Giaour
Giaour or Gawur or Gavour 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" were commonly used in defters for Orthodox Christians, usually without ethnic distinction. Christian ethnic groups in the Ottoman Balkans included Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians and Vlachs, among others.The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica described the term as follows:
During the Tanzimat era, a hatt-i humayun prohibited the use of the term by Muslims with reference to non-Muslims
to prevent problems occurring in social relationships.
European cultural references
- 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 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning contains these lines:
Musselmans and Giaours
Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth
For any weeping.