Pashas

Pasha or Paşa (Ottoman Turkish: پاشا‎, Turkish: paşa), in older works sometimes anglicized as bashaw, was a higher rank in the Ottoman Empire political and military system, typically granted to governors, generals, dignitaries and others. As an honorary title, Pasha, in one of its various ranks, is similar to a British peerage or knighthood, and was also one of the highest titles in pre-republican Egypt.

Popular view connects it with Turkish baş(-ı) ('head'; cf. "başkan", "president" or "başkent", "capital"), or the similar-sounding compound baş-ağa (the title of an official). Etymologist Sevan Nişanyan rejects both these explanations and instead derives it from Turkish beşe ('boy, prince'), which is cognate with Persian baççe (بچّه). Old Turkish had no fixed distinction between /b/ and /p/, and the word was spelled başa still in the 15th century.

According to Josef W. Meri and Jere L. Bacharach, the word is "more than likely derived from the Persian Padishah". The same view is held by Nicholas Ostler, who mentions that the word was formed as a shortening of the Persian word Padishah.

As first used in western Europe, the title appeared in writing with the initial "b". The English forms bashaw, bassaw, bucha etc., general in the 16th and 17th century, derive through the medieval Latin and Italian word bassa. Due to the Ottoman presence in the Arab World, the title became used frequently in Arabic, though pronounced as basha due to the absence of the sound "p" in Arabic.

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