Dragoman

For other uses, see Dragoman (disambiguation).
Amédée Jaubert (left) was Napoleon's "favourite orientalist adviser and dragoman".[1] He accompanied the Persian envoy Mirza Mohammad-Reza Qazvini at Finckenstein Palace to meet with Napoleon on 27 April 1807 for the Treaty of Finckenstein. Detail of a painting by François Mulard.
Plate from The Crescent and the Cross by Elliot Warburton entitled "Encampment at Baalbec, lady and dragoman in foreground."

A dragoman was an interpreter, translator, and official guide between Turkish-, Arabic-, and Persian-speaking countries and polities of the Middle East and European embassies, consulates, vice-consulates and trading posts. A dragoman had to have a knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and European languages.

In the Ottoman Empire, Dragomans were mainly members of the Ottoman Greek community, who possessed considerable multilingual skills, because Greek trading communities did substantial business in the markets of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Atlantic Ocean,[which?] and the Indian Ocean.[2] To a lesser extent, other communities with international commercial links, notably the Armenians, were recruited.[2]

Dragoman Joseph Shaar. Temple of Jupiter, Baalbek, 1891
  1. ^ Hamilton, Alastair; Groot, Alexander H. de; Boogert, Maurits H. van den (2000). Friends and rivals in the East: studies in Anglo–Dutch relations in the Levant from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. BRILL. pp. 230ff. ISBN 978-90-04-11854-6.
  2. ^ a b Quataert, Donald (2005). The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922. Cambridge University Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-521-83910-5.