Ghulam (
Arabic: غلام,
ALA-LC: ghulām) is an Arabic word meaning servant, assistant, boy, or youth. It is used to describe young servants in paradise. It is also used to refer to slave-soldiers in the
Abbasid,
Ottoman,
Safavid and to a lesser extent,
Mughal empires, as described in the article Ghilman, which is the plural form of the word.
It is traditionally used as the first element of compounded Muslim male given names, meaning servant of ..., mostly in
Persian (where it is pronounced Gholâm) and in
Urdu. In both Persian and Urdu, the particle al- is not used with ghulam (unlike compounds formed with ʿabd; e.g. Gholammohammad, Gholamhoseyn, Gholamali... and Abd al-Muhammad, Abd al-Husayn, Abd al-Ali...). Since the 20th century, Ghulam has also been used as an independent given name and surname.
This page or section lists people that share the same
given name or the same
family name. If an
internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article.
See also
Ghilman, young servants in paradise or slave-soldiers in the Abbasid, Ottoman, Safavid and to a lesser extent, Mughal empires