Giaour

File:The Giaour MET DP874603 - cropped.jpg: The Giaour (1820, lithograph; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)]]

File:Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix 021.jpg: 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 ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|dʒ|aʊər}}; {{langx|tr|gâvur}}, {{IPA|tr|ɟaˈvuɾ}}; from {{langx|fa|گور}} gâvor;{{efn|an obsolete variant of modern {{lang|fa|گبر}} gaur, originally derived from {{langx|arc|𐡂𐡁𐡓𐡀|gaḇrā|man; person}}}} {{langx|ro|ghiaur}}; {{langx|sq|kaur}}; {{langx|el|γκιαούρης|gkiaoúris}}; {{langx|bg|гяур}}; Bosnian; kaur/đaur) meaning "infidel", is a slur used mostly in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire for non-Muslims or, more particularly, Christians in the Balkans.{{cite book|author=Speros Vryonis|title=The Turkish State and History: Clio Meets the Grey Wolf|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mTFpAAAAMAAJ|year=1993|publisher=Institute for Balkan Studies|isbn=978-0-89241-532-8|quote=The Turkish term "giaour" a term of contempt, was applied to these Balkan Christians,}}{{cite book|title=Entangled Histories of the Balkans: Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FGmJqMflYgoC&pg=PA44|date=13 June 2013|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-25076-5|page=44|quote=In the Ottoman defters, Orthodox Christians are as a rule recorded as kâfir or gâvur (infidels) or (u)rum.}}

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 Balkan lands of the Ottoman Empire included Greeks (rûm), Bulgarians (bulgar), Serbs (sırp), Albanians (arnavut) and Vlachs (eflak), among others.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica described the term as follows:

{{quote|Giaour (a Turkish adaptation of the Persian gâwr or gōr, an infidel), a word used by the Turks to describe all who are not Mohammedans, with especial reference to Christians. The word, first employed as a term of contempt and reproach, has become so general that in most cases no insult is intended in its use; for example in parts of China, the term foreign devil has become void of offence. A strict analogy to giaour is found in the Arabic kafir, or unbeliever, which is so commonly in use as to have become the proper name of peoples and countries.}}

During the Tanzimat (1839–1876) era, a hatt-i humayun prohibited the use of the term by Muslims with reference to non-Muslims

{{cite journal

| 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.{{cite book|last= Gawrych|first= George|authorlink= George Gawrych|title=The Crescent and the Eagle: Ottoman Rule, Islam and the Albanians, 1874-1913|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=wPOtzk-unJgC|year= 2006|publisher= I.B.Tauris|isbn= 978-1-84511-287-5|page= 15}}

European cultural references

File:Giaours smoking the Tchibouque with the Pacha of the Dardanelles. Travels in Circassia, Krim-tartary, &c.jpg with the 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.{{cite book|last=Beckford|first=William|authorlink=William Beckford (novelist)|title=Vathek|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dn2X3Zdc3GIC|year=2013|publisher=OUP Oxford|isbn=978-0-19-164578-5}}
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: