TURKISH AND PERSIAN LOANS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Abstract
Of the 600 Persian and 284 Turkish loans collected from standard English dictionaries, at
least 319 have been used by 98 significant literary figures throughout the centuries. These
demonstrate that literary writers directly affect the English language by providing the first
known record of a given loan, or by creatively using a previous borrowing to introduce a
new sense, a different form as in a derivation or compound, or a different form class (as in
Jonson’s noun chouse, from Shirley’s original verb). Literature and linguistics are thereby
more closely, naturally linked in interdisciplinary research. Sir William Jones, Gibbon, Byron,
and a few others provided rich raw materials for later literature. The data reveal a progression
toward greater accuracy and authenticity, which add to the reputation and stature of
the work. Poets like Byron, utilizing rhyme and subtle internal definitions to explain exotic
words, enhanced their literary artistry and charm by employing actual Oriental words. Without
the words, the writers might never have gained fame in Oriental aspects of Romanticism
and Victorianism. The numerical rank is surprising, led by Byron with 94 different words,
followed by James Morier, Thomas Hope, Thackeray, Thomas Moore, Jones, Purchas, Disraeli,
Gibbon, William Beckford, Scott, and Kipling with 34.
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The collecting of 600 Persian and 284 Turkish loans (Cannon 1998a and
forthcoming), in a continuing series of linguistic articles on loans recorded
in the English language, turned up hundreds of citations from 98 significant
literary figures throughout the centuries. The citations underpin this
article on (1) why the figures presumably used such words and (2) whether
that use influenced the words’ acceptance into English. The dual purposes
address the old question of whether literary writers actually affect the
language. Literary scholars have neglected the role of loans in writers’ poetic
and prose vocabulary, which are often used multiply; and such a multidisciplinary
study linking linguistics and literature brings the two disciplines
into further consonance with other multidisciplinary research.
The three Oriental verse-tales of Byron, who helped to develop and characterize
the Oriental aspects of Romanticism – the period most affected
by such aspects – made him an obvious touchstone for finding the literary
usages in Cannon’s corpora. We excluded Arabic items that came into
English directly from Arabic and not directly from Turkish and/or Persian
unless Byron used the words extensively. Otherwise, Cannon’s 2,338 Arabic
loans (1994) were excluded on principle, in order to keep our literary corpus
within bounds. Some of our Turkish and Persian religious words were themselves
borrowed from Arabic and are so indistinguishable that they could
reinforce the primarily Arabic transfer, but are not yet credited in dictionaries
(Cannon 1998a). We will first describe three monographs, which
concentrate on Oriental themes and imagery, and then, roughly chrono-
Neophilologus 84: 285–307, 2000.
Ó 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
logically, discuss the 98 literary figures’ use of 319 loans. Our Appendixes
1 and 2 list these loans and writers.
The monographs treat few of the actual borrowings used by literary
figures, implying that Orientalization was effected with little use of Oriental
words. Martha Pike Conant’s Oriental tale in England in the eighteenth
century (1908) discusses the Orientalist Sir William Jones (1746–1794)
and others, at a time not yet propitious for Oriental fiction. Her conclusions
in comparative literature, history, and criticism hardly reach into
linguistics proper. Edna Osborne’s Oriental diction and theme in English
verse, 1740–1840 (1916), extending into some of the most eventful decades,
includes a few of our words in her “Oriental vocabulary in Sir William
Jones” (134–135); but most are Indic or Arabic. Even these are mainly
place-names and other proper nouns that belong in encyclopedias and atlases
rather than in the general English vocabulary, though they did contribute
to Jones’s intended literary Orientalization. Osborne’s list of “Oriental”
vocabulary in the King James Bible (138) contains none of our items, which,
indeed, do not appear in that epochal version. Marzieh Gail’s Persia and
the Victorians (1951), lacking an index, mainly treats travel books and
Victorians who sought Persian information in their research. The longest
chapters are “Sir William and Bocara’s gold” (13–34) and James Morier’s
frolicking with Hajji Baba (163–184), with brief chapters on Matthew
Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum and Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát. Gail omits
Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Thackeray, major figures who employed
Persian materials to improve their works.
Our three earliest loans are Arabic religious words, used in Middle
English for influential political dogma inspired by Pope Urban II’s rallying
call of “Deus vult” (“God wills [it]”), which effectively authorized the
Crusades and the blaspheming of Islam (Cannon 1995: 25). Layamon’s Brut
introduced Mahun “Mahomet” to English as a false god or idol. By the time
of William Langland’s Piers Plowman B, folk etymology had pejorated
the name to Mahoun(d), a devil in hell with Lucifer. In King Lear, Edgar
terms Mahu “The Prince of Darkenesse”. Such use was not for artistic or
narrative purposes. The authors’ stature familiarized the names in the general
vocabulary and advanced the prejudice that has now reappeared against
the Muslim Middle East.
Chaucer and Spenser characterized Islam by Muslim personages in a
few passages. Thus Muslims in “The Man of law’s tale” explain that they
were taught by “Mahoun, oure prophete”, and they swear by Mahound in
five passages in The Faerie Queene. The negative Mahound, rather than
the modern Muhammad, is echoed as late as Sir Walter Scott, Browning’s
“The Return of the Druses”, and Thackeray. The scattering of Mahomet
elsewhere and later as Muhammad has ameliorated the prejudice. Alkoran
fared better, with Chaucer voicing Muslims’ protestations like “the hooly
laws of oure Alkaron”. The most vigorous defense was the Egyptian sultan’s
286 Garland Cannon
criticism of Christianity from a Muslim basis, in a long conversation with
Sir John Mandeville. Unlike Mahomet, Allah (< Arabic al-’ila¯h “the god”)
was used circumspectly from the first.
In turning to individual authors, we find five pre-Renaissance writers.
We have seen the use of Mahomet (we will cite the standard form hereafter)
by Layamon and Langland, and by Chaucer and Mandeville, both
of whom also used Alkoran. While William Caxton’s introduction of the
now-rare solak and the common tambour is linguistically important (cf.
Chaucer’s 24 Arabic introductions, detailed in Cannon 1994: 71), the most
important source was The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1499). Its vast,
lasting popularity chiefly motivated the English and Continental zest for
travel books that laid the groundwork for borrowings in the 18th and 19th
centuries, which were to expand the English vocabulary and provide raw
materials for literature. The author used only four of our words, which
were common names like Turk rather than borrowings employed for local
color. His sources were books rather than actual travels to the Middle East
and India, though Columbus and others evidently consulted his book for
geographical information.
At the outset of the Renaissance, authenticity in literary description of
Oriental places was not a major goal, as opposed to the later, firsthand observations
of Jones, Byron, Morier, etc. Then Richard Hakluyt and Samuel
Purchas collected and published explorers’ accounts of far-flung travels,
inspiring many literary figures to burrow into libraries for detailed materials
for describing Oriental scenes and actions. These accounts contain
dozens of enticing words. Thirteen of Hakluyt’s 21 items are cited in The
Oxford English dictionary (OED 1989) as the earliest record: Bairam,
batman, bey, elchee, giaour, kehaya, nefte, pik, Ramazan, shah, shahi,
subashi, and toman. The “Muslim slave” sense of mameluke was the first
recorded shift from the original 1511 sense of “member of the former
Egyptian military class”. However, excepting a few items like Ramazan and
shah, most of these are still little used. A few other items reinforced some
earlier transfers that later became common (vizier, 1562), or provided a word
and concept on which to base a poem (Byron’s giaour).
Continuing Hakluyt’s publications, Purchas gave us the first record of 26
(of his 53) loans: caique, canaut, elatcha, firman, hammam, imaret, jackal,
khoja, kiosk, lascar, mahmudi, maidan, Mir, mogul, nakhoda, oda, oke,
ormuzine, Parsi, pilau, ryot, serai, shahbandar, shikar, tezkere, and yoghurt.
Also earliest known are the transferred sense of muezzin in “the Mouden,
or Sexten crieth in the steeple”, and the derivation sultanship, which Byron
liked. More of Purchas’ introductions have become common in English than
have Hakluyt’s, often familiarized by later usage.
Other Renaissance nondramatic introductions are Richard Crashaw’s
pasha, John Foxe’s Mussulman, Spenser’s Scanderbeg, and Sir Thomas
More’s bashaw and janizary (of his six items), besides the first produc-
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 287
tive form in Andrew Marvell’s participle Alkorand and Roger Ascham’s first
use of Turkish. Robert Burton’s Anatomy of melancholy reinforced the earlier
bhang, dervish, and roc, as did Bacon’s sherbet. As beylik is the only
introduction in Sir Thomas North’s version of Plutarch’s Lives, apparently
North was not seeking to add Oriental “inkhorn terms” to the English
vocabulary, alongside his classical introductions (Cannon 1998b: 133).
In the dramas, the items are used familiarly in dialogue, where glosses
cannot easily be given, and the orality is likely to have more impact on
the audience. The introductions include Francis Beaumont’s hyleg and Ben
Jonson’s noun chouse (the verb form first used by James Shirley in 1659),
and the transferred sense of turban in “a huge turbant of nightcaps on his
head”. Philip Massinger advanced the naturalization of mufti (of his four
loans), as did Jonson for martagon and seraglio, John Fletcher for mogul,
John Ford for chouse, and Shakespeare for Sophy and turbaned. In view
of the Moorish theme in Othello, the nine appearances of forms of Turk
there is not surprising. Indeed, the “turbaned Turk” helps to characterize
this enemy, with forms of Turk appearing 30 times in 14 of Shakespeare’s
plays.
The use of our loans in Restoration literature is generally unimpressive,
as in Nicholas Rowe’s use of Allah. Of the six items in Paradise
lost (turban is in Paradise regained), Milton’s introduction of Gehenna
“Muslim hell” (related to Turkish jehennem and Persian Jehannam, both
from Arabic) in “black Gehenna call’d, the Type of Hell”, and Ormus
(now Hormuz) as a symbol of Eastern wealth was unsuccessful, as the
two do not appear in dictionaries. His uses of “great Mogul” and Sophy were
only mild reinforcements.
Dryden’s 17 items are the exception. They include the first-known
figurative or transferred senses of mogul “great personage”, dragoman
in “druggerman of heaven”, and seraglio “nunnery”. He was creative
with old loans, introducing the derivatives hylegiacal, Mussulwoman
(< Mussulman), and Muftiship, though none became common. His Conquest
of Granada may have been the first use of two of our items for dramatic
heightening, where two Moors are preparing to fight as champions. They
swear on and kiss the Alcoran, in the name of Mahomet, before beginning
the climactic battle (Part II, v, 47ff.). Dryden’s simar was later adopted
as symar by Byron. The use of caravansary and jackal in Joseph Addison
and Richard Steele’s Spectator and Guardian, in view of the widespread
reading of those newspapers in coffeehouses, may have been influential,
as was possibly Samuel Butler’s bashaw. But the use of chenar (tree) in
John Eveyln’s Diary, and Scanderbeg in Thomas Otway’s The Atheist, did
little to assist the naturalization of those still-rare words.
In the 18th century, we find Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Edward
Gibbon, William Beckford, and especially Jones, as the major providers
of Oriental loans. All but Jones had much less direct impact on the English
288 Garland Cannon
vocabulary than Hakluyt and Purchas did, but much more influence on
Romantic poetry, as evidenced by acknowledgments to them in notes. Some
of Montagu’s charming, polished eye-witness descriptions of her life in
Constantinople in 1717 rival Pope’s letters as major literary correspondence.
Among her 27 items are introductions of Arnaut, feridgi, kislar aga, and
divan as “levee”. Her items are usually skillfully blended into the text,
with occasional glosses, as for defterdar, which she wrote as “tefterdar (i.e.,
treasurer)”. Her compoundings may convey a moral judgment (seraglio
ladies), and a letter to Pope communicated janizary.
Preceding Jones, we find Dr. Johnson’s introduction of houri and his
use of china in a Rambler essay (none of our words is in his “Oriental”
Rasselas), Jonathan Swift’s use of vizier in several works, Henry Fielding’s
bashaw, Samuel Foote’s jagir in The Nabob, and Laurence Sterne’s introduction
of a transferred sense in “caravanseras of rest”. Six of Oliver
Goldsmith’s seven items appeared in a 1774 journalistic preface to a work
in natural history, with the goat pasan introduced, gazelle first used as an
adjective, and the mythical roc described. His bezoar pazar was its last
record and so became obsolete. Not among our cited authors but meriting
a negative reference is William Collins’ Persian eclogues (1742), which,
by title, would seem to be a source of loans and is praised by Osborne
(1916), but uses only the common Turk, of our words. Its “Persian” qualities
derive from the subject matter, themes, images, and a few encyclopedic
proper nouns.
British literary translators had introduced classical “inkhorn terms” into
English to enrich and provide needed vocabulary. Asiatic languages lacked
their champion until Jones challenged the neoclassical constraints and began
urging the use of Middle Eastern words and other elements to rejuvenate
British literature and restore its imaginative qualities (Cannon 1994: 70).
The scholar rather than the artist dominated Jones’s writings that were
inspired by Persian (but not by Arabic and Sanskrit, as his translations of
the Mu‘allaqát and Ka¯lida¯sa’s ´Sakuntala¯ had wide literary impact). Only
four of his 57 Persian and/or Turkish items appear in his poetry: narghile
in “The Enchanted fruit” (1784), and Hindustani, jackal, and subadar in
his slight 1784 “Plassey-plain”. Eight others are in “An Essay on the
poetry of the eastern nations”, an essay in literary criticism appended to
his much-praised, innovative Poems, consisting chiefly of translations from
the Asiatick languages (1772). Jones used the other 45 words in the many
essays and books in which he dramatically communicated his Oriental
discoveries, chiefly in A Grammar of the Persian language (1771), the
unfinished “Essay on the history of the Turks” (1773), and his “Fifth
anniversary discourse” and “Sixth anniversary discourse” to his Asiatic
Society (l788, 1789).
“A Persian song of Hafiz” titillated readers with fluid place-names that
are not a part of the general vocabulary, in lines like
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 289
Than all Bocara’s vaunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand. . . .
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bower so sweet as Mosellay.
But Jones’s place in literature is as a Romantic precursor and source,
not as an original poet. A well-liked member of Johnson’s Literary Club
(see his description of the fellow-members, in Letters 2: 278–281), he
had long conversations with Edmund Burke, Gibbon, Johnson, Thomas
Percy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Adam Smith that influenced their writings.
His use of notes in verse-romances like “The Enchanted fruit”, so as
not to mar the music and syntax with glosses, still weakened the
poem, which nonetheless influenced Robert Southey, Byron in the verseromance
genre, Thomas Moore, and others. Jones’s voluminous writings
from India, widely pirated in England and America, further inspired his
contemporaries.
He attempted to introduce dozens of Persian proper nouns and other
encyclopedic words that he transliterated, items of such rare currency that
they are still not recorded in dictionaries, as well as many Arabic and
Sanskrit loans that he successfully introduced or helped to naturalize
(Cannon 1990: 311). His 57 Persian and/or Turkish words surpass Purchas’
53, but are exceeded by Byron’s 94. Twenty-eight are the first-known record,
of which the OED credits Jones for only bulbul, shikasta, and taliq. As
our Jones citations antedate 13 other OED entries and provide the earliest
record of 12 items in dictionaries other than the OED, we see that a study
of literary usages can emend standard linguistic and lexicographic information.
His introductions include common items like Afghan “the people”,
Avesta, bulbul and gul (both of which Byron liked), Iran, narghile, Osmanli,
Pahlavi, and Sassanid. And he advanced the naturalization of gazelle (in
his Poems), houri, Iran, jackal, sultan, etc.
Though The Decline and fall of the Roman empire introduces none of
our loans or derivational or compounded forms created from them, at least
47 of the items are employed for precision and literary enhancement. At
the beginning of his long account of Muhammad and Islam, Gibbon
acknowledges a “total ignorance of the Oriental tongues” and consequent
reliance on extensive reading. His decades-long research supplied the items,
supplemented by Jones as a personal source. Because Gibbon was one of
the few well-known literary figures to use numbers of items like Jones’s
Zend and Zend-Avesta, he assisted in their acceptance into English. When
we contrast Lady Montagu’s use of select Turkish words to describe a harem
or smallpox inoculation, we perceive a purposeful, stylistic Gibbon creating
a vast panorama. When he needs a precise detail, he chooses Turkish
ichoglan rather than an unwieldy phrase like “sultan’s page-in-waiting”,
or kislar aga rather than chief eunuch. When he needs the name of the
Persian unit of length, he finds the Latin-transmitted parasang (< Persian).
290 Garland Cannon
Such words increase the interest, help his history to come alive, and enhance
one of the finest historical styles of all time. His goal of accuracy eschewed
glittering, exotic language or expansion of the English vocabulary. His
spelling is usually accurate, as when he uses the old form beglerbeg, which
was not yet superseded by bey(lerbey), and the common Curd for modern
Kurd. The loans are all nouns, including 18 proper nouns. His history is one
of the major vehicles for our items. Reading (and Jones) provided his scattered
Asian information, and his synthesis of the data constituted rich
materials for later literature.
The final significant 18th-century use of our items was in Beckford’s fantastic
novel Vathek (1784), which, emulating Jones, uses notes rather than
glosses to explain all but pilau and mosque (which needed no definition
by then). “The Giaour”, a central character, leads the evil caliph Vathek
down to Eblis “chief of the wicked jinn”, and Vathek is punished for his
empty pomp and forbidden power. Of Beckford’s introductions (abdest,
Bismillah, takhtrawan), only ghoul has become common. He could have
found all but five of his 37 loans in Jones’s works, several of which he
acknowledges in the notes. Eblis’ gloomy galleries resemble the great
gallery in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1765), except that,
barring the Indian tale in Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the wanderer,
the Gothic novels do not use our items. Instead of Eblis, Shaitan, ghouls,
and afrits, vague entities like bad angels, Satan, etc. haunt the Gothic
galleries.
Romanticism exhibits the peak of the literary use of our loans, followed
distantly by the Victorians. Chronologically, the key representatives are
Robert Southey, Byron (the principal user), Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh,
Thomas Hope’s Anastasius, Morier, and Sir Walter Scott. Like Beckford,
Southey probably found more of his Oriental items in Jones’s writings
than in any other source, though many appear in the travel books that
Jones himself read. These formed part of the erudition underpinning
Southey’s epics like Thalaba the destroyer (1801, containing 24 of his 33
items), which are no longer read but advanced the acceptance of several
words. He introduced Al Araf, huma, and the transferred sense of ghoul
in “human ghouls”.
Influenced by Jones’s narratives like “The Enchanted fruit”, Byron established
the Romantic tradition of Oriental tales, which Moore emulated in
poetry, and Hope and Morier followed in their picaresque novels. Unlike
some of his colleagues, Byron did not find the majority of his loans in
Jones, who was nonetheless his major source, which he supplemented with
words heard in person in Albania. His high, historical stature is evidenced
by the OED’s crediting his 1814 introduction of alma (actually in “The
Waltz”, 1813), attar-gul, camise, galiongee, rayah, Stamboul, tophaike,
and yataghan in “silver-sheath’ed ataghan”, with only tambourgi (no entry
in the OED) overlooked. Though only camise and yataghan have become
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 291
comparatively common, his great popularity insured that his 94 items (of
our total 319) received substantial impetus toward naturalization.
His use of the items demonstrates his superiority to Jones and fellowpoets.
Usually indicating the exotic nature of the word only by capitalizing
the first letter, he eschews italics, quotation marks, and glosses, and appends
fewer definitional notes than other Romantics and the Victorians do (cf.
the lengthy Spanish quotations in Southey’s notes for Roderick). Sometimes
Byron’s sophisticated internal definitions blend a possessive form into the
rhyme, as in various couplets in The Giaour (1813). An entire Muslim
cultural-religious observance is simultaneously dramatized in “To-night, set
the Rhamazani’s sun;/ To-night, the Bairam feast’s begun.” His couplets
convey both the syllabic stress and the pronunciation, when needed, as in
“Swift as the hurled on high jerreed/ Springs to the touch his startled
steed” and in “Not thus was Hassan wont to fly/ When Leila dwelt in his
Serai.” A few couplets later we find rhyming pairs like set/ Minaret, power/
Giaour, Mosque/ Kiosk, Gazelle/ well, and lid/ Giamschid “Jamshid”. So
Byron employed the loans for purposes far beyond mere local color, as seen
often in Southey and Moore. He shaped the items so deftly into the poetry
that the lines become more artistic, while making the poetic situations
more authentic in Turkish or other environments. Arabic words are similarly
used. Moreover, his concordances disclose many obscure Oriental items
that, while appropriate for his dramatic situations, have still not been
accepted into English dictionaries. But however far his Oriental tales have
declined in modern interest, our loans often appear in his flashes of real
poetry.
Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1817), based on wide reading, was translated
and made into an opera. It, too, has lost its great popularity, borne down,
as it is, with long, explanatory notes and many quoted sources. His lexical
introductions are small: the OED credits zel, but overlooks his Kashan
and first attributive use of Gabar in “Gheber belt”. His 61 loans do sharpen
the Oriental flavor of the sprawling, verbose tale, but add little to its artistry,
charm and wit, or plot. All but 23 appear in his friend Byron’s poems.
Hope’s Anastasius (1819) and Morier’s Adventures of Hajji Baba (1824)
create anthropologically and linguistically authentic pictures of Asia Minor
and the Middle East, built upon extensive travel there. These greatly surpass
the “Orientalism” created in earlier works except by Jones and Gibbon.
The OED credits Hope’s introduction of bimbashi, but overlooks his araba
and rezai. He appends notes for the loans, totaling 86, that he used most
often. Anastasius makes no special artistic or dramatic use of the words,
but is important for its popularity, influence, and the praise of Byron
(leading to his use of the Russo-Turkish war in Don Juan) and Scott in
The Talisman.
Anastasius was the direct precursor of Hajji Baba, which was more
interesting, dramatic, and creative, despite the constant, distracting glosses
292 Garland Cannon
for the usually italicized 89 loans. The words, reminiscent of Jones’s
expertise in gaining authenticity through Oriental words, helped to make
this novel a kind of touchstone throughout the 19th century as a true
picture of Persian culture, reflected in the Persianisms littering Hajji Baba’s
broken English. Thus one terrified, superstitious character screams, “It’s a
ghôl!” The OED credits Morier’s introduction of yakdan “portmanteau”,
yuzbashi, and the first figurative sense of kabob (“making kabob of our
hearts”) and transferred sense of shaitan (“He is a Sheitan”, in Ayesha),
but overlooks his introduced anderoon. Besides dozens of obscure
Persianisms (e.g., kabobchi “roast-beef man”), we have arbitrarily excluded
21 other rare items that are solely in Morier and dictionaries. Thirteen of
these are the first record in English (shalwar), and five antedate the OED’s
earliest citation (zurna, predated from 1970 to 1824). Morier influenced
the acceptance of baklava, a Near Eastern pastry that no other literary figure
mentions. His loans enhanced both the language and the delightful artistry
in his novels, which constitute a Persian treasure trove.
A plethora of loans sometimes clutters his prose, unlike the works containing
Scott’s 35 items. The Talisman (1825) makes sophisticated, discreet
use of almost all the items to extend the ambiance of the Jerusalem scene
that Scott paints, despite the modest caveat in his Introduction that he
“was almost totally unacquainted” with this setting. His items contribute
little to the language, unless one affects the Arabic plural Maugrabin (rather
than use the common, regularized Maugrabees) that he attempts to introduce.
But this was probably a natural development by 1825, as Jones,
Gibbon, Bryon, etc. had already introduced most of our items and effected
much of the naturalization. Literary usage was now mainly for creative,
narrative purposes, as when an unnamed dervish dances and spins so violently
that, when he collapses at the feet of King Richard, the retainers think
that he is dead. In this tense climactic scene, he opens his eyes surreptitiously
and attempts to kill the English monarch with his khanjar, a word
not used by Jones or Byron. These two words and their milieu are crucial
to the drama.
Starkly excepting Byron, the slim use of our items by the major
Romantics suggests an objective difference from their Oriental colleagues.
Separate from the Oriental strain, the eight items in each of Wordsworth
and Keats, and the 12 in Coleridge indicate the non-Oriental aspect of
Romanticism, in “a selection of language really used by men” who would
not know exotic Turkish and Persian words. Shelley’s 17 items do exhibit
three exceptions in Hellas – an Arabic call, Arnaut, and Byron’s spelling
pacha instead of the pasha established since Gibbon’s time. There is little
need for poetic utility. In an 1811 letter, Shelley coined the derivation
Hindoostanish; and Coleridge’s notebook first records seraglio as a verb
(“My heart seraglios a whole host of joys”). In his Osorio (1797), the
line “Of Mosks, and minarets, and golden crescents” fits two of our
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 293
words into the kind of stylistic list characterizing the new poetry, as in
Wordsworth’s “A lover of the meadows and the woods,/ And mountains”.
There are other writers in this period. Mrs. Mary Sherwood’s 11 items
have an Indian setting (they were mainly transferred via Indic languages,
as borrowed from Persian). She introduced the transferred sense of nawab
as “a wealthy, retired Anglo-Indian”, and helped to naturalize words like
cummerbund. Maturin’s 11 items in Melmoth (1820) are common ones
like Turkish mosque, used to heighten the moody, sensuous quality of a
Hindu setting within the successive religious perversions. Maria Edgeworth
introduced the verb shawling, and Walter Savage Landor’s two items include
the derivation mamelukery. Our Appendix 2 specifies the single items
appearing in each of Jane Austen, Thomas Campbell, and Thomas De
Quincey, besides Charles Lamb’s well-known essay on china. Thomas
Hood’s minor poem “Poetry, prose, and worse” (1835) contains 11 of his
dozen common items.
Of the six Victorian poets who used our loans, only Tennyson and
Browning employed significant numbers. Besides Tennyson’s major debt to
Jones for the idea underpinning “Locksley Hall”, four items appear in his
adolescent Poems by two brothers (1827), with credit given to Jones in
the notes. Twenty-six items are skillfully interwoven across Tennyson’s
poetic corpus, ranging from his being the only literary figure known to have
used the item (kuphar, mujtahid), to dialectal usage in “The Northern
cobbler” (“An I were chousin’ the wife”), and powerful embellishment of
the theme of death in “The Ancient sage” (“Some death-song for the Ghouls/
To make their banquet relish”). “Akbar’s dream” (1835) contains 13 items,
with the first transferred sense (but unsuccessful) of Jones’s alif (“The
Alif of Thine Alphabet of Love”), and a note on Zend-Avesta echoing
Gibbon.
Browning’s 32 items, 25 of which do not appear in Tennyson, are also
smoothly employed across his entire corpus. With nine to 16 usages each,
dervish, shah, and Turk are his favorites. Pippa Passes contains the first
figurative sense of martagon, and his Persian form khanjar (rather than
the Turkish hanjar) signals the replacing of Byron’s Turkish impetus with
a Persian one. Browning’s political sense of Jones’s hamza “a Lebanese
office”, in “The Return of the Druses”, is unsuccessful, as dictionaries
eschewed it. The only known poetic use of Shahanshah occurs in “A Beanstripe”.
There are echoes from Milton (Ormuz) and Byron (attar-gul). “The
Flight of the duchess” emulates Byron’s technique of indicating pronunciation
through rhyme, in “Like the band-roll strung with tomans/ Which
proves the veil a Persian woman’s”. The loans can effect a stark contrast,
as in Sordello (“I’d fain hope, sweetly; seeing, peri or ghoul”).
When Arnold translated a portion of Firdausi’s Sháhnáma as “Sohrab
and Rustum” (1853), Jones’s plea in the preface to his 1772 Poems was
partly fulfilled, for he never completed more than a few sample verses of
294 Garland Cannon
his long-envisioned epic. FitzGerald’s version of Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát
(1859) further signalled the final success of Jones’s and later arguments
for a revolution against neoclassicism, with an imaginative new poetry
sometimes with a Persian-Arabic component now established. Among
Arnold’s numerous Persian proper nouns are only six of our items, besides
six other, well-known ones in “The Sick king in Bokhara” (1849). His
attempted introduction of Registàn “market-place” failed, as did FitzGerald’s
first recording of mah, Mahi, Mushtari, and tamam, which were not inserted
in dictionaries. Rubáiyát remains semantically tied to its Persian context,
and Jamshid and saki were little advanced from their obscurity. FitzGerald’s
only advancement was Jones’s Pahlavi.
Passing over Robert Louis Stevenson’s Romantic use of bazaar, minaret,
and mosque in his little “Travel” (1885), we reach Rudyard Kipling. Many
of his 34 items appear in prose and overlap into the 20th century. He introduced
the still-rare Kabuli, shadi, tar “telegram” (“My father is at the
tar-house sending tars”, in a 1893 Harper’s weekly), jackal as a functionally
shifted verb, and Zakka Khel as an attributive. Kim introduces no items,
though it contains perhaps the only literary use of Hubshee, shabash,
shikasta, and yarak. His Departmental ditties (1889) offers the first poetic
appearance of babul and musth, as well as the rare dasturi, jezail, and shikar.
Repeating some of Mrs. Sherwood’s Indic-transferred items, Kipling’s items
are fundamental to his creative skills and reputation for highly original
Anglo-Indian literature. Without them, that literature would have been much
poorer or might not have existed.
Three writers of nonfiction prose made minor use of our loans. John
Ruskin is represented by gul; and Thomas Carlyle, by afghan, Allah, and
ghoul. Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 13 items, first published in journalistic
essays in the Edinburgh Review, usually relate to India (lac, lascar).
Denotationally necessary, they had little effect on the language.
The Victorian novelists are chiefly represented by William Makepeace
Thackeray and Benjamin Disraeli. Thackeray introduced Kohinoor in
Pendennis, and bulbul as an attributive in Vanity fair. His Indian antecedents
partly explain why he utilized several Indic items in various novels with
non-Indian settings to create satire, wit, and/or characterization (cheese
“something first-rate”, mufti, narghile, and yashmak). The majority of his
85 items appear in two small books. A Journey from Cornhill to Cairo
(1845) exhibits how 59 loans had a considerable role in converting a travel
book into a work of literary value (cf. Tancred), transcending the local color
created in early travelers’ books. His satirical genius is often assisted, as
in contrasting the title Emin Bey a few lines later with Skinflint Beg. Many
of his often duplicated items in the burlesque Tremendous adventures of
Major Gahagan (1841) exaggerate character, as the invincible commander
of the Indian Irregular Horse narrates his Munchausen-like exploits composing
the book. Thus “I shouted to him in a voice of thunder (in the
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 295
Hindustanee tongue of course)”. The major dons “a scarlet turban three
feet high” and strips off an enemy’s “turban, camerbund, peijammahs, and
papooshes”. Such examples illustrate a fine novelist’s artistic blending of
Oriental words into his prose.
Almost all of Disraeli’s 50 loans appear in Tancred (1847) to describe
the landscape around Jerusalem, where the hero travels. This primarily local
color (cf. Scott’s Jerusalem), intended to buttress the essentially religious
theme, is little better than the travel accounts that most of our writers
surveyed for Asiatic words and culture. Disraeli introduced Latakia
“aromatic Turkish tobacco” in an 1833 letter, and ghoul-like in Coningsby,
with unsuccessful naturalization or introduction of several obscure Arabic
and Turkish words. His failed supernatural theme in Tancred is little assisted
by the repetition of Eblis; missing are div, Munkar, and other needed words
that Beckford, Byron, and Morier expertly employed.
Among seven novelists who used a few of our words, there are Thomas
Hardy’s introduction of an extended sense of attar (“the attar of applause”,
in Far from the madding crowd); and George Meredith’s fezzy, in
Beauchamp’s career. Ouida’s pair of words includes Byron’s alma; and
Charles Dickens used fakir, mogul, and shawl. Charlotte Bronte, Charles
Kingsley, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton each employed one or two of our
words.
Six 19th-century Americans should be mentioned. Many of Herman
Melville’s 34 items are used creatively and dramatically, as in the male
whales who become sultans of their harems. The mysterious Parsi, Fedallah,
is significant in Ahab’s final revenge against Moby Dick, as are other religious
words like Eblis and Milton’s Gehenna elsewhere. Ralph Waldo
Emerson’s 19 items are spread among nine works, where he argues for
tolerance and universal religion in his “Song of Seyd Nimetollah” in
couplets like “What are Moslems? What are Giaours?/ All are Love’s, and
all are ours”. His “Saadi” utilizes Allah, bazaar, dervish, and fakir for similar
intellectual purposes. Washington Irving’s 21 items, excepting gazelle and
ghoul, are in his Mahomet, a minor work where they appear in his text
and an appendix. Besides Oliver Wendell Holmes’s harem, huma, and meerschaum,
we should list William Dean Howells’ seersucker.
Excepting Melville, the other major American literary use was by Edgar
Allan Poe, who selected nine Muslim religious words to intensify his eerie
ambiance. A Muslim concept inspired “Al Araaf” and “Israfel” (the angel
of music), where we find the attributive “Houri glances”. Poe used both
Eblis and simoom in his “Tamerlane”. His best-liked loan was ghoul, which
he employed musically in “The Bells” and “Dream-land”. Generations of
readers have shuddered at the phrase “ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir”
in “Ulalume”.
Various 20th-century works contain several items introduced into
English. Among Lawrence Durrell’s eight words are some Turkish ones first
296 Garland Cannon
appearing in the 1920s (mastika, meltemi) and the inflected form “purdahed
girls”. Sinclair Lewis introduces shish kebab and routinely uses seven
items (harem, in “feminism and haremism”). T.E. Lawrence’s seven words,
mainly from his letters in the period 1911–1938, introduce mukhtar in
1911 and two rug terms (Kermanji, kilim). Arthur Koestler’s four items
exhibit the first literary employment of hora, a journalistic use of Kemalist,
Lawrence’s mukhtar, and shish kebab. John Galsworthy’s two items include
the first transferred sense of purdah as “quarantine”. O Henry initiates the
figurative sense of cheese in “Big Cheese”, and burlesques FitzGerald in
the story “The Rubaiyat of a Scotch highball”. There are one or two items
in Wystan Hugh Auden, C. S. Forester, James Joyce, Dame Iris Murdoch,
Wilfred Owen, Ezra Pound, Saki, George Bernard Shaw, Evelyn Waugh,
and H. G. Wells.
The stature of some other novelists bars their words from inclusion in
our literary corpus. As most of the citations, mainly missing Sax Rohmer’s,
are in the OED, we will not cite the titles in the following list. The largest
usages are in John Masters’ Indian novels (chaprassi, cheese, chokidar,
dafadar, kulah, rissaldar, saj, tahsildar, tangi, and Morier’s yakdan),
followed by Rohmer’s bimbashi, Latakia, mudir, muezzin, yashmak, and
yuzbashi. Mary Margaret Kaye’s The Far pavilions (1978) uses four loans
(shadi, tahsildar, tar, yakdan), as do Emma Lathen’s By Hook or by crook
(Hamadan, lungi, Qum, Sarouk), and William Haggard’s gup, Herat,
Ispahan, and posteen. There are also Louis Bromfield’s khoja, Arthur Joseph
Cronin’s rahat lokum, Len Deighton’s recent biryani and Kashan, James
T. Farrell’s harem, Dashiell Hammett’s pajamaed, Helen Hunt Jackson’s
Gibraltar, David Jordan’s nastalik and tabla, Richard Mason’s lungi,
Vladimir Nabokov’s charshaf and kiosk, and Rex Stout’s Imam Bayildi
and Kirman.
Finally, our literary corpus suggests five conclusions. First, though writers
are almost certainly going to be influenced by others’ works, our Appendix
A indicates that the rich, authentic, lexical raw materials provided by Jones,
Gibbon, Byron, Lalla Rookh, Anastasius, and Hajji Baba helped to impart
the Oriental qualities in some Romantic and Victorian literature. For
example, Byron’s preference for the oral clipping Stamboul (not his contemporaries’
place-name Istanbul) led Hope to adopt Byron’s more intimate
spelling, just as Shelley espoused Byron’s pacha instead of the established
pasha.
Second, there is a fairly clear chronology and partial explanation of the
sources. Before Jones’s many data were available, the number of loans used
by a given writer was usually small, for the limited Orientalization was
effected principally by means other than the use of Oriental words. With
the exception of Purchas’ large total tabulated from the travelers’ accounts
that he published, Dryden’s 17 items constituted a large total (cf. Byron’s
94). Writers drew their Turkish, Persian, and Arabic culture from the increas-
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 297
ingly popular travel books, as Dryden did for The Conquest of Granada and
Oreng-Zeb. Personal observation, including residence among peoples in
the given area, did not become a significant literary source until the impact
of Mrs. Montagu’s widely read letters from Constantinople, Jones’s ten years
in India (but earlier work at Oxford with native speakers of Arabic and
Persian), and, later, Byron’s associations with Ali Pasha and his Turkish
followers. But as Byron did not know Arabic, many words of which appear
in his poetry, these words and much Muslim information came from his
reading. Such evidence invites studies of literary sources.
Third, our loans improved the quality, authenticity, and reputation of some
literary works. Even without any direct observation, good poetry could
derive from research, so that a scholar could be a poet like Jones, who
was considered a major poet of his day. We note the large sum paid Moore
for Lalla Rookh, and the influence and European stature that flowed from
it, as seen also in Southey’s research for Thalaba. Yet Southey’s and Moore’s
dependence on glossing and cumbersome notes (that can leave the text incoherent
if one interrupts the aesthetic flow in order to read the needed
definition and explanation) helped to make them inferior to a really good
poet like Byron. He employed notes only when necessary, artistically
meshing the loans and cultural information into his poetry. These words
added realism and authenticity to his created Turkish and Muslim environments.
Overall, whether derived from reading or travel, they improved
English literature and rendered its Oriental qualities more fully and truly
Oriental.
Fourth, the loans demonstrate the sometimes inextricable interdisciplinary
linking of literature and linguistics. When the usage is the first record
(Jones’s Afghan), it becomes more important linguistically because of the
stature of the writer. This may be a new sense (Dryden’s seraglio
“nunnery”), or employment in a different form (Edgeworth’s shawling) or
form class (Jonson’s noun chouse, from Shirley’s verb). This originality
may emend the etymology in dictionaries, as in Byron’s Turkish forms of
originally Arabic words, which should now be corrected to specify a dual
source even when Arabic remains the main source. Comparably, Hajji Baba
contains Persian forms of words that Persian borrowed from Arabic, as in
ketab, madrase, and salam (= kitab, madrasa, and salaam, respectively).
Such lexicographic corrections will affect the database for the third edition
of the OED (projected for 2010) and entries in the much-used college
dictionaries. And the data in dictionaries, principally the OED, comprise
elements of a writer’s vocabulary (thereby style). They enlarge his or her
overall impact on posterity by crediting effects on the English language
alongside the literary work transmitting the words. And our reading through
the likely sources discovered that the concordances, even when published
by reputable presses, omit some of our words, as do the Melville concordances.
298 Garland Cannon
Lastly, the identity and rank of the numerous literary figures who have
affected English by using words from our limited corpora offer some surprises.
While the small number of introductions by Chaucer, Spenser, and
Shakespeare might seem to indicate little impact, they powerfully influenced
the negative meanings of key Islamic words and thus the Western view of
Muslim culture. A Shakespeare’s use of a previously introduced word called
attention to the word and advanced its naturalization faster than if employed
by a lesser writer, especially when the word was orally conveyed at the
Globe instead of read in a book. Moreover, Shakespeare probably contributed
more new words and meanings than any other writer, literary or
nonliterary, with 1,500 tabulated (McQuain and Malless 1998). The number
of loans contained in a work can be a tenuous criterion. Ascham’s single
word was the introduction of Turkish, which was surely more valuable
than Coleridge’s 12 items that include the introduction of the still unusual
use of seraglio as a verb, even though, in the abstract, any word or sense
is as valuable as any other.
Let us rank the largest number of different usages, parenthesizing the
number of introductions and the best-known one, if any. Among the surprises
in the following list is the high rank of Thackeray (not known as
an Oriental writer) and of the minor figures Hope and Morier (whose novels
motivated later writers), with Byron (not Jones, who has the highest Oriental
reputation) in first place: Byron 94 (9 – camise), Morier 89 (5 – yakdan),
Hope 86 (3 – araba), Thackeray 85 (2 – adjective bulbul), Moore 61 (3 –
zel), Jones 57 (28 – Iran), Purchas 53 (26 – yoghurt), Disraeli 50 (2 –
Latakia), Gibbon 47, Beckford 37 (4 – ghoul), Scott 35, Kipling 34 (5 –
verb jackal), Melville 34, Southey 33 (3 – huma), Browning 32 (1 –
martagon “a human sense”), Mrs. Montagu 27 (5 – divan “levee”), Tennyson
26, Hakluyt 21 (13 – shah), Irving 21, Emerson 19 (1 – Gibraltar “impregnable
stronghold”), Dryden 17 (6 – mogul “great personage”), and Shelley
17 (1 – Hindoostanish). And all but the fairly recent of the 98 writers
have made lexical introductions or advanced words from their originally
Oriental setting toward the more generalized context found when a modern
novelist like Rex Stout uses the words as though they are of native stock.
Texas A&M University GARLAND CANNON
Department of English
College Station, TX 77843-4227
USA
Appendix 1: Turkish and/or Persian Loans Used by Literary Figures
Ninety-eight literary figures have used some of at least 319 Turkish and/or Persian loans
(which may be ultimately from Arabic and transmitted by one or both into English) in
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 299
literary works or their correspondence. Appendix 2 lists these authors (e.g., Byron, Disraeli,
Gibbon, Thomas Hope, Irving, Sir William Jones, Kipling, James Morier, Purchas, Scott,
and Thackeray symbolized by the first letter of their last name). High-frequency items like
Allah, harem, Koran, mosque, sultan, turban, Turk, and vizier often appear many times in
the same work or in multiple works by the same author, but are tabulated only once for
that author. Only likely works have been searched, as a minute reading of the complete corpus
of the many writers, few of whom are represented by concordances or glossaries, would require
years, though possibly turning up some additional usages and authors. A comprehensive search
of The Oxford English Dictionary would likely discover other writers of lesser quality or nonaesthetic
intent who have used some of the 319 loans.
300 Garland Cannon
abdest – Be
adrop – Jonson
Afghan – J, Moo, M, Mac, T, Ar, D
afghan – Car, Law
Afshar – J
aga – B, H, M, T
Ahriman – J, G, S, Brow
Al Araf – So, Poe, I
alif – J, Te
Alkoran – Chaucer, More, Burton, Dry,
Marvell, Mon, J, Be, Em
Allah – Dry, Rowe, G, Be, So, Cole, B, Moo,
S, Words, Te, Car, T, Ar, Em, Me, I, D
– many
alma – B, H, Maturin, T, Ouida
Al Sirat – Be, B, H, I
anderoon – M, T
araba – H, T
Arnaut – Mon, B, H, Sh, T
attar – Mac, Te, T, Hardy
attar-gul – B, Moo, Brow
Avesta – J
Azrael – Be, So, B, H, S, Poe, Te, I
babul – K
baft – P
Bahadur – T
Bairam – Hak, B, Te
Bakhtiari – J
baklava – M
baksheesh – T, D
Baluchi – P
ban – Cole, Campbell
bashaw – More, Fielding, Butler, B, Hood,
Me
batman – Hak
bazaar – Mon, So, Moo, M, Brow, T, Em,
Mac, I, Me, D, Stevenson
beg – J, G, M, T
bellum – Law
bey – Hak, Mon, B, Moo, H, T, D
beylerbeg – G
beylik – North
b(h)ang – Burton, Mac
bimbashi – H, K
bismillah – Be, So, B, M, T
bosh – Kingsley, Brow
bostangi – Mon, H, M
boza – So
bukshi – P
bulbul – J, B, Moo, Te, T
burkha – K
caftan – Mon, B, Moo, S
caique – P, B, H, T
calender – Be, M, T
calpac – B, H
camise – B, S
canaut – P
caratch – B, H
caravansary – Hak, Ad, Sterne, So, H, M,
T
carboy – Poe
chadar – P
chaprassi – T
(big) cheese – T, Henry
chenar – Evelyn, Moo, M
chiaus – Hak, Jonson, Massinger, G, B
chibouk – B, Moo, H, M, Me, D
chick – Sherwood
chillum – T
china – Mon, Johnson, B, Keats, Sh, Lamb,
M, Me
choga – K
chokidar – Sherwood, B, K
chouse – Jonson, Ford, Dry, Shirley, Butler,
S, Keats, Te, Brow
cummerbund – Sherwood, T
cushy – Waugh, Auden
Dari – J
dasturi – K
daye – Sherwood
defterdar – Hak, Mon, H
dervish – P, Burton, G, Be, B, H, Sh, M, S,
Mac, T, Em, D, Brow
dey – Dry, B, H, Me
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 301
dinar – G, Moo, M, Brow
disdar – B
div – J, Be, Moo, H, M, I
divan “levee” – Mon, Be, B, Moo, H, M, S,
Hood, T, Me, Em, D
dixie – Wells
doab – T
dragoman – Hak, Dry, G, B, H, T
durbar – P
Eblis – G, Be, So, B, Moo, H, M, S, Poe,
I, Me, Em, D
effendi – Mon, J, H, M, T, D
elatcha – P
elchee – Hak, M
fakir – G, Be, B, Moo, Maturin, Em, So, S,
Dickens
farsang – P
fatwa – H, M
feridgi – Mon, H
Feringhee – Hak, Sherwood, T
fez – M, T, Meredith, Lewis
firman – P, B, H, M, Hood
Gabar – G, J, Moo, M, I, D
galiongee – B
gambroon – Lytton
gazelle – J, Goldsmith, I, B, Moo, Hood, T,
D – many
Gehenna – Milton, B, M, Me, I
ghazal – J, Moo, Hood, T
ghoul – Be, So, B, Moo, I, Car, Brow, Poe,
D, T, Te – many
giaour – Hak, Be, B, M, S, Em, T, D, Brow
Gibraltar – So, Sh, B, Brow, T, Me, Em
gul – J, B, Hood, Ruskin
gup – Galsworthy
Hajji – H, G, M, S, T, I
halva – Saki, K
hammam – P, T
hamza – J
hanjar – P, H, D
harem – Mon, Be, B, Moo, S, T, Me, Em,
Holmes, Te, D, Lewis – many
havildar – T
henna – P, So, B, Moo, H, M, Brow, T, D
Hindustani – J, Sh, T
hora – Koestler
houri – Johnson, J, G, Be, So, B, Moo, S,
Lytton, Poe, Te, Mac, T, I, Me, Brow –
many
Hubshee – K
huma – So, Moo, Holmes
huzoor – K
hyleg – Beaumont, Dry
ichoglan – G, H, T
imaret – P, Moo
Iran – J, G, B, Moo, M, Te, Ar, Em –
many
Israfil – So, Moo, Poe, I
jackal – P, Dry, Ad, J, So, B, Moo, H, Sh,
Em, Ar, K – many
jagir – Foote
Jamshid – J, Be, B, Moo, H, M, S, Ar, Brow,
Fitz
janizary – More, Mon, G, B, Moo, H, Sh,
M, T, Keats, Me, D – many
jelick – B
jerid – B, Moo, H, S, D
jezail – K
kabob – H, M, T
Kabuli – K
kaimakam – Mon, H, D
kajawah – K
kanoon – Moo
Kashan – Moo
kehaya – Hak, P, North, Mon, H
Kemalist – Koestler
Kermanji – Law
khabar – K
khan “inn” – Mon, H, T, D
khanjar – S, Brow, K
khansama – Sherwood
khoja – P
kilim – Law
kincob – Sherwood
kiosk – P, Mon, B, Moo, T, Em, D
Kirghiz – De Quincey, Ar
kislar aga – Mon, G, B, H
kismet – M, Lewis
Kohinoor – M, T, Brow
konak – H, Durrell
Koran – P, G, Be, J, So, B, Moo, Sh, S, Te,
T, I, Me, Lewis – many
kulah – Moo
kuphar – Te
Kurd – G, B, H, M, S, Ar, D, Law
kurus – Pound
lac – Marvell, Mac
lari – P
lascar – P, Words, Mac, Brow
Latakia – T, D
mahmudi – P
Mahomet – Layamon, Chaucer, Mand, More,
Spenser, Shake, Bacon, Dry, Butler, J, G,
Be, Cole, B, Moo, S, Sh, T, Brow, Te, I
– many
maidan – P, So, T
302 Garland Cannon
mameluke – Hak, More, Butler, G, B, Moo,
H, Landor, Cole, T, Me, D
martagon – Jonson, Brow
mastika – Durrell
Maugrabee – B, H, S
maund – M
Mazhabi – K
meerschaum – Cole, Holmes
mehmandar – Moo, H, M
meltemi – Durrell
meze – Durrell
minaret – Be, So, Cole, B, Sh, Moo, H,
Maturin, S, Te, Words, Brow, T, D,
Stevenson – many
Mir – P, J, Hood, Mac
mirza – P, Dry, G, M
miskal – P, M
mobed – J
mogul – P, Fletcher, Milton, Dry, G, J, B,
Moo, Words, Dickens, Mac, Me, Te –
many
mohur – Austen
mosque – P, Dry, Mon, G, Be, Cole, So, B,
Moo, Words, Maturin, M, S, Te, T, Ar,
I, Me, Em, D, Stevenson – many
moussaka – Durrell
mudir – Durrell
muezzin – P, G, Be, B, Moo, H, Maturin,
M, S, T, Me
mufti – Massinger, Dry, J, G, So, B, H, M,
T, Em, Me, D
mujtahid – Te
mukhtar – Law, Koestler
mullah – P, J, Be, H, M, S, T, Ar
Munkar and Nakir – Be, B, Moo, I
musellim – B
mussalchee – P
Mussulman – Foxe, Dry, J, G, Be, Cole, So,
B, Moo, H, M, Hood, Keats, T, Te, Mac,
I, Me, D
musth – K
mutessarif – Law
nakhoda – P
narghile – J, M, T, Me, D
nawab – J, Sherwood, Maturin, T
nazir – Moo, M, Mac
nefte – Hak
neskhi – J, H
nil “dye” – P, H
oda – P, B
odalisque – B, Te, Shaw, Joyce
Oghuz – J, Auden
oke – P, H, I, D
Ormuz – Milton, Marvell, G, J, Moo, Me,
Brow, D
ormuzine – P
Osmanli – J, B, H, M, D
pabouch – H, M, S, T
Padishah – P, B, H, T
Pahlavi – J, Fitz
pajamas – T, Lewis
para – B, H, M
parasang – G, B, M
Parsi – P, G, J, Moo, H, Te, Me
pasan – Goldsmith
pasha – Crashaw, Mon, G, B, H, Sh, M, T,
D – many
pashalic – B, H
pazar – P, Goldsmith, M
peri – Be, J, So, B, Moo, H, Keats, M, Brow,
I, Me
pik – Hak
pilau – P, Be, B, H, M, S, T, Me, D
Porte – J, G, Be, H, M, T, D
posteen – K
purdah – Maturin, T, Galsworthy, Durrell
qasida – J, Durrell
rahat lokum – Forester
raki – D
Ramazan – Hak, B, H, M, T
rayah – B, H
rezai – H, Sherwood
rial – M
rissaldar – K
roc – Burton, Goldsmith, So, H, T
Rubáiyát – Fitz, Henry
ryot – P, M
saic – B, M
saki – J, M, Fitz
samiel – Goldsmith, Moo, H
sanjak – G
Sassanid – J, G
Scanderbeg – Spenser, Jonson, Otway, G,
H, Em
scanderoon – D
seersucker – Howells
selictar – B
Seljuk – G, S
sepoy – D
seraglio – Jonson, Massinger, P, Marvell,
Dry, Mon, G, Be, Cole, B, Sh, Te, T,
Bronte, Me – many
serai – P, B, H
serang – K
Appendix 2: Literary Figures Who Have Used the Loans
One exemplar loan is given for each of 98 literary figures who have used some of at least
319 different Turkish and/or Persian loans in the works cited, though, except for concordances,
the searches could not be comprehensive. For economy, some writers’ names are abbreviated
in Appendix 1, and each writer’s known uses of the loans are totaled. The accessibility
and editions of the works cited are such as to preclude giving bibliographical reference to
specific editions. An asterisk indicates that the specified writer is the first known to have used
the cited loan, which may also be in a different form class, derivative or compound form,
or in a transferred or extended definition.
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 303
Seraskier – Mon, B, H
shabash – K
shadi – K
shah – Hak, G, Moo, M, T, Brow, Me –
many
Shahanshah – M, Brow
shahbandar – P
shahi – Hak, M
shaitan – B, M
shamiana – P
shawl – Edgeworth, B, Sh, Keats, Brow,
Dickens, T, Me, Ar, D – many
sherbet – Bacon, Mon, Be, B, Moo, H, M,
S, T, Em, D
shikar – P, K
shikasta – J, K
Shiraz – Be, So, Moo, M
shisham – K
shish kebab – Lewis, Koestler
simar – Dry, Be, B, S
simoom – Cole, So, B, Moo, H, S, Poe, Em,
Brow, T, Me
simurg – J, Be, So, Moo, Brow
sirdar – Sherwood, H, M
sitringee – Sherwood
solak – Caxton
Sophy – Spenser, Shake, Milton, G, Be, B
spahi – B, H, Landor, Ouida
Stamboul – B, H, Sh, Brow, D
subadar – J, K
subashi – Hak, P, H
sultan – Mand, P, Shake, Milton, Mon, G,
Be, J, So, Cole, B, Words, Moo, Sh, S,
Poe, Brow, T, Me, Te, D – many
sumbul – J
syagush – Goldsmith
syce – T, K
tabla – Murdoch
taboot – So, M
takhtrawan – Be, M
taliq – J
tamasha – T, K
tamboo – Owen
tambour – Caxton, So, B, Keats, S, T
tambourgi – B
tar – K
Tatar – J, So, H, M, D, Lewis
tendour – Mon, H
tezkere – P
Timariot – Massinger, B
toman – Hak, G, M, T, Brow
tophaike – B
Topkhana – H, T, K
Turanian – J
turban – Hak, P, Shake, Jonson, Milton, Dry,
G, B, So, Words, Moo, S, Keats, T, Me,
Brow, D, Lewis – many
Turk – Mand, More, Spenser, Ascham,
Shake, Milton, Evelyn, Pope, Dry, J, G,
Cole, B, Words, Moo, Sh, S, Te, Brow,
T, Em, Me – many
Turkoman – P, J, B, Moo, M, Em, D
ulema – J, M, So, Te, Ar
Uzbek – G, Moo
vakeel – M, K
vizier – Hak, Swift, Mon, J, G, Be, B, Sh,
Moo, T, Te, Ar, Mac, Me, Meredith, D
– many
yakdan – M
yarak – K
Yasa – J
yashmak – T
yataghan – B, H, T, Brow
yoghurt – P, M, Waugh
Yusufzai – K, Kaye
yuzbashi – M
Zakka Khel – K
zel – Moo
Zend – J, G
Zend-Avesta – Goldsmith, G, J, Te, Me
Ad. Addison, Joseph. The Guardian #71, The Spectator #289. (jackal)-2
Ar. Arnold, Matthew. “Calais sands”, “The Sick king in Bokhara”, Sohrab and Rustum.
(Afghan)-12
Ascham, Roger. Toxophilus. (Turkish)-1*
Auden, Wystan Hugh. The Age of anxiety, On the frontier. (Oghuz)-2
Austen, Jane. Sense and sensibility. (mohur)-1
Bacon, Francis. “Of boldness” (Essayes), Sylva sylvarum. (sherbet)-2
Beaumont, Francis. The Bloody brother. (hyleg)-1*
Be. Beckford, William. Vathek. (ghoul)-37*
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. (seraglio)-1
Brow. Browning, Robert. “Aristophanes’ apology”, “Bad dreams II”, “A Bean-stripe”, “The
Flight of the duchess”, “Home thoughts, from the sea”, “Jochanan Hakkadosh”, “Mihrab
Shah”, “Old pictures in Florence”, “Pacchiarotto”, Paracelsus, “A Pillar at Sebzevar”,
“Pippa Passes”, “Porphyria’s lover”, Red cotton night-cap country, “The Return of the
Druses”, The Ring and the book, Sordello, “Two camels”, Two poets of Croisic, “Waring”.
(martagon)-32*
Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of melancholy. (bhang)-4
Butler, Samuel. Hudibras. (bashaw)-4
B. Byron, Lord. Beppo, The Bride of Abydos, Childe Harold’s pilgrimage, The Corsair,
Don Juan, English bards and Scotch reviewers, The Giaour, The Island, Sardanapalus,
The Siege of Corinth, “The Waltz”. (camise)-94*
Campbell, Thomas. “The Turkish lady”. (ban)-1
Car. Carlyle, Thomas. On heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history; Sartor resartus.
(afghan)-3
Caxton, William. The Cronicles of England, The Fables of Aesop. (solak)-2*
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Man of Law’s Tale”. (Mahoun)-3
Cole. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Death of Wallenstein, “A Mathematical problem”,
Osorio, The Piccolomini (transl. of first part of Schiller’s Wallenstein), “Religious
musings”, Table-talk, notebooks, 1799 letter. (seraglio)-12*
Crashaw, Richard. Carmen Deo nostro. (pasha)-1*
De Quincey, Thomas. “Revolt of the Tartars” (Blackwood’s Magazine, July 1837, p. 109).
(Kirghiz)-1
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge, Oliver Twist, Tom Tiddler’s ground. (fakir)-3
D. Disraeli, Benjamin. Coningsby, Tancred, 1833 letter. (Latakia)-50*
Dry. Dryden, John. Annus mirabilis, The Assignation, Aureng-Zebe, The Conquest of Granada,
Don Sebastian, An Evening’s love, The Flower and the Leaf, “The Hind and the panther”,
The kind keeper, The Wild gallant. (dragoman)-17*
Durrell, Lawrence. Balthazar, Bitter lemons, Spirit of place, Tunc. (moussaka)-8
Edgeworth, Maria. Absentee. (v. shawling)-1*
Em. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. English traits, manners; “Fragments on the poet and the poetic
gift”; “Mithridates”; “Monadnoc”; “Ode inscribed to W. H. Channing”; “Saadi”; Society
and solitude; “Song of Seyd Nimetollah of Kuhistan”. (Gibraltar)-19*
Evelyn, John. Diary. (chenar)-2
Fielding, Henry. Jonathan Wild. (bashaw)-1
Fitz. FitzGerald, Edward. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. (Rubáiyát)-4*
Fletcher, John. The Fair maid of the inn. (mogul)-1
Foote, Samuel. The Nabob. (jagir)-1
Ford, John. The Ladies triall. (chouse)-1
Forester, Cecil Scott. The Commodore. (rahat lokum)-1
Foxe, John. The Book of Martyrs. (Mussulman)-1*
Galsworthy, John. Swan song, The White monkey. (purdah)-2*
G. Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and fall of the Roman empire. (Zend)-47
304 Garland Cannon
Goldsmith, Oliver. The Citizen of the world, Preface to Richard Brookes’s A New and accurate
system of natural history. (adj. gazelle)-7*
Hak. Hakluyt, Richard. The Principall navigations, voiages, and discoueries of the English
nation. (bey)-21*
Hardy, Thomas. Far from the madding crowd. (attar)-1
Henry, O. “The Rubaiyat of a Scotch highball”, “The Unprofitable servant”. (Big Cheese)-
2*
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. The Autocrat of the breakfast-table, The Poet at the breakfasttable.
(huma)-3
Hood, Thomas. Kilmansegg, “Poetry, Prose, and Worse”. (firman)-12
H. Hope, Thomas. Anastasius. (araba)-86*
Howells, William Dean. Their wedding journey. (seersucker)-1
I. Irving, Washington. The Lives of Mahomet and his successors, Salmagundi, Tales of a traveller.
(ghoul)-21
Johnson, Dr. Samuel. Irene, Rambler #200. (houri)-2*
J. Jones, Sir William. “The Enchanted fruit”, “An Essay on the history of the Turks”, “An
Essay on the poetry of the eastern nations”, A Grammar of the Persian language, The
History of the life of Nader Shah, “Plassey-Plain”, Fifth/Sixth anniversary discourse,
1784 letter. (Pahlavi)-57*
Jonson, Ben. The Alchemist, Every man in his humour, The Sad shepherd, The Silent woman.
(chouse)-6*
Joyce, James. Giacomo Joyce. (odalisque)-1
Keats, John. “Ben Nevis”, “The Cap and bells”, “The Eve of St. Agnes”, Lamia, Otho the
great. (chouse)-8
Kingsley, Charles. The Water-babies. (bosh)-1
K. Kipling, Rudyard. Barrack-room ballads, “The City of dreadful night”, The Day’s
work, Departmental ditties, The Eyes of Asia, From sea to sea, The Jungle book, Kim,
Land and sea tales, Letters of travel, Life’s handicap, Many inventions, Plain tales from
the hills, Soldiers three, Stalky and Co., and in Daily Mail of 4 April 1900. (v. jackal)-
34*
Koestler, Arthur. The Age of longing, “London letter” (Partisan Review, 1947, 14: 344),
Thieves in the night. (hora)-5
Lamb, Charles. “Old China”. (china)-1
Landor, Walter Savage. Imaginary conversations of literary men and statesmen. (mamelukery)-
2*
Langland, William. Piers Plowman B. (Mahound)-1
Law. Lawrence, Thomas Edward. Seven pillars of wisdom, 1911–1938 letters. (mukhtar)-
7*
Layamon. Brut. (Mahun)-1*
Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street, Our Mr. Wrenn. (shish kebab)-8*
Lytton, Edward Bulwer-. Lucretia, Pelham. (gambroon)-2
Mac. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. The History of England, Rev. in Edinburgh Review (“Lord
Clive”, “Warren Hastings”, “Milton”). (vizier)-13
Mand. Mandeville. The travels of Sir John Mandeville. (Mahomet)-4
Marvell, Andrew. “Bermudas”, “Britannia and Rawleigh”, “The First anniversary of the
government under O.C.”, “The Last instructions to a painter”. (alcoran’d)-5*
Massinger, Philip. The Picture, Renegado. (mufti)-4
Maturin, Charles Robert. Melmoth the wanderer. (purdah)-11
Me. Melville, Herman. Mardi, Moby-Dick, Omoo, Pierre, Redburn, Typee, White-jacket.
(harem)-34*
Meredith, George. Beauchamp’s career, The Tragic comedians. (fezzy)-2*
Milton, John. Paradise lost, Paradise regained. (Ormuz)-7*
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 305
Mon. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. l713–1718 letters. (Arnaut)-27*
Moo. Moore, Thomas. Lalla Rookh. (zel)-61*
More, Sir Thomas. The Confutacyon of Tyndales answere, A Dialoge concerning heresyes,
A Dialoge of comforte against tribulation. (bashaw)-6*
M. Morier, James. The Adventures of Hajji Baba, Ayesha, Hajji Baba in England. (yakdan)-
89*
Murdoch, Iris. A Word child. (tabla)-1
North, Sir Thomas. Plutarch’s lives. (beylik)-2*
Otway, Thomas. The Atheist. (Scanderbeg)-1
Ouida. Tricotrin, Under two flags. (spahi)-2
Owen, Wilfred. 1918 letters. (tamboo)-1
Poe, Edgar Allan. “A. G. Pym”, “Al Aaraaf”, “The Bells”, “Dream-land”, “Israfel”, Politian,
“Tamerlane”, “To Marie Louise”. (Israfel)-9
Pound, Ezra. Thrones. (kurus)-1
P. Purchas, Samuel. Purchas his pilgrims. (jackal)-53*
Rowe, Nicholas. Tamerlane. (Allah)-1
Ruskin, John. Fors clavigera. (gul)-1
Saki (H. H. Munro). The Toys of peace. (halva)-1
S. Scott, Sir Walter. Don Roderick, Harold the dauntless, Ivanhoe, Peveril of the peak, Quentin
Durward, St. Ronin’s well, The Talisman, Woodstock. (jerid)-35
Shake. Shakespeare, William. King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Twelfth night.
(Sophy)-5
Shaw, George Bernard. 1903 letter. (odalisque)-1
Sh. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Hellas, “Julian and Maddalo”, Laon and Cythna, “Letter to
Maria Gisborne”, Oedipus tyrannus, Queen Mab, 1811 letter. (Hindoostanish)-17*
Sherwood, Mrs. Mary. The history of Little Henry and his bearer, History of little Lucy,
The Lady and her ayah, The Lady of the manor, Orange grove. (nawab)-11*
Shirley, James. Honour and Mammon. (v. chouse)-1*
So. Southey, Robert. Common-place book; The Curse of Kehama; Roderick, the last of the
Goths; Sir Thomas More; Thalaba the destroyer; in Quarterly Review (1812: 7.53). (ghoul)-
33*
Spenser, Edmund. Commendatory sonnets, The Faerie queene. (Scanderbeg)-4*
Sterne, Laurence. The Sermons of Mr. Yorick. (caravansary)-1*
Stevenson, Robert Louis. “Travel”. (bazaar)-3
Swift, Jonathan. “A Project for the advancement of religion”. (vizier)-1
Te. Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. “Akbar’s dream”, “The Ancient sage”, “A Dream of fair women”,
“Locksley Hall Sixty Years After”, “The Lover’s tale”, “Maud”, “Montenegro”, “The
Northern cobbler”, “The Palace of art”, “The Princess”, Poems by two brothers,
“Recollections of the Arabian Nights”, “Romney’s remorse”. (ulema)-26
T. Thackeray, William Makepeace. The book of snobs, Codlingsby, The History of Henry
Esmond, The Newcomes, Notes of a journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, Pendennis,
Sultan Stark, The Tremendous adventures of Major Gahagan, Vanity Fair. (adj. bulbul)-
85*
Waugh, Evelyn. Decline and fall, A Handful of dust. (yoghurt)-2
Wells, Herbert George. Mr. Britling sees it through. (dixie)-1
Words. Wordsworth, William. “The Armenian lady’s love”, The Excursion, “Peter Bell”,
The Prelude. (lascar)-8
306 Garland Cannon
References
Cannon, Garland. The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990.
Cannon, Garland. The Arabic Contributions to the English Language: An Historical
Dictionary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1994.
Cannon, Garland. “Oriental Jones: Scholarship, Literature, Multiculturalism, and Humankind,”
in Garland Cannon and Kevin R. Brine, Eds. Objects of Enquiry: the Life, Contributions,
and Influences of Sir William Jones. New York: New York University, 1995, 25–50.
Cannon, Garland. “Persian Loans in the English Language.” Orbis 40 (1998a).
Cannon, Garland. “Sir William Jones and the New Pluralism over Languages and Cultures.”
Yearbook of English Studies 28 (1998b): 128–143.
Cannon, Garland. “Turkish Loans in the English Language.” Orbis 41 (forthcoming).
Conant, Martha Pike. The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1908.
Gail, Marzieh. Persia and the Victorians. London: George Allen, 1951.
Jones, Sir William. The Letters of Sir William Jones, 2 vols. Ed. Garland Cannon. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970.
McQuain, Jeffrey and Stanley Malless. Coined by Shakespeare: Words and Meanings First
Penned by the Bard. Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster, 1998.
Osborne, Edna. “Oriental Diction and Theme in English Verse, 1740–1840.” Humanistic
Studies of the University of Kansas 2 (1916): 7–142.
Oxford English dictionary, The. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. 20 vols.
Turkish and Persian Loans in English Literature 307
