What is it about?
My point i: there was no lingua franca in such contexts (Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli....). People spoke Arabic and a variety of languages (Spanish, Judeo-Spanish, Sicilian, Maltese, other Italian dialects. Turkish Ottoman, Greek, Black African languages, Caucasian languages...). In my opinion the colonialist content of the notion of lingua franca is too strong. Even if there were many forms of linguistic hybridization, Arabic was the language of administration, commerce, civic life and culture).
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Why is it important?
It is important because the concept of lingua franca has been often used in history as a kind of justification of colonization (and later as a tool of post-colonial interprétations).
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This page is a summary of: La langue des marchands de Tripoli au xixe siècle : langue franque et langue arabe dans un port méditerranéen, OpenEdition,
DOI: 10.4000/books.irmc.1469.
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