Essays in the History of Languages and Linguistics. Dedicated to Marek Stachowski on the occasion of his 6oa' birthday. Edited by M. N£meth, B. Podolak, M. Urban. Krakow 2017. Pages 473-481. doi: 10.12797/9788376388618. 28

Kinga Paraskiewicz Jagiellonian University in Krakow

IN SEARCH OF GIAOUR. NOTES ON THE NEW PERSIAN GABR A ZOROASTRIAN; INFIDEL’

The article offers remarks on the history and transmission of the Persian word gabr and a number of words in other languages that derive from it. First, the semantic development of the word is traced from a neutral meaning ‘a Zoroas- trian’ to a term of abuse. This is followed by a critical comparison of two ety­ mological proposals that attempt to link the New Persian word alternatively to Arabic and to Aramaic. The conclusion is that Persian gabr ‘a Zoroastrian’ most likely derives from an Aramaic word for ‘a foreign hero, brave man’. etymology, semantic changes, Persian, religious terms

Look at the great Turk, he governs Guebres, Banians, Greek Christians, Neslorians, Romans. (Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary)

1. Infidel giaour versus Zoroastrian gaur or guebre

The Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1910 described the term giaour as follows: “a Turk­ ish adaptation of the Persian gawr or gor, an infidel; a word used by the Turks to describe all who are not Mohommedans, with especial reference to Christians. The word, first employed as a term of contempt and reproach, has become so 474 Kinga Paraskiewicz

general that in most cases no insult is intended in its use; similarly, in parts of China, the term “foreign devil” has become void of offence. A strict analogy to giaour is found in the Arabic kaffir, or unbeliever, which is so commonly in use as to have become the proper name of peoples and countries” (EB1910 XI: 927). The Persian word gabr ‘infidel, unbeliever’ was used by the Turks (also Kurds, but not Arabs!) to designate various religious communities and the adherents of all religions except the Muslims; first Zoroastrians, then Christians, including Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Assyrians: “In the Ottoman defters. Orthodox Christians are as a rule recorded as kafir or gavur (infidels) or (u)rum” (Daskalov, Marinov 2013: 44). Ottoman Turkish gáur (1544-1548: giaur) ‘Chris- tianus’ (Heffening 1942: 25); gáur, gávur(i63o) ‘infideles; quales Turcae non passim Christianos vocant, uti á nobis reciprocé vocantur & habendi sunt’ (Meninski 1680 II: 3856); gavur (1790: giavour) ‘infidele’ (Viguier 1790: 394; cf. Stachowski 2014: 198). Modern Turkish gavur, a general word to describe a ‘non-Muslim’, is a highly offensive slur and is used to denigrate a foreigner. From Turkish this word entered into European languages: 1. giaour, French, from dialectal Italian (Venetian) giaur, from Turkish gavur, from Persian gawr, gabr, first known use: 1564 (Merriam-Webster) 2. giaour, n. (1564), rel., (Byron’s The Giaour, 1813) Lit., var. gaur, gour + 11 (de­ rogatory) [Fr. (< Tur. gavur ‘non-Musilim’ < Per. gaur ‘infidel’, var. of gabr ‘fire-worshipper’ < Ar. kafir ‘infidel’] ‘a non-Musilim, esp. a Christian (= in­ fidel, unbeliever); the chief character of Byron’s oriental verse-tale (Cannon, Kaye 2001: 86) 3. giaour, from Turkish gavur, from Persian gaur, probably from Arabic kafir (Oxford Die.) 4. giaour, 1555-65; earlier gower, gour < Turkish gavur < Persian gaur, variant of gai>r Zoroastrian, non-Muslim; spelling giaour < French, with gi-representing Turk palatalized g, later taken as spelling for j (Dic.com)

Apart from Turkish, Pers, gabr found its way into French gaur or guébre ‘fidéle á la religion iranienne traditionnelle, le mazdéisme’ (Dic.cordial) and then English. These words were commonly used by European travelers when referring to the Zoroastrians:1

1 E.g. The French merchant Jean Tavernier mentions gaurs, or ‘ancient Persians who adored fire’ in Isfahan in 1647 (Rose 2011:176). In search of giaour. Notes on the New Persian gabr ... 475

1. guebre/gheber ‘a follower of the ancient Persian religion as reformed by Zo­ roaster’ (Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary) 2. guebre/gueber (1662) rel. [Fr. guèbre < Pers, gabr] ‘a Parsi’ (Cannon, Kaye 2001:86); “The Parsees are called ‘Gabers’ or ‘Gaures’ i.e. fire-worshippers in Persia” (Ov­ ington 1994:139). 3. “(Littérature) nous écrivons guèbre: ghebr est un mot persien qui signifie un sectateur de Zoroastre, un adorateur du feu, celui qui fait profession del’an- cienne religion des Perses ; mais chez les Turcs, ce mot est injurieux, et se prend pour un idolâtre, pour un infidèle qui vit sans loi et sans discipline ; les Guèbres sont les mêmes que les Gaures” (Boulanger 1757 <2>).

2. Persian gabr The New Persian word gabrat present obsolete in the sense ‘infidel’,2 was used in all periods of classical Persian literature from its beginnings3 as a technical and rather neutral term synonymous with môq ‘magus; one of the Magi, worshipper of fire; infidel, pagan; (also later) a Christian monk’ (Steingass 1892:1278,1340), or the obsolete âtas-parast ‘fire-worshipper’, along with many other religious terms (cf. Shaki 2000: 239-240):

F. Steingass: gabr ‘a guebre, ancient Persian, one of the Magi of the sect of Zo­ roaster, a priest of the worshippers of fire; a pagan, infidel; a plant resembling ginger’; gafer-dbdtfhabitation of fire-worshippers; the suburbs of Ispahan’, gabri ‘the Magian religion; paganism’; gaur ‘a pagan, infidel, guebre, or worshipper of fire; name of a city in Bengal, now in ruins’; gâvr, gâvur (for gabr?) ‘an infidel’ (Steingass 1892: 1073-1074,1101). I.A. Vullers: gabrcoll, gâvur, ‘magus, cultor ignis (môqkeates-parastast) [Borhâniqâ- tiu, lex. persicum4; coll. Sàdii Gulistan ed. Semelet, Paris 1828: 1 bis, 10. 30, 23; et Chrestomathia Schahnamiana ed. Vullers: 66. 524]; ubi mardigabr, infidelis quivis, paganus M., qua significat. vox et ar. kafir orta videtur, ut gavrex ar. qabr (Vullers 1855 2: 950). I.A. Vullers: gavr, gabr, gâvur ‘1. magus; cultor ignis; paganus, infidelis; 2. coll. gavrah gens quaedam infidelium in Hindustan (kaferi Hindustan); 3. nom. urbis in Bengalia nunc vastatae’ (Vullers 1855 II: 1043)

2 In Modern Persian only: kâfer and its synonyms: nâ-mosolmân, bi-din, bi-imân. 3 E.g.: Ferdousi (Berlels 1957 1:149). 4 Mo'in (1954 HI: 1773-1774)· 476 Kinga Paraskiewicz

Persian dictionaries, like the famous Loqat-name-ye Dehxoda (Dehxoda 1956), and the Mo’in’s Farhang-e farsi (Mo’in 1963-1973) provide us with several synonyms of this word: gabr = moq ‘one of the Magi, worshipper of fire, infidel, pagan; a Christian monk; a tavern-keeper’, mubid, maubad, mubad ‘chief of the Magi; a Parsi, guebre, especially one of their priests; a doctor, philosopher, any man of great wisdom whose sayings are quoted; one who administers justice; a judge, especially of the Jews; a wazir a councillor of state; name of the husband of Wisa’ (Steingass 1892:1278,1340),5 atas-parast ‘a fire-worshipper’, yazdan-parast ‘a worshipper of God; a name assumed by some fire-worshippers’ (Steingass 1892: 1530), her-bud ‘a priest of a fire-temple; a judge of the Magi; a fire-wor­ shipper; an ascetic’ (cf. Steingass 1892:1520), mardixuda (haqq) ‘a man of God; a priest of the Magi’ (cf. Steingass 1892:1211), zandig, zindig ‘(chanter/reader of) the Zand’,6 (Arabicized forms:) zindiq, zanadiq, zanadiqat (pl. of zindiq) ‘of the Zand’, zand-bd/‘Zand-weaver’; zand-xan ‘a chanter or reader of the Zand’, pe­ joratively: zand-soz ‘who consumes or destroys the Zand’, mutazandiq ‘turned Guebre (zindiq) ‘become a worshipper of fire; impious’ (cf. Steingass 1892: 623, 625,1158), rdst-pos ‘who hides the truth, an infidel’ (cf. Steingass 1892: 562), bi-din ‘irreligious, heretical; an infidel’ (Steingass 1892: 218), napak-din ‘of an impure faith, heretic, infidel’ (Steingass 1892:1366). It is worth mentioning that most of the Persian words are neutral technical (or poetical) terms, while the Arabic loanwords for ‘infidels’ used in Persian are of depreciatory character: Arab, kafir ‘one denying God; an infidel; (more par­ ticularly) a Cabulese; dark (cloud); black (hair); a mistress; one who wears a gar­ ment over his coat of mail; a farmer; sower; the sea; a mighty river’; kafiri harbi ‘an infidel against whom war is incumbent’; kafiri zimmi ‘an infidel who pays tribute, and therefore is under protection’; kafiri kitdbi ‘an infidel in possession of sacred books, i.e. a Jew, Christian, or Majusi’ (Steingass 1892: 1007); kafiri ‘of or relating to an infidel; infidelity, unbelief; impiety; the language of the Ka­ firs’; kufri ‘infidel, pagan; an unbeliever, an idolater’; kafur ‘unthankful; impious, an infidel’ (Steingass 1892: 1039); Arab, sabi’at, sabi’a ‘an idolater, who changes his religion, pagan, Sabean’ (Steingass 1892: 778); Arab, qair-kitabi ‘one without a book; a heathen, a pagan, an idolater’ (Steingass 1892: 1014); Arab, musriki

5 Arabicized forms: majus (pl. of majusi) ‘Magi, fire-worshippers’, majuse ‘one worship­ per of fire’, majusiyat 'the religion of the Magi’, mawabizat (pl. of maubaz) ‘priests of the Magi’ (Steingass 1892:1179,1337,1340). 6 A Pahlavi version of the Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroastrians. In search of giaour. Notes on the New Persian gabr ... 477

‘a polytheist, idolater, pagan’ (Steingass 1892: 1246); Arab, mulhid ‘a heretic, pa­ gan, unbeliever; one who denies the resurrection of the dead; an atheist; impious, iniquitous; one who renounces the faith’ (Steingass 1892: 1307); Arab, wasani ‘an idolater, pagan, heathen’ (Steingass 1892:1456); Arab, sanawi ‘one who holds the doctrine of the two principles, one of the sect of the Magi’ (Steingass 1892: 347); ahli zalâl ‘an infidel, heretic’ (Steingass 1892:125).

3. In search of gabr The New Persian gabr (also gabrak) ‘Zoroastrian’ (gabri, gabraki ‘zoroastrian- ism’) has no clear etymology. Several proposals have been made for the term, unfortunately none of which is convincing (Javânmard 1963, Pazuh 1963, Pur-e Dàwud 1964, Sahzâdi 1963, Sorusiân 1963, Mohit Tabâtabâ’i 1970). The question is when this term appeared, what its original meaning was, and towards whom it was used for the first time in the sense of infidel. It seems that it must have originated after the Muslim conquest, since it is not attested in any Middle Persian text in this meaning (cf. Middle Persian ag-den ‘of evil religion; heretic’7). The most widely quoted and more favorably received is that by Iranian scholar Ebràhim Pur-e Dâwüd, who suggested that the Persian gabr derives from the Arabic word kafir ‘infidel’ mispronunced by the Persians in early Islamic Peri­ od.8 This etymology is still favoured in various dictionaries and encyclopaedias. For example, A. Bausani writes the following in the Encyclopaedia ofIslam:

GABR, term generally used in Persian literature — with rather depreciative impli­ cations — to indicate Zoroastrians. Philologists have not yet reached agreement on its etymology. Several suggestions have been made, e.g.: (a) from Hebrew habher (‘companion’) in the sense of Kiddüshïn 72a; (b) from Aramaeo-Pahlavi gabrâ (read mart), especially in the compounds môg-martàn (‘the Magi’) (writte môg-gabrâ-âri): (c) from a Persian corruption of Arabic kafir (‘unbeliever’). The first two etymol­ ogies are rather improbable, so that the derivation from A. kafir seems the most acceptable. In Persian literature the word takes often the depreciative suffix -ak (gabrak, pi. gabrakan). Persian knows also the form gawrigaur, Kurdish the forms

7 The term agdên, often problematically translated as ‘infidel’, referred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Tracing this term in Middle Persian texts such as legal cases in The Book of a Thousand Judgments and polemics in the Dënkard Book in, one can see that the concept of the infidel frequently appears in discussions about slavery, intermarriage, and conversion to and from Zoroastrianism. Cf. Mokhtarian (2015: 99-115). 8 Piir-e Dàwud (1964: 302-318), quoted in the Logat-name-ye Dehxoda (1959). 478 Kinga Paraskiewicz

gebir (applied to Armenians), gawr (Zoroastrians), gâvir (applied to Europeans, especially Russians), Turkish the well-known word gâvur (unbeliever). In Persian literature the word is applied only secondarily to “unbelievers” in general, the oldest texts using it especially and technically for Zoroastrians. This, together with the iranization of the Arabic word which probably lies behind it, points to a very old origin—purely “oral”— of the loan, certainly at a period preceding that when Arabic words were introduced in abundance into new-Persian, at the birth of new-Persian written literature. (Bausani 1991II: 970-971)

Mansour Shaki does not agree with this hypothesis, since the Arabic word kafir (Pers, kâfer) contains no sound that does not exist in Persian:

But, although Persians still fail to articulate some Arabic speech sounds properly, there is no unusual sound in kâfer that would require phonetic modification. Moreover, although gabr has been sometimes used to denote infidel {kâfer) by semantic extension (e.g., Rûmî, Matnawïü, p. 287, v. 177; Hasan Rümlü, ed. Navâ’ï, I, p. 384; Eskandar Beg, I, pp. 85, 87), kâfer as a generic word could hardly refer to a specific revealed religion such as Zoroastrianism. (Shaki 2000: 240)

Shaki claims that the New Persian term gabr derives, in all likelihood, from Ara­ maic GBR’/gabrâ (lit. ‘man’), which in the Sasanian period was used to refer to free peasants in the region of Mesopotamia.’ Then the word was used as a technical term synonymous with mogmagus’:

With the dwindling of the Zoroastrian community because of frequent pros- elytisations and the curtailment of their social rights, the term came to have a pejorative implication, which is the reason for its commutation to the respect­ able zardosti (Zoroastrian) in recent times. (...) It, therefore, seems likely that gabr, used already in Sasanian times in reference to a section of Zoroastrian community in Mesopotamia, had been employed by the converted Persians in the Islamic period to indicate their Zoroastrian compatriots, a practice that later spread throughout the country. The term has also been used by the Muslim Kurds, Turks, and some other ethnic groups in modified forms to denote various religious communities other than Zoroastians, sometimes even in the sense of unbeliever. (Shaki 2000: 240)

However, it is hard to believe that a word denoting free peasants in Mesopotamia, mentioned only in the obscure book by Shteyermanova, had become so widespread.

9 Quoting the unknown work of M. Shtyermanova, Vesmimaya (sic, instead of Vsemir- naya - K.P.) Istoriya (World history), Moscow 1955, vol. 2, 25.2.1. In search of giaour. Notes on the New Persian gabr ... 479

Of course it is obvious that the term could not derive from mog-mard / mgw- GBR’ (magus), as it has been suggested by some scholars, “for the element GBR’/ gabrâ, being an ideogram and a bound constituent of the compound, cannot appear in absolute form, nor may it be pronounced other than mard (man) in common parlance” (Shaki 2000: 240). Nevertheless, one must remember that the knowledge of Aramaic before the Arabic conquest among the Persians was quite common. The Aramaic (Old Aramaic, Imperial Aramaic, Nabatean, Palmyrean, Jewish Aramaic, Syriac, Mandaic) term gabrâ [GBR’] ‘a man’ (Jean, Hoftijzer 1965: 47; Drower, Macuch 1963: 73) was used by Persians to indicate not free peasants but strong, brave men in the Sasanian times. This Semitic word also has its equivalent in Hebrew: gibbor ‘man’ (from iqa gabar. to be strong, mighty), adj. noun masc. ‘strong, mighty; champion; great, helper, hero, Mighty One, mighty warrior, valiant warrior’, cf. Arab, gabbâr ‘who magnifies himself, behaves proudly, a tyrant, who is bold, audacious’.10 Hebrew gibbor, which oc­ curs over a hundred times in the Bible, parallels the use of Greek héros. It stands for the demi-gods of the distant past (Gen. 6: 4), who correspond to such heroes as Heracles or Perseus. Nimrod was called gibbor (Gen. 10: 8) - a mighty warri­ or-king and founder of great cities (Speiser 1967). Hebr. melek gibbor (Dan. 11.3) refers to Alexander the Great, described as the “accursed” (gizistag) wrecker of the Zoroastrian tradition. Most probably this Aramaic word denoting foreign heroes, brave men, must have been used by the Zoroastrians themselves in contrast to Arab, kafir which had for them a derogative meaning.

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10 Lockman Foundation (1981, 1998). 480 Kinga Paraskiewicz

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