# Ottoman: ekrem



## xorius

Hello!
I have a text below: „Abdul-Kerim is now commander ekram.”
What is the semnification of ekram?


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## TekYelken

Hi,

As someone who has worked with foreigners (even if only from behind a bar ) I found that it's very easy for them to confuse Arabic with Turkish. Therefore, I would not be surprised if the origin of that sentence was Arabic. Then again, I might be wrong and the word *ekram* may be related to Ottoman Turkish, but in any case it would be better if you gave more context. It's also likely that the sentence is metaphoric, for we have sayings like that. To give an example:

*"*Where there is no dog about, the cat calls itself* Abdurrahman Çelebi*" etc.

Cheers,


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## xorius

Thanks, i think you have a good intuition and i choose ottoman turkish, that mean an ottoman commander.


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## TekYelken

No xorius, I think you got me wrong. I mean the word *ekram *maybe from old Turkish (Ottoman Turkish). Sorry for the confusion.

I guess *commander ekram *might mean *chief commander *or something like that. 

 Hope this helps, 

Max.


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## xorius

Exactly! Thanks again.


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## shafaq

Ekram means  *most honorable, most generous*.
I didn't see it means cheef .
I think there is some kind of allusion due to the name of the commander which means "man (slave) of The *Kerim*=Glorious (a name for the God) where *kerim* solely means *honorable, generou*s.


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## macrotis

The writer is playing with words. *Ekrem* is the comparative or superlative form of *kerim* (from Arabic). The commander-in-chief is usually referred to as *serdar-ı ekrem*. Since _kumandan-ı ekrem_ isn't so common, it seems that Abdulkerim efendi has a lower rank than that of commander-in-chief.


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