Malta was conquered by North African Islamic caliphate around ~800AD, and then 200 years later the Normans(yes, those normans weren't just invading England around the year 1000) came in and took it, and then 200 years after that they kicked the Muslims out. By that point the Arabic that the original invaders brought was the common language, and it developed independently from the Arabic spoken in North Africa, slowly becoming latinized by the Christian Normans.

Gotcha, so it does parallel Sicily pretty closely but I don't think Arabic took hold as a common language quite how it did in Malta, but this is definitely something I need to look into more deeply. Thanks!

That's exactly right...the Arabs also invaded sicily around the same time, but didn't get as much as a foothold as they did on Malta...maybe just because of population sizes, or the fact that mainland Italy down by current day calabria were also speaking the same language as the Sicilians, so there was a reserve for the language to continue on. So Sicilian (the language) has a lot of borrowing from Arabic (as well as greek) instead of being a dialect of arabic.