Aywaz (footman)

Aywaz (also ayvaz) was the term for the footmen employed in great households in the later Ottoman Empire. They were generally Armenians of Van, and sometimes Kurds. Their duties included waiting at table, lighting and stoking the mangals (braziers), filling and cleaning the lamps, and doing the household's shopping. In a Turkish saying, "the aywaz and the butcher: it all amounts to the same", the shopping was thought sometimes to bring a profit to both servant and tradesman. A senior aywaz who acted as steward was called aywaz kahya (ketkhuda). ¹

The usual dress of an aywaz was a purple jacket, waistcoat and trousers, coloured woollen stockings and black shoes, with a white towel over the shoulders, a broad-striped apron, and a fez wound with a turban. ¹

A hukm-i sherif to the çavuşbaşı, dated Rabi' I 1164 (January-February 1751), speaks of Armenian dhimmis who had for some time been employed in the houses of the great, drank wine, stole in their places of work and evaded the poll tax. It ordered that Armenian and Greek dhimmis should no longer be employed in the houses of the great but be replaced by Muslims. How far Greeks were in fact so employed is not clear, and the order seems to have had no lasting effect: the aywaz remained a stock figure in the Karagöz shadow-plays, where Sergis, an Armenian of Van, is the typical aywaz. ¹

The origin of the word is doubtful. It is thought to be a corruption of the Arabic siwad; on formal grounds the plural 'awad would seem the likelier etymon, although the form the Arabic siwad takes in the dialect of Gaziantep is close to the Turkish word, and the connexion of ideas is hard to see. A second Aywaz, the son of a butcher and the most valiant follower of Köroğlu in the folk tales, is a different figure and is not treated here. ¹