WORDSPEAK
Feringhees and kafirs
BY ANAND
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A look at hostile or contemptuous terms that people of other religious persuasions had for Christians and, by extension, for white people.
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Feringhi, or Feringhee, was originally used in a purely geographical sense.
THE focus of recent "Wordspeak" columns has been on the pejorative mantle that certain words take on in a religious sense. Europe's history is full of examples of a xenophobic mistrust of everything that was not Christian. People of the unbelieving nations were called pagans and heathens. To be fair, we must look at some hostile or contemptuous terms that the people of other religious persuasions had for Christians and, by extension, for white people.
Purely geographical sense
Feringhi or Feringhee, with its derivatives and diverse pronunciations, is a very old label in Asia for a European, and was originally used in a purely geographical sense. It now generally carries a significance that can be alternatively disdainful and condescending. Feringhi has long meant a foreigner, particularly Caucasians and Westerners, in parts of Africa and the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia. In India, the combatants on either side during the uprising of 1857 (a.k.a. the Indian Mutiny) called each other Feringhies and Pandies. In Arabic language (in Egypt and in some North African countries) "Afrangui" also means a foreigner of obvious western appearance.
The origin of the term is in `Franks', a group of Germanic tribes who dominated Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Their name was possibly adopted from their word for a javelin (franca). They settled in Gaul in Western Europe, which after various upheavals in the early Middle Ages, became modern-day France. By the late Middle Ages, a large percentage of Europe's kings and queens were French. During the centuries following the first Crusades led by Frank kings, the term "Franks" had become synonymous with "aggressive westerner". It still is the standard term for western Europeans in the Mediterranean.
Greek speakers used it to mean the Latin (Catholics) as opposed to the Orthodox. `Frank' (frangos) may also be used by them for Westerners in general (no particular reference to Frenchman), and the prefix frango- can refer to various `western' things. The "g" pronunciation of "k" is a standard phenomenon in Greek and some other languages in the context n-g. There is a reference to a dictionary of Syriac, the classical Aramaic (Semitic) language used in some Middle Eastern Christian churches, that lists frang as `a European' and frangiya as `the Country of the Franks; Western Europe; Latin language or church'.
South Asian languages borrowed feringhi from Arabic, which has no initial consonant clusters, hence the variation ifranj/firanj. The "i" of ifrangi is a standard phenomenon in Turkish and Arabic. When these people might have tried to say `Franks', the `f' must have come out as `if' and the `k' as `g'. It explains why many Urdu/Farsi speakers in India still say `iskool' instead of `school'.
Spread
The word spread through Muslim trade routes after the Crusades into Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Persian traders who were established in Siam by the 16th century were called `farangg' by the Thais. In colonial Sri Lanka, `Parangi' was used to refer to both Portuguese people and to a form of syphilis called Yaws that was introduced by Portuguese.
The term was borrowed by other languages of the region, initially describing the Portuguese, but used later for all white people. In Dravidian languages, it comes out as farengi, farangi and pirangi. The Samoan word, also common in French Polynesia, for a Caucasian foreigner is `palangi'.
Let me add, as an aside, that those whom we, the South Asians, called ferenghis decided to get back at us. In the sci-fi television show "Star Trek: The Next Generation", `ferenghis' or foreigners are critters four feet tall with basically hominid bodies but severely distorted faces.
Kafir, another dislogistic term fairly common in Indian languages, is an Arabic word meaning "an unbeliever, a person who hides, denies, or covers the truth". In cultural terms, it is a derogatory term used to describe an unbeliever, non-Muslims, a Muslim of a differing sect, or an apostate from Islam. It is usually translated into English as `infidel' or `unbeliever'. Its opposite is momin (believer). Some scholars apply kafir to Jews and Christians, while others call them `ahale-kitab' (People of the Book) and explain that the label has been used historically to identify Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and followers of non-denominational religions or local, pagan traditions.
To cover
The following quote describes the word's etymology: active participle of the root K-F-R "to cover". As a pre-Islamic term it described farmers burying seeds in the ground, covering them with soil while planting. Thus, the word kâfir implies the meaning "a person who hides or covers". In Islamic parlance, a kâfir is a word used to describe a person who rejects Islamic faith, i.e. "hides or covers (viz., the truth)".
This tailpiece to avoid confusion: Kafir is also the name of a tribe in northeastern Afghanistan (because they accepted Islam some centuries later than did their neighbours). In South Africa, it is an offensive term for any Black African (derived from the Arab epithet for slaves and Negro Africans).
E-mail: anand@journalist.com (Please put `Wordspeak' in the subject box)
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