Rûm

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For other uses, see Rum (disambiguation).

Rûm, also Roum or Rhum (in Arabic الرُّومُ ar-Rūm, Turkish Rum), is a very indefinite term used at different times in the Muslim world for Europeans generally and for the Byzantine Empire in particular, for the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in Asia Minor, and for Greeks inhabiting Ottoman or modern Turkish territory. Most often, "Rûm" referred to the Byzantine Empire.

When the Arabs met the Byzantine Greeks, these called themselves Ρωμιοί or Ρωμαίοι Rhomaioi, Romans, and the Arabs, therefore, called them "the Rûm" as a race-name, their territory "the land of the Rûm", and the Mediterranean "the Sea of the Rûm." They called ancient Greece by the name "Yūnān" (Ionia) and ancient Greeks "Yūnānī", the ancient Romans, "Rūm" and sometimes "Latin'yun" (Latins). Later, because Muslim contact with the Byzantine Greeks most often took place in Asia Minor, the term Rûm became fixed there geographically and remained even after the conquest by the Seljuk Turks, so that their territory was called the land of the Seljuks of Rûm, or the Sultanate of Rûm. But as the Mediterranean was "the Sea of the Rûm", so all peoples on its north coast were called sweepingly "the Rûm".

In Al-Andalus any Christian slave-girl who had embraced Islam was named Roumiya. Also the legendary lover of King Roderic and daughter of Count Julian is named La Cava Rumía ^[1]—her affair being the putative cause of the Moorish invasion of Hispania (Portugal and Spain) in 711 CE.

We find the crew of a Genoese vessel being called Romans by a Muslim traveller. The crusades introduced the Franks (Ifranja), and later Arabic writers recognize them and their civilization on the north shore of the Mediterranean west from Rome; so Ibn Khaldun wrote in the latter part of the 14th century. Even in the modern-day Maghreb, any Westerner is liable to be called يا رومي "Ya Roumi" - "Hey, Frenchie!" in the countryside at least, and the French language is often called ar-Roumiyya.