A text in a Romance language is said to be aljamiado if it is written using the Arabic or the Hebrew alphabets, as texts written in the Mozarabic or Judeo-Spanish languages are.

In their latest times, Moriscos had lost Arabic as an everyday language, and wrote in Spanish language on Islamic subjects. Examples are the Coplas del alhichante (about a hajj) or the Libro de Yuçuf on the Biblical Joseph (dreamer).

In Bosnia, Slavic Muslims wrote their Bosnian texts using the Arabic alphabet.

Since the writing systems are not very suited to complex vowel sets, the alphabets had to be adapted, and the reader was expected to guess the missing sounds.

In Spanish, aljama means the quarters where Jews or Mudejars lived

External links

• A bilingual Arabic-aljamiado Quran from the fifteenth century (http://biblioteca.arabismo.com/almonacid/a1/a1p_153.html)