Musta?rab, Musta?rabs

views updated

MUSTA?RAB, MUSTA?RABS

MUSTA?RAB, MUSTA?RABS , name of the Arab-speaking, old, established Jewish communities and residents in the Middle East. The term is borrowed from the Arabic. According to Arab genealogists, the "?Arab al-Musta?riba" were not of native Arab stock; they were naturalized, "Arabized," Arabs. In Muslim Spain the Christians who adopted Arabic and Arab customs were called "Mozarabs." The term Musta?rab (better: Musta?rib) for Arabized Jews seems a late one; it occurs from the 15th century onward and seems to have been first used by immigrants from Christian Europe for the old, established Jews in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. The terms al-Mash?riqa ("Easterners") and Moriscos are sometimes used in the same sense.

bibliography:

Neubauer, Chronicles, 1 (1887), 146, 150; A. Yaari, Iggerot Ere? Yisrael (1943), 169; I. Ben-Zvi, Me?karim u-Mekorot (1966), 15–20.

[Haïm Z'ew Hirschberg]

More From encyclopedia.com