Khatun

Khatun (Old Turkic: 𐰮𐰍𐰣‎, romanized: Katun, Ottoman Turkish: ۟ۧŰȘون‎, romanized: Hatun or Ù‚Ű§ŰŻÛŒÙ† romanized: Kadın, Uzbek: xotin, Persian: ۟ۧŰȘون‎ khātĆ«n; Mongolian: á Źá  á Č᠀᠚, khatun, Ń…Đ°Ń‚Đ°Đœ khatan; Urdu: ۟ۧŰȘون‎, Hindi: à€–à€Œà€Ÿà€€à„‚à€š khātĆ«n; Bengali: àŠ–àŠŸàŠ€à§àŠš; Sylheti: ê ˆê Łê ”ê „ê ˜; Turkish: hatun; Azerbaijani: xatun) is a female title of nobility and counterpart to "khan" or "Khagan" prominently used in the Turkic Khaganates and in the subsequent Mongol Empire.

For the village in Iran, see Mazraeh-ye Khatun, Isfahan.

Etymology and history

Before the advent of Islam in Central Asia, Khatun was the title of the queen of Bukhara. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, "Khatun [is] a title of Sogdian origin borne by the wives and female relatives of the GöktĂŒrks and subsequent Turkish rulers."[1]

According to Bruno De Nicola in Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206-1335, the linguistic origins of the term “khatun” are unknown, though possibly of Old Turkic or Sogdian origin. De Nicola states that prior to the spread of the Mongols across Central Asia, Khatun meant ‘lady’ or ‘noblewoman’ and is found in broad usage in medieval Persian and Arabic texts.[2]

Peter Benjamin Golden observed that the title qatun appeared among the GöktĂŒrks as the title for the khagan's wife and was borrowed from Sogdian xwāten "wife of the ruler"[3] Earlier, British Orientalist Gerard Clauson (1891–1974) defined xa:tun as "'lady' and the like" and says there is "no reasonable doubt that it is taken from Sogdian xwt'yn (xwatēn), in Sogdian xwt'y ('lord, ruler') and xwt'yn 'lord's or ruler's wife'), "which is precisely the meaning of xa:tun in the early period."[4]

Modern usage

In Uzbek, the language spoken in modern-day Bukhara, in Uzbekistan, the word is spelled xotin and has come to simply refer to any woman. In Turkish, it is written hatun. The general Turkish word for 'woman', kadın, is a doublet derived from the same origin.[5]

In Hindi and Urdu, the word khatun is used commonly to refer to any woman. The female title khanum is also used as the feminine counterpart of khan.

Notable Khatuns

See also

References
  1. Mernissi, Fatima (1993). The Forgotten Queens of Islam. University of Minnesota Press. p. 21.
  2. De Nicola, Bruno (2017). Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206-1335. Edinburgh University Press. p. 2. ISBN 9781474415477.
  3. Peter Benjamin Golden (1998), "Turks and Iranians: An historical sketch" in Johanson, Lars; CsatĂł, Éva Ágnes (2015). The Turkic Languages. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-82534-7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link), page 5
  4. Clauson, Gerard (1972). An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 602–603.
  5. Clauson, p. 602.

Works cited


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