The term ‘Judaeo-Arabic’ refers to a type of Arabic that was used by Jews and was distinct in some way from other types of Arabic. It is by no means a uniform linguistic entity and is used to refer both to written forms of Arabic and also to spoken dialects.

The Arabic language was used by Jews in Arabia before the rise of Islam. Some of the pre-Islamic Arabic poets were Jewish, the most famous of whom was as-Samawʾal ibn ʿAdī. The surviving written works of those Jewish poets do not exhibit anything that dist…