mezquita

Forms

mezquita f (plural mezquitas)^[1] Charters and Old Spanish texts write mezkida, meçquita, mezchita, meçkitas and mesquita.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Andalusian Arabic مسجد (másǧid), the Andalusian Arabic form of Arabic مسجد (masjid, “place of prostration, mosque”), according to the DLE, which says it came through Berber.^[4] The Arabic noun comes from سجد (sajada, “to prostrate oneself”).^[5][6]

The ending ⟨-ita⟩ and the feminine gender do not fit the Arabic word, and the explanations differ.^[7][5] Corominas thinks it probably came through Armenian մզկիթ (mzkitʿ), a form brought from the East by the Crusaders, and Gómez de Silva and Bénaben follow him.^[5][6][8] Corriente rejects the Greek and Armenian routes: the first Muslim conquerors of the West were mostly Yemenis, whose dialects kept a stop /g/ for /ǧ/ and used a feminine variant *masgidah, which also gave tamǝzgida; the Mozarabs then jokingly reshaped the word as *musqíta “she who makes one fall (into error)”.^[7][9][10] Wiktionary reports Al-Jallad's view that the source is Aramaic 𐡌𐡎𐡂𐡃𐡀 (masgəḏā, “the mosque”), which would also explain Byzantine Greek μασγίδα (masgída).^[1]

The same word is Catalan mesquita, Galician mesquita and Portuguese mesquita, Italian moschea and meschita.^[7][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1098.^[5] DEMel lists still earlier forms in Aragonese charters, mezkida in 1087 and mezquitas at Huesca in 1093.^[2] The first record in a Spanish text is the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where the Moors of Morocco fear the Cid allá dentro en Marruecos, o las mezquitas son “there in Morocco, where the mosques are”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The sense has always been “Muslim place of worship”.^[2][4] In the 13th century the Aragonese Vidal Mayor has a Muslim swear his oath in the mosque, as a Jew does in the synagogue, and Alfonso X's laws call synagogues and mosques houses of religion because they are built to pray to God.^[3][11] Nebrija translated the word as aedicula macumethae, the shrine of Muhammad.^[12]

In the Americas the conquerors used it from the 1520s for the temples of the native peoples: in Honduras in 1526 the Indians keep their idols in houses “like mosques”, and in 1533 a Cuzco text speaks of the mezquita of the Sun.^[13][1] Autoridades reports Covarrubias's view that the word is Arabic and means “place of prayer”.^[14] The Academy first gave an etymology in 1884, from Arabic meschid “place of worship”.^[15]

Timeline

• 1087 – mezkida in a charter of Peter I of Aragon.^[2]
• 1093 – mezquitas in a charter of Huesca.^[2]
• 1098 – Corominas's first record.^[5]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy).^[3]
• c. 1250 – the Vidal Mayor.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: aedicula macumethae.^[12]
• 1524 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy gives an Arabic etymology for the first time.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mosque, a Muslim place of worship.^[4][1]
2. (historical, obsolete) A temple of the native peoples of the Americas, as the conquerors called it.^[1][13]

Related words

• Portuguese mesquita
• Italian moschea

Usage notes

Moliner gives aljama as a synonym.^[16] Mezquita is also a place name in Galicia, Aragon, Salamanca and Cuenca.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mezquita
3. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mezquita
4. ^ a b c Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. mezquita
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mezquita
6. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 461
7. ^ a b c Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 389
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. mezquita
9. ^ a b Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. mesquita
10. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. mezquita
11. ^ Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. mezquita
12. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 380
13. ^ a b c Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. mezquita
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 563
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 701
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mezquita
17. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1192