Ir-Rabat

Abstract

From where is the word Rabat derived? What does it mean? Maltese has acquired a lot from Arabic, but it is essentially a Semitic language. Words in our language similar to Arabic do not necessarily come from it. It is possible that those words had formed part of the language of the inhabitants of Malta hundreds of years before the Arabs came. One should remember that the first known people who ruled Malta were the Phoenicians, who too were of Semitic origins. The Roman writer Diodorus Siculus says that the islands of Malta and Gozo were a colony of the Phoenicians. When St Paul came to Malta, the inhabitants neither talked Greek nor Latin. As far as we know they talked a Punic dialect, and probably continued to talk it till the Arabs came in the year A.D. 870. This Punic dialect was not very different from Arabic. It is possible that this is one of the reasons why the Arabic language was so much assimilated by the inhabitants of Malta. [excerpt]