Note 64 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 6)

(p. 49). Azanegues of Sahara ... Moorish tongue.—[Cf. Ritter, Géographie Comparée, III, p. 366, art. Azenagha. Ritter says they speak Berber. On this language see the curious article, Berber, by M. d'Avezac, in his Encylopédie des gens du Monde. On the Azanegues, Barros says (Decade I, Bk. i, ch. ii): "The countries which the Azanegues inhabit border on the negroes of Jaloff, where begins the region of Guinea." Sahará signifies desert. Geographers spell Zahará, Zaara, Ssahhará, Sarra, and Sahar. The inhabitants are called Saharacin—Saracens—"sons of the desert" (cf. Ritter, Géographie Comparée, III, p. 360), a term immensely extended by mediæval writers—thus Plano Carpini expects to find "black Saracens" in India. On the etymology, cf. Renaud's Invasions des Sarrasins en France, Pt. iv, pp. 227-242, etc. He confirms Azurara's statement that the Sahara language differed from the Mooris—i.e., it was Berber, not Arabic—and he refers us to the Arab author Ibn-Alkûtya, in evidence of this.]—S.

The "Other lands where he learned the Moorish tongue" were probably Marocco, or one of the other Barbary States along the Mediterranean littoral, where Arabic was in regular use. This language stopped, for the most part, at the Sahara Desert. Santarem's derivation of the word "Saracen" is much disputed.