Ghazi (warrior)

Ghazi (غازي, ġāzī) is an Arabic term originally referring to an individual who participates in Ghazw (غزو, ġazw), meaning military expeditions or raiding; after the emergence of Islam, it took on new connotations of religious warfare. The related word Ghazwa (غزوة ġazwah) is a singulative form meaning a battle or military expedition, often one led by the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

In English language literature the word often appears as razzia, a borrowing from French via Italian.

In the context of the wars between Russia and the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus, starting as early as the late 18th century's Sheikh Mansur's resistance to Russian expansion, the word usually appears in the form gazavat (газават).

Ghazi as raid—razzia

In medieval Bedouin culture, ghazw[a] was a form of limited warfare verging on brigandage that avoided head-on confrontations and instead emphasized raiding and looting, usually of livestock. The Umayyad-period Bedouin poet al-Kutami wrote the oft-quoted verses: "Our business is to make raids on the enemy, on our neighbor and our own brother, in the event we find none to raid but a brother." (Semi-institutionalized raiding of livestock herds was not unique to the Bedouins; the Soviet anthropologists adopted the Kazakh word barymta to describe similar practices of nomads in the Eurasian steppes.) William Montgomery Watt hypothesized that Muhammad found it useful to divert this continuous internecine warfare toward his enemies, making it the basis of his war strategy; according to Watt, the celebrated battle of Badr started as one such razzia. As a form of warfare, the razzia was then mimicked by the Christian states of Iberia in their relations with the taifa states; rough synonyms and similar tactics are the Iberian cavalgada and the Anglo-French chevauchée.