Sultans in ancient Israel?

[Jabrosky]

This is perhaps a minor terminological issue, but I've just started a story with a setting inspired by ancient Israel, and I want to ask what I should call my culture's king. I'm tempted to use the term "sultan" as that sounds more Middle Easternish, but I'm not sure if "sultan" is appropriate for Middle Eastern rulers in general or is specific to Muslim cultures. Could a king of ancient Israel be called a sultan?

 

[Steerpike]

As far as I know, Sultan is generally associated with a Muslim ruler. Not sure it is absolutely limited to that, though. "King" is the word I generally see associated with rulers in ancient Israel.

 

[Ankari]

Sultan comes from the Turkish Muslim Empire and is a Turkish word. A sultan was a governor over a territory as assigned by the Caliph, so the title couldn't apply to a king like figure.

 

[Ravana]

Actually, the sultans generally were "kings"–or "emperors," depending on who and when–effectively if not officially, and certainly after the Ottomans seized the office of the Caliphate and merged it with their own ruler. Not that the Caliph always exercised control over the entire Islamic world even before then… that was one of the reasons the Ottomans could pull off a stunt like that. For that matter, the Caliph didn't always control even the Caliphate, certainly not to the point where he could assign rulers, any more than the Papacy could assign European monarchs.

Interestingly, as far as I can tell, while the title was first used by Turkic peoples, the word itself appears to be derived from Arabic. Which came as a surprise to me: I'd thought it was Turkic in origin, too. I'll have to dig into that one some more.

In any event, the title didn't exist at the time of Ancient Israel, and certainly wouldn't have been used by the Israelis. The correct term would be "melek" (or "melekh," or "melech"), itself one of many variants of the Semitic word usually transliterated as "malik."

 

[Shockley]

While I'd also lean to a variation on melek, you might want to manufacture your own term. This is how I'd do it. I'd think up a few Jewish figures. Jerubel. David. Gideon. Ma'ath. Absalom. Saul. Solomon. Then I'd identify common syllables and letters.

Sa. Om. On. U. S.

Then I'd pick out particular phrases I like.

Gid. Solom. Vid. Jeru. Bel.

Then I'd just mash those together until something shook out that I liked. It would be original to me, but true to the setting since it comes from (an admittedly Anglicized version of) their culture.