Gabr

Gabr (PerB|گبر) (also "gabrak", "gawr", "gaur", "gyaur", "gabre") is a New Persian term originally used to denote a Zoroastrian.

Historically, "gabr" was a technical term synonymous with "mōg", "magus", denoting a follower of Zoroastrianism, and it is with this meaning that the term is attested in very early New Persian texts such as the "Shahnameh". In time, "gabr" came to have a pejorative implication and was superseded in literature by the respectable "Zardoshti", "Zoroastrian".

By the 13th century the word had come to be applied to a follower of any religion other than Islam, and it has "also been used by the Muslim Kurds, Turks, and some other ethnic groups in modified forms to denote various religious communities other than Zoroastians, sometimes even in the sense of unbeliever."citation|last=Shaki|first=Mansour|chapter=Gabr|title=Encyclopedia Iranica|volume=10|year=2001|location=Costa Mesa|publisher=Mazda|chapter-url=http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v10f3/v10f311.html] As a consequence of the curtailment of social rights, non-Muslims were compelled to live in restricted areas, which the Muslim populace referred to as "Gabristan"s.citation|title=Relations between the Safavid State and its Non-Muslim Minorities|last=Savory|first=R. M.|journal=Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations|volume=14|issue=4|year= 2003|pages=435-458]

The etymology of the term is uncertain. "In all likelihood," "gabr" derives from the Aramaic "GBR", which – in written Middle Iranian languages – serves as an ideogram that would be read as an Iranian language word meaning "man." (for the use of ideograms in Middle Iranian languages, see Pahlavi) During the Sassanid era (226-651), the ideogram signified a free (i.e. non-slave) peasant of Mesopotamia. Following the collapse of the empire and the subsequent rise of Islam, it "seems likely that "gabr" used already in Sasanian times in reference to a section of Zoroastrian community in Mesopotamia, had been employed by the converted Persians in the Islamic period to indicate their Zoroastrian compatriots, a practice that later spread throughout the country." It has also been suggested that "gabr" might be a mispronounciation of Arabic "kafir" "unbeliever," but this theory has been rejected on linguistic grounds: "there is no unusual sound in "kafir" that would require phonetic modification." Also, "kafir" as a generic word probably wouldn't refer to a specific revealed religion such as Zoroastrianism.citation|last=Bausani|first=A.|chapter=Gabr|title=Encyclopedia of Islam| edition=2|volume=II|year=1965|location=Leiden|publisher=Brill ]

ee also

* "majusi", the Arabic word for a Zoroastrian.
* "Gabrōni", a northwestern Iranian dialect which is used by Zoroastrians in Yazd and Kerman.
* Zoroastrians in Iran

Bibliography

Further reading

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