Rum (endonym)

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Rūm (

Eastern Roman Empire
.

The term Rūm is now used to describe:

A view showing several floors of an underground Rûm city in Turkey.

Origins

The term Rūm in Arabic and New Persian was derived from Middle Persian hrōm, which had in turn derived from Parthian frwm, which was used to label "Rome" and the "Roman Empire" and was derived from the Greek Ῥώμη.[1] The Armenian and Georgian forms of the name were also derived from Aramaic and Parthian.[a] According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, Rūm is a Persian and Turkish word used to refer to the Byzantine Empire.[2]

Inscriptions

The Greek (Ῥώμη), Middle Persian (hrōm), Parthian (frwm) versions of Rūm are found on the

Marcus Antonius Gordianus.[3] The inscriptions on the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht date from around 262 AD.[4]

Rûm is found in the pre-Islamic

Eastern Roman Empire under its Greek-speaking emperors (the Heraclian dynasty). The empire was the most prominent Christian state during the period of Muhammad's life and during the composition of the Quran, the Western Roman Empire having fallen two centuries earlier, during the 5th century.[6]

Sultanate of Rûm
.

The

Greek
lingua franca, was not used anywhere at the time.

The Roman and later Eastern Roman (Byzantine) state encompassed the entirety of the eastern Mediterranean for six centuries, but after the advent of Islam in Arabia in the 7th century and during the subsequent

Mediterranean
as "the Sea of the Rûm".

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turkish conqueror Sultan Mehmed II declared himself to have replaced the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) ruler as the new Kayser-i Rum, literally "Caesar of the Romans". In the Ottoman millet system, the conquered natives of Turkey and the Balkans were now categorized as the "Rum Millet" (Millet-i Rum) for taxation purposes and were allowed to continue practicing Orthodox Christianity, the religion that had been promulgated by the former Byzantine state. In modern Turkey Rum is still used to denote the Orthodox Christian native minority of Turkey, together with its pre-conquest remnant institutions such as the Rum Ortodoks Patrikhanesi, the Turkish designation of the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the figurehead for all of Orthodox Christianity and former religious leader of the Eastern Roman state.

In geography

Abandoned Rûm churches carved into a solid stone cliff face, Cappadocia, Nevşehir/Turkey.

Muslim contact with the Byzantine Empire most often took place in

Sultanate of Rûm
, the "Sultanate of the Rome."

After the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, the area was called Rumelia (Roman lands) as it was predominantly inhabited by the newly conquered-nation, which the Ottomans called Rûm.

As a name

Al-Rūmī is a

nisbah
that designates people originating in the Eastern Roman Empire or lands that formerly belonged to it, especially those that are now called Turkey. Historical people so designated include the following:

  • Suhayb ar-Rumi
    , a companion of Muhammad
  • Harithah bint al-Muammil
    (Zunairah al-Rumiya), a companion of Muhammad
  • Rumi a moniker for Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, the 13th-century Persian poet who lived most of his life amongst the conquered Rûm (Byzantines) of Konya (Byzantine Greek: Ἰκόνιον or Ikonio) in the Sultanate of Rûm
  • Qāḍī Zāda al-Rūmī, 14th-century mathematician
  • Ayrumlu
    , Former Queen of Iran

The Greek surname Roumeliotis stems from the word Rûm borrowed by Ottomans.[citation needed]

Other uses

During the 16th century, the Portuguese used rume and rumes (plural) as a generic term to refer to the Mamluk-Ottoman forces that they faced in the Indian Ocean.[8]

The term

Rumeika" is a Greek dialect identified mainly with the Ottoman Greeks.[citation needed
]

The Chinese during the Ming dynasty referred to the Ottomans as Lumi (魯迷), derived from Rum or Rumi. The Chinese also referred to Rum as Wulumu 務魯木 during the Qing dynasty. The modern Mandarin Chinese name for the city of Rome is Luoma (羅馬).[citation needed]

Among the Muslim aristocracy of South Asia, the fez is known as the Rumi Topi (which means "hat of Rome or Byzantium").[9]

Non-Ottoman Muslims in the classical period called the Ottomans Rumis because of the Byzantine legacy that was inherited by the Ottoman Empire. [10]

In the

Rhomaioi.[citation needed
]

The Latin alphabet used for Malay is endonymically called tulisan Rumi (lit. 'Roman writing').[11]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "It was the Parthian and Aramaic form that subsequently was borrowed by the Pahlawi, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic and finally Neo-Persian and Turkish languages. [...] The Arabic and New Persian languages inherited the Pahlawi hrōm with the omission of the aspirated component in the Ancient Greek rho."[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Shukurov 2020, p. 145.
  2. ^ Babinger 1987, p. 1174.
  3. ^ Rubin 2002, p. 279.
  4. ^ Rapp 2014, p. 28.
  5. ^ El Cheikh, Nadia Maria (1995). "Rûm". In C.E. Bosworth; E. Van Donzel; W.P. Heinrichs; G. Lecomte (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. VIII. Brill. p. 601.
  6. ^ El-Cheikh, Nadia Maria (2004). Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs. Harvard University Press. p. 24.
  7. ^ Robinson 1999, p. 29.
  8. ^ Ozbaran, Salih, "Ottomans as 'Rumes' in Portuguese sources in the sixteenth century", Portuguese Studies, Annual, 2001. "Alternate link."
  9. ^ The "Rumi Topi" of Hyderabad, by Omair M. Farooqui
  10. ^ Ozbaran, Salih, "Ottomans as 'Rumes' in Portuguese sources in the sixteenth century", Portuguese Studies, Annual, 2001. "Alternate link."
  11. .

Bibliography

Further reading

External links