Phoenician language
"Hisbaal" is the oldest name for Seville. It appears to have originated during the Phoenician colonisation of the Tartessian culture in south-western Iberia and it refers to the God Baal. According to Manuel Pellicer Catalán, the ancient name was Spal, and it meant "lowland" in the Phoenician language (cognate to the Hebrew "Shfela" and the Arabic "Asfal" ). During Roman rule, the name was Latinised as and later as . After the Umayyad invasion, this name remained in use among the Mozarabs, being adapted into Arabic as "Išbīliya" (): since the /p/ phoneme does not exist in Arabic, it was replaced by /b/; the Latin place-name suffix "-is" was Arabized as "-iya", and "a" turned into "ī" due to the phonetic phenomenon called "imāla".