Zafra

The Arabic noun ṣajra designates a rock of certain size, a crag or a boulder; applied to a toponym, it indicates a settlement on a prominent rocky outcrop. Extremaduran Zafra sits indeed on a granite hill that dominated the old communication route between Baetica and Lusitania. The 9th-century Arab fortress was later replaced by the Alcázar de los Duques de Feria (15th century), built on the same defences and today a National Parador. The medieval Castilian spelling Çafra kept the medieval ç to represent the Arabic affricate sibilant; today's Z- is the result of the 15th-century palatalisation. The common noun zafra also has its own lexical life in Castilian: it designates the annual sugar-cane harvest in Latin America, but that zafra comes from the Arabic safra ('journey, transfer'), a homophone and homograph but etymologically distinct from the toponym.