I SAID THAT I DO NOT KNOW THE PRECISE MEANING OF DHIMMI

Submitted by Seamus MacNemi (United States), Jun 30, 2007 at 19:33

And then I went on to say that it was used, in the case of my ancestors, to mean a non Muslim in the service of the Sultan . That is exactly what it meant to the Turkish Sultan. What it means to you or to any other arab linguist means absolutely nothing in this case. The Turks were not Arabs and they had a great disdain for Arabs in general. There were no Arabs in the Sultans army and they were not given any position of authority in the Sultans government. The Turks, in general, considered themselves to be better Muslims than the Arabs. They thought the Arabs were better ruled over than ruling and I agree with them.

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