Word Origins | Hammal Redux

Mavi Boncuk |

Hammal on Galata bridge 1900

 Le Porte-faix in Salonica

Jewish porter in Thessaloniki in a Late 19th century picture postcard with a Jewish hamalis (porter) in Thessaloniki, 1800-1920, Thessalonik

Hamal also Hammal: porter[1]

(h-mäl)noun, hammāl [ Codex Cumanicus, 1300]  from Arabic ḥammāl حمّال  amml, from amala, to carry yük taşıyıcı, kufeci, (kufe: large basket + ci: meaning the job). A porter or bearer in certain Muslim countries.

[1] Porter: 1. A person employed to carry burdens, especially an attendant who carries travelers' baggage at a hotel or transportation station.2. A railroad employee who waits on passengers in a sleeping car or parlor car.3. A maintenance worker for a building or institution.[Middle English portour, from Anglo-Norman, from Late Latin porttor, from Latin portre, to carry. FR: Le porte-faix EN: porter GN: Lastträgerpor·ter 1 (pôrtr, pr-)Since most trading was done by sea, the carried goods gave the name port to a place on a waterway with facilities for loading and unloading ships.

 Tiflis Armenian and Persian porters

Kaffeewirt und kurdischer Lastträger (Hammal)

Osmanischer Straßenkaffee in Istambul. Kurdische Hammals, Lastträger. Mann mit Stock in alttürkischer Tracht und rechts vorn Arnaute (Albanese).

Sie rauchen die Wasserpfeife, Nargileh.

Mavi Boncuk |

Constantinople hammals as described in 

The National Geographic, December 1914

Chickens en route to market: Constantinople

"Often as many as 150,000 persons, of every race and of every region, clad in every kind of human garment, and representing every graduation of human rank, traverse the Galata bridge in a single day. There are no rules of the road. Carriage, beast, and pedestrian mix up in a hopeless jumble, the latter plunging into a tumultuous living mass, dodging hither and thither, stopping now and rushing on again, and finally, as though by a miracle, emerging unharmed at the other end."

A Porter, or Hamal: Constantinople

"Practically all the work of the city is done by outsiders, and each kind of work, as the reader may have already gathered, is done chiefly by men from a certain "country". So it is that the men who sell ice-cream in the streets are Albaniana, Christian and Mohammedan, from the region of Uskub; that the layers of pavement are Mohammedan Albanians of the south; that railroad navies- or those of the Roumelian Railroad- are Christian Albanians from the dame region; that bath men are Turks from Sivas; that street porters are Kurds or Asia Minor Turks, according to the kind of load they carry; that most boatmen are from the Black Sea coast and so on indefinitely. "