Siculo-Arabic or Sicilian Arabic is a group of Arabic varieties that were spoken in the Emirate of Sicily from the 9th century, persisting under the subsequent Norman rule until the 13th century. However, only one dialect of Siculo-Arabic is still spoken: Maltese. Siculo-Arabic dialects descend from Arabic following the Abbasid conquest of Sicily in the 9th century and gradually marginalized following the Norman conquest in the 11th century.

Siculo-Arabic is designated as a historical language that is attested only in writings from the 9th–13th centuries in Sicily. of which present-day Maltese is considered to be its sole surviving descendant. Maltese evolved from one of the dialects of Siculo-Arabic over the past 800 years and a gradual process of Latinisation that gave Maltese a significant superstrate influence from Romance languages. By contrast, present-day Sicilian, which is an Italo-Dalmatian language, retains relatively little Siculo-Arabic vocabulary; its influence is limited to some 300 words.

During the 7th and 8th centuries, Sicily was raided from Tunis. The eventual Muslim Arab conquest of Byzantine Sicily was piecemeal and slow. The region was a frontier zone, even after the fall of Taormina in 962, which completed the invasion. Romance languages, such as African Romance, and Byzantine Greek continued to be used in the island well after the Arabic conquest. Its speakers were largely made up of Sicilian Muslims. However, based on the foundation charter on the Church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio (written in both Greek and Arabic), it can be speculated that Siculo-Arabic was also the mother tongue for many Sicilian, in this case Palermo’s, Orthodox Christians.

When the Normans entered Sicily, the island was divided into two main non-Latin linguistic groups:

In 1086, the Normans managed to secure the conversion of the last important Kalbid ruler of Enna Ibn Hamud. This conversion along with the Norman adoption of many Arab governing customs resulted in the emergence of a Christian Siculo-Arabic language. During the Norman era the chancery office operated in Arabic, Greek and Latin.

The Neżha el-mxtieq fi ĥtirâq el-âfâq (Arabic: نزهة المشتاق في اختراق الآفاق, lit. "the book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands"), most often known as the Tabula Rogeriana (lit. The Book of Roger in Latin) is a description of the world and world map created by the Palermo-based Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154. Al-Idrisi worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map for fifteen years at the court of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, who commissioned the work around 1138.^{[clarification needed]}

In the post-conquest period, both Arabic and Greek were sometimes used by the new rulers and subsequently used in the king's fiscal administration, which managed royal lands and men in Sicily and Calabria. The many documents that it issued are among the main and most important sources for Arabic in Sicily. However, when the Hohenstaufen replaced the Normans, Arabic was dropped as a language of government in 1198 and the Hohenstaufen expelled the remaining Muslims to Lucera and North Africa in the 13th century. Due to the expulsions, the only remaining Siculo-Arabic speakers were Christians.

When the Aragonese took Sicily, they introduced Catalan nobility, made Latin the only official language; Greek and Arabic official records in Sicily ceased to exist by the 14th century.