Jawi Tradition in the Philippines

Abstract

Chapter six provides a general survey on the Islamic written tradition in the archipelago, from the introduction of Jawi script in pre-Hispanic Luzon to the first intellectual works to establish a Philology on Moro languages. Certainly, vestiges of the use of the old Islamic lingua franca can be still tested in modern Tagalog, with several words coming from Arabic. The Boxer Codex clearly mentioned Muslim preachers and missionaries teaching the word—the Qur’ān—to Tagalogs. At the same time, Arabic borrowings did not come only via Malay, but the Philippine languages testify many other borrowings coming from the Arabic once spoken in Spain. Moreover, the growing process of Hispanicization of southern Philippines from Zamboanga introduced not only the Spanish language in the courts of the sultans, but also numerous Spanish borrowings in Jawi documents. The chapter problematizes this linguistic complexity connecting, in Islamic terms, Spain and the Philippines. In other words, the chapter connects the Islamic Far East with the legacy of al-Andalus, since both Iberian Moriscos and Filipino Moros wrote Spanish in Arabic script, in the phenomenon called aljamiado. Indeed, Spain did not consciously promote Islamization, but unconsciously promoted Islamication, since Andalusian legacy was at the very core of Spanish culture.