The occasional “Arabness” of the American Southwest

Visiting Santa Fe, I’m reminded yet again of how very Arab the American Southwest sometimes feels.

There’s a lot of Arabic influence around these parts.  Even the name of the city of Albuquerque, the etymology of which is in some dispute, has been argued to come from Arabic.  (Many Spanish and English words beginning with the element al-, which is the Arabic definite article, indisputably do — e.g., algorithm, algebra, alcohol, the star-name Aldebaran, the palace of the Alhambra, the California town called Alhambra, the place-name Alcatraz, alchemy, alkali, albatross, and so forth.)  While some claim that Albuquerque comes from the Latin alba querqus, or “white oak,” others insist that it’s from the Arabic abu al-qurq, meaning “land of the cork oak” (literally, “father of the cork oak”), or the Arabic al-barquq (“apricot”)

In either case, the vehicle for such influences is Spanish, and it must be recalled that substantial portions of modern Portugal and Spain were ruled by Arabic speakers from AD 711 to AD 1492.  We often refer to this influence as Moorish.

Many of the architectural features of the Southwest, including the enclosed courtyards and tiled fountains that are so familiar in the California missions and beyond, are indisputably distant legacies of Damascus and the Arabs.  The Umayyad dynasty, based in Syria, ruled much of the Iberian peninsula (under the name Andalusia) for a long and influential time.  That’s why communities even in the Spanish-speaking Southwest were administered by a mayor called an alcalde (Arabic “judge” or القاضي [al-qāḍī]).  That’s why Spanish-speakers exclaim ojalá, “I wish!,” reflecting the Arabic  وشاء الله (wa-šā’ allāh; “may God will it!”).

Even the designs of the tiles look Middle Eastern.  And the basket designs, though undoubtedly American Indian in many cases, would fit strikingly well in the bazaars of Aswan, Egypt.

Posted from Santa Fe, New Mexico