"The Spanish lyric has been considered the oldest in Romance Europe, since the
discovery of the kharjas. These were written in Mozarabic dialect -a variation
of Romance, derived from Latin- with Hebrew or Arabic characters. They are the
core and end of the "moaxajas", poems widespread throughout the Iberian
peninsula written in Semitic languages. Samuel Stern managed to decipher the
first ones, in Hebrew poetry, in 1948.
We have some unsigned works from
the 10th century and others signed by identified authors. It is assumed that
they were written during an earlier epoch – even before the Arab invasion – but
the Andalusian muslims were able to understand them and mixed them with words
from their own language. For this reason it proved difficult for the modern
philologists to decipher them. In the Arab kharjas we find arabisms mixed
perfectly intelligibly with Romance phrases. The kjarjas are the oldest lyrical
poems of all Romance poetry."
Medieval Spanish Poetry
[via plep]
