saraf

plural sarafs · alternative obsolete xaraffe · alternative obsolete xaraffo · alternative obsolete charaff · alternative obsolete xaraf · alternative obsolete xaroff · alternative obsolete xeraffo · alternative obsolete sarraf · alternative obsolete saraff · alternative obsolete serof · alternative obsolete seraff

1. A provider of financial services in the Middle East and in South Asia, especially (historical) during the early modern and colonial period.

   They [Armenians] prospered as our ‘Sarrafs’.

   1897 July, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, page 24

   3 more examples

   There is in euery place of the street exchangers of mony, by them called Xaraffos, which are all christian Iewes.

   1598, Jan Huygen van Linschoten, translated by William Phillip, Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies, Bk. i, Ch. xxxiii, p. 66

   He sent us to receive the money from his Saraf, or banker.

   1811, Carsten Niebuhr, “Travels in Arabia”, in John Pinkerton, transl., A General Collection of Voyages and Travels..., volume X, page 71

   The mâmour... till the recent reform appointing a Controller-General of Receipts, received the taxes from the saraffs.

   1877, James Carlile McCoan, Egypt As It Is, page 115

plural Sarafs

1. A surname from Hindi, Urdu, Persian, or Arabic, of Indian usage.