hodja

plural hodjas · alternative khoja

1. A Muslim schoolmaster.

   A young boy chanted the Koran while our hodja sat by the low table swaying himself to its rhythm.

   1926, Halide Edib, House with Wisteria: Memoirs of Turkey Old and New, Facsimile edition, published 2005, page 88

   2 more examples

   1916, unnamed narrator, quoted in 2008, Viscount Bryce (editor), The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Bryce, page 315, The next night I heard two hodjas talking, under my window, of a terrible massacre of the Armenians that had just taken place in the mountains; they seemed to be very sorry about it and spoke of it with horror; they did not know, of course, that I was listening.

   "I hate all priests, rabbis, and hodjas," he once told me — hodja being the nearest equivalent the Mohammedans have for a minister of religion.

   2007, Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story: A Personal Account of the Armenian Genocide, page 14