Sahib

"Saheb" redirects here. For the city in Iran, see Saheb, Iran. For the administrative subdivision of Iran, see Saheb Rural District. For other uses, see Saheb (disambiguation).
This article is about the title. For other uses, see Sahib (disambiguation).
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Imperial, royal, noble, gentry and chivalric ranks in West, Central, South Asia and North Africa

Sahib or Saheb (/ˈsɑːhɪb/; Arabic: صاحب) is an Arabic title meaning 'companion'. It was historically used for the first caliph Abu Bakr in the Quran.

As a loanword, Sahib has passed into several languages, including Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Crimean Tatar,[1] Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Pashto, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Rohingya and Somali. During medieval times, it was used as a term of address, either as an official title or an honorific. Now, in South and Central Asia, it is almost exclusively used to give respect to someone higher or lower. For example, drivers are commonly addressed as sahib in South Asia and so on. The honorific has largely been replaced with sir. Some shorten sahib to saab.

  1. ^ van Schaaik, Gerjan (1996). Studies in Turkish Grammar. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 144–145. ISBN 978-3447038065.