hodja

• khoja

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish خواجه (modern Turkish hoca), from Persian خواجه (xâje). Doublet of howadji, Khoja, and Hoxha.

hodja (plural hodjas)

1. A Muslim schoolmaster.
   • 1916, unnamed narrator, quoted in 2008, Viscount Bryce (editor), The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Bryce, page 315,

     The next night I heard two hodjas talking, under my window, of a terrible massacre of the Armenians that had just taken place in the mountains; they seemed to be very sorry about it and spoke of it with horror; they did not know, of course, that I was listening.

   • 1926, Halide Edib, House with Wisteria: Memoirs of Turkey Old and New, Facsimile edition, published 2005, page 88:

     A young boy chanted the Koran while our hodja sat by the low table swaying himself to its rhythm.

   • 2007, Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story: A Personal Account of the Armenian Genocide, page 14:

     "I hate all priests, rabbis, and hodjas," he once told me — hodja being the nearest equivalent the Mohammedans have for a minister of religion.

• johad

hodja m (plural hodjas)

1. (Islam) hodja (a Muslim schoolmaster)