Although Mozarabic is today used as an umbrella term for any Romance variety spoken in medieval Al-Andalus—whether in modern day Portugal or Spain —its speakers would not have referred to it that way. They instead called it

Mozarabic was spoken by Mozarabs (Christians living as dhimmis), Muladis (natives converted to Islam), Jews, and possibly some of the ruling Arabs and Berbers. The cultural and literary language of the Mozarabs was at first Latin, but as time passed, it came to

It is widely agreed that Mozarabic had the following features:
• The diphthongs /au̯, ai̯/, the latter possibly changed to /ei̯/

• Aljamiado
• Mozarabs
• Mozarabic Rite
• Mozarabic art and architecture
• Andalusian Arabic

Other than the obvious Arabic influence, and remnants of a pre-Roman substratum, early Mozarabic may also have been affected by African Romance, carried over to the Iberian Peninsula by the Berbers who made up most of the Islamic army that conquered it and

Because Mozarabic was not a language of higher culture, such as Latin or Arabic, it had no standard writing-system. Numerous Latin documents written by early Mozarabs are, however, extant.
The bulk of surviving material in Mozarabic is found in the

• Corriente Córdoba, Federico & Sáenz-Badillos, Ángel. 1994. Nueva propuesta de lectura de las xarajât de la serie árabe con texto romance. Revista de filología española 73 (3–4).