Padishahs

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Supreme rulers holding the ancient title of emperor or great king in Persia, the Ottoman Empire and related Asian courts
2. The plural form of a grand imperial title once borne by monarchs of Persia and the Ottoman sultans and shahs of the East
3. Sovereign emperors who carried the lofty title padishah, used historically across Persian and Ottoman dominions

Etymology: "Padishahs" is the plural of "padishah," a title for supreme imperial rulers, most famously the Ottoman sultans. The singular form is the older and more basic one: it is a Persian compound, "pādšāh," built from "pād" (lord, protector, master) and "šāh" (king), so it means something like "protector-king" or "king of kings." Persian was the language of courts across much of the Islamic world, and the title travelled with it, reaching Turkish, Urdu, and other languages of the region. Because the title belongs to the sovereign's rank rather than to a single person, it was applied to many rulers over the centuries, and in English it appears in the plural whenever writers discuss more than one of them. The plural simply follows the regular English pattern of adding "-s" to the singular.

Synonyms: shah, sultan, emperor