ethnarch

plural ethnarchs

1. historicalThe governor of a Jewish province under the Roman Empire.

   In the course of the struggle with the unfortunate ethnarch, the nobles had found it expedient to attach themselves to Rome.

   1880, Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

2. A leader of an ethnic community, especially a Jewish or (in the Ottoman Empire) Eastern Orthodox leader having political as well as spiritual authority.

   By the seventeenth century the archbishop became recognized as the ethnarch (ethnic political leader) of the Greek Cypriot community.

   2013, John Coakley, Pathways from Ethnic Conflict: Institutional Redesign in Divided Societies, Routledge, →ISBN, page 135

   3 more examples

   In fact, from a worldly perspective, sages were petty clerks, employees of the ethnarch of their ethnic group. The ethnarch may have treated sages with […]

   1984, Jacob Neusner, Our Sages, God, and Israel: An Anthology of The Talmud of the Land of Israel, SP Books, →ISBN, page 120

   The Archbishop became the ethnarch, the leader of the ethnic group. It was his responsibility to administer the territories where his people lived, to collect taxes and to regulate matters relating to marriage, divorce, dowry and inheritance.

   2001, Anna Jarstad, Changing the Game: Consociational Theory and Ethnic Quotas in Cyprus and New Zealand, Uppsala Universitet

   But the Ethnarch, by tradition and long-established practice that had begun under the Ottomans, was more than a spiritual leader. He was expected to act as the spokesman, defender and protector of his flock.

   2019, Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Country, Penguin, published 2020, page 310