A form of the word is known already from Middle Persian, or Pahlavi language, as pātaxšā(h)orpādixšā(y).[3][4][5][6] Middle Persian pād may stem from Avestanpaiti,[7] and is akin to Pati (title). Xšāy, "to rule", and xšāyaθiya, "king", are from Old Persian.
It was adopted by several monarchs claiming the highest rank, roughly equivalent to the ancient Persian notion of "Great King", and later adopted by post-Achaemenid and the Mughal emperors of India. However, in some periods it was used more generally for autonomous Muslim rulers, as in the Hudud al-'Alam of the 10th century, where even some petty princes of Afghanistan are called pādshā(h)/pādshāʼi/pādshāy.[8]
The rulers on the following thrones – the first two effectively commanding major West Asian empires – were styled Padishah:
Some Seljuk rulers, like Grand SeljukAhmad Sanjar (aspadishah-i sharq-u gharb, a translation of the Arabic malik al-mashriq wa al-maghrib [King of the East and the West]), Sultan of RumKaykhusraw I (asPadishah of Islam), and Sultan of Rum Kayqubad I (aspādshāh).[9]
Mongol IlkhanGhazan took the title Padshah-i Islam after he converted to Islam in 1295, possibly in order to undermine the religious prestige of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.[10] The title Ilkhan, that came into use c. 1259–1265, may be an equivalent of Padishah, if it is taken to mean "sovereign khan" (and not "subordinate khan" as often posited).[11]
Ahmad Shah Durrani, who founded the Durrani Empire in 1747 with the title Pādshah-i Afghanistan in Persian and Badcha Da Afghanistan in the Pashto language. The Sadduzai were overthrown in 1823 but there was a brief restoration by Shah Shujah in 1839 with the help of British India & Ranjit Singh and the Sikh Empire. The title became dormant from his assassination in 1842 until 1926 when Amanullah Khan resurrected it (official from 1937) and was finally laid to rest with the abdication of Mohammed Zahir Shah in 1973 following a coup; at other times the Afghan monarchy used the style Emir (Amir al-Momenin)orMalik ("King").[12]
Like many titles, the word Padishah was also often used as a name, either by nobles with other (in this case always lower) styles, or even by commoners.
Padshah Begum is the title of consorts of padishahs.
In the Ottoman Empire the title padishah was exclusively reserved for the Ottoman emperor, as the Ottoman chancery rarely and unwillingly addressed foreign monarchs as padishahs. The Habsburg emperors were consequently denied this title and addressed merely as the "kings of Vienna" (beç kıralı).[15] With the Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606, it was the first time that the Sublime Porte recognized Rudolf II as equal of the padishah.[16] The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774, gave similar concessions to the Russian Empire.[17]
^Korobeĭnikov, Dimitri (2014). Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century. Oxford, United Kingdom. pp. 99–101, 290, 157. ISBN978-0-19-870826-1. OCLC884743514.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Peter Fibiger Bang; Dariusz Kolodziejczyk (2012). Universal Empire: A Comparative Approach to Imperial Culture and Representation in Eurasian History. Cambridge University Press. p. 178.
^Kenneth Meyer Setton (1991). Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century. p. 22.
^Bernard Lewis (2002). What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. p. 164.
