The closest relatives of Maltese today are North African Arabic varieties. The tendency to focus on synchronic structure in both contexts has allowed deeper insights into their respective grammars, but makes it easy to neglect the usefulness of North African data for the analysis of Maltese. In the hope of encouraging greater interaction between the two fields, this paper gives an introduction to recent work on North African Arabic, followed by five case studies illustrating how North African data allows a deeper understanding not only of the Arabic roots of Maltese but also of the role of Berber and Romance influence in shaping it.