Sayyid
This article is about the honorific title - for surnames, including other spellings, see Sayyid (disambiguation).
Sayyid or Sajid (plural Sadat; Arabic سَيِّد, DMG Sayyid 'lord', also as a form of address, feminine form Arabic سَيِّدة, DMG Sayyida 'woman, lady', also as a form of address; Persian pronunciation Seyyed; Turkish Seyyid; Albanian Seid; Kurdish Seyîd, feminine form: Seyyîde; Malay Syed; Bosnian Sejdić) is the honorific title of the descendants of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, who are descended from him through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali ibn Abi Talib on his father's side. Among other things, an accurate family tree is kept to prove the claim to the title. Among Islamic clerics, the Sayyids wear a black turban, while all others wear white ones. Within Shi'ite Islam (such as in Iran and Iraq), legitimate descendants are considered to be the clerics descended from Fatima and Ali ibn Abi Talib through the latter's younger son al-Ḥusain b. 'Alī. The title Sherif (Arabic شريف Sharīf, DMG Šarīf), "the noble one," on the other hand, applies to the descendants of his elder brother al-Hasan ibn ʿAlī, including the ruling houses of Jordan and Morocco. They wear a green turban.
In the Ottoman Empire, sayyids had the privilege of wearing a green turban
Distinction
Since an inaccurate or at least inconsistent Latin transliteration is often used for Arabic terms, the title Sayyid can be confused with the names Said (سعيد, DMG Saʿīd) or Zaid (زيد, DMG Zaid), which, however, differ significantly in pronunciation.
Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, the Sayyid are recognized as an ethnic group. On March 15, 2019, President Ashraf Ghani decided to mention the "Sadat tribe" in the electronically recorded national personal data. They occupy a place of honor in Afghanistan. The Sayyids, the majority of whom live in Balch and Kunduz in the north and Nangarhar in the east, are Sunni Muslims, but there are also some, including in Bamiyan province, who belong to Shia Islam. These are often referred to as Sadat, a word traditionally applied "in the northern Hejaz region and British India alike to the descendants of Hasan and Hussein, (the first Shia martyrs) sons of Ali and grandsons of Muhammad."
