Khuda (Persian: خُدا, romanized: xodâ, Persian pronunciation: [xoˈdɒː]) is the Persian word for God. Originally, it was used in reference to Ahura Mazda (the name of the God in Zoroastrianism) although it is now mainly used to refer to the God in an Islamic context. Iranian languages, Turkic languages, and many Indo-Aryan languages employ the word.[1] Today, it is a word that is largely used in the non-Arabic Islamic world, with wide usage from its native country Iran, along with Turkey, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and some Muslim-majority areas of India, as well as Southern and Southwestern Russia.[2][3]
Semi-religious usage appears, for example, in the epithet zaman-i derang xvatay "time of the long dominion", as found in the Menog-i Khrad. The fourth and eighty-sixth entry of the Pazend prayer titled 101 Names of God, Harvesp-Khoda "Lord of All" and Khudawand "Lord of the Universe", respectively, are compounds involving Khuda.[4]
Application of khoda as "the Lord" (Ahura Mazda) is represented in the first entry in the medieval Frahang-i Pahlavig.
In Islamic times, the term came to be used for God in Islam, paralleling the Arabic name of God Al-Malik "Owner, King, Lord, Master".
The phrase Khoda Hafez (meaning May God be your Guardian) is a parting phrase commonly used in across the Greater Iran region, in languages including Persian, Pashto, Azeri, and Kurdish. Furthermore, the term is also employed as a parting phrase in many languages across the Indian subcontinent including Urdu, Punjabi, Deccani, Sindhi, Bengali and Kashmiri.[5][2]
It also exists as a popular loanword, used for God in Turkish (Hüdâ),[6] Bengali (খোদা),[7] Hindi-Urdu (ख़ुदा, خُدا),[1] Kazakh (Xuda/Quda/Qudaı), Uzbek (Xudo), Tatar (Ходай), Chinese (Chinese: 胡达 or 胡達; pinyin: húdá[8] along with Chinese: 胡大; pinyin: húdà,[9]), and other Indo-Aryan languages and Turkic languages.
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خدا in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wagenaar, Henk W.; Parikh, S. S. (1993). Allied Chambers transliterated Hindi-Hindi-English dictionary. Allied Publishers. p. 314. ISBN 978-81-86062-10-4.
Edalji Kersâspji Antiâ, Pazend texts, Bombay 1909, pp. 335–337.
Zorlu, Tuncay (2008). Innovation and Empire in Turkey: Sultan Selim III and the Modernisation of the Ottoman Navy. I.B.Tauris. p. 116. ISBN 978-0857713599. Masih, M El (6 December 2017). From Persecution to the Promised Land. WestBow Press. ISBN 978-1-9736-0772-4.