Mozarabic was a continuum of closely relate Romance dialects spoken in Muslim dominated areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the Romance languages' development in Iberia. Mozarabic descends from Late Latin and early Romance dialects spoken in the Iberian Peninsula from 5th to 8th centuries (Hispania was the name of a group of three provinces of the Peninsula and the name more commonly used at Roman and Visigothic times). This set of dialects came to be known as the Mozarabic language, though there was never a common standard. (Mozarab comes from the Arabic word مستعرب - musta'rab, i.e. "Arabized").