Gazi

A ghazi (or gazi ; Arabic: غازي ghāzī [ɣaːˈziː], pl. ghuzāt) is an individual who participated in a ghazwa (غَزْو [ɣazw]) – a military expedition or raid against those whom they considered "Kafirs". Early Islamic literature characterised as ghazwa the expeditions led by the Islamic prophet Muhammad; later, Turkic military commanders used the word to refer to their wars of conquest. In the context of the wars between Russia and the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus, starting as early as Sheikh Mansur's resistance to Russian expansion from 1785 to 1791, the word ghazwa usually appears in the form gazavat (Russian: газават). In English-language literature, the word ghazw often appears as "razzia", a borrowing through French from Maghrebi Arabic. In modern Turkish, the word gazi refers to veterans, and also (as a title) to Turkic Muslim champions such as Ertuğrul (Ertuğrul Ghazi) and Sultan Osman I (Osman Ghazi).