Giaour

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Non-Muslim person (of the Ottoman Empire)

title: "Giaour" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["islam-related-slurs", "turkish-words-and-phrases", "ethno-cultural-designations", "christianity-in-the-ottoman-empire", "exonyms", "religious-exonyms", "persecution-of-christians-by-muslims"] description: "Non-Muslim person (of the Ottoman Empire)" topic_path: "society/religion" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giaour" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Non-Muslim person (of the Ottoman Empire) ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/The_Giaour_MET_DP874603_-_cropped.jpg" caption="[[Théodore Géricault]]: ''The Giaour'' (1820, lithograph; [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]], New York)"] ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Eugène_Ferdinand_Victor_Delacroix_021.jpg" caption="[[Eugène Delacroix]]: ''The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan'' (1826, oil on canvas; [[Art Institute of Chicago]]), inspired by [[Lord Byron]]'s ''[[The Giaour]]''"] ::

Giaour or Gawur or Gavour (; , ; from gâvor; ; ; ; ; Bosnian; kaur/đaur) meaning "infidel", is a term used mostly in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire for non-Muslims or, more particularly, Christians in the Balkans.

Terminology

The terms "kafir", "gawur", and "rûm" (the last meaning "Rum millet") were commonly used in defters (tax registries) for Orthodox Christians, usually without ethnic distinction. Christian ethnic groups in the Ottoman Balkans included Greeks (rûm), Bulgarians (bulgar), Serbs (sırp), Albanians (arnavut) and Vlachs (eflak), among others.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica described the term as follows: ::quote[attribution="Turkish]] adaptation of the [[Persian language"] Giaour (a [[Turkish language ::

During the Tanzimat (1839–1876) era, a hatt-i humayun prohibited the use of the term by Muslims with reference to non-Muslims | year = 1868 | title = The Eastern Question | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=0BsaAQAAIAAJ | journal = London Quarterly Review | location = London | publisher = E.C. Barton | page = 407 | quote = The application of the word giaour, dog, is forbidden by the Hatt-i-Humayoou [...]. | access-date = 20 November 2023 to prevent problems occurring in social relationships.

European cultural references

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Giaours_smoking_the_Tchibouque_with_the_Pacha_of_the_Dardanelles._Travels_in_Circassia,Krim-tartary,&c.jpg" caption="pacha]] of the [[Dardanelles]]'', book illustration from 1839."] ::

Giaour is the name given to the evil monster of a man in the tale Vathek, written by William Beckford in French in 1782 and translated into English soon after. The spelling Giaour appears in the French as well as in the English translation.
In 1813 Lord Byron published his poem The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale, whose themes revolve around the ideas of love, death, and afterlife in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
Le Giaour, an 1832 painting by Ary Scheffer, oil on canvas, "Musée de la Vie romantique", Hôtel Scheffer-Renan, Paris.
Sonnet XL of Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning contains these lines:

::quote Musselmans and Giaours Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth For any weeping. ::

Notes

References

Bibliography

References

Speros Vryonis. (1993). "The Turkish State and History: Clio Meets the Grey Wolf". Institute for Balkan Studies.
(13 June 2013). "Entangled Histories of the Balkans: Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies". BRILL.
Beckford, William. (2013). "Vathek". OUP Oxford.
0925-8620, [[Brigitte Adriaensen]], [[Marco Kunz]], Rodopi, 2009, {{ISBN. 9042025476, {{ISBN. 9789042025479. Quotes ''Estambul otomano'', page 62, [[Juan Goytisolo]], 1989, Barcelona, Planeta.

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