Aghawat, plural, and singular Agha (Arabic: أغاوات plural and آغا singular) were individuals who serve in the holy mosques in Mecca and Madinah. They had to be eunuchs and at least have a minimum amount of Islamic knowledge. They were stated to not be enslaved people; but instead, as free individuals who serve, by choice, the two holy mosques. Historically, Aghawat were non-Muslim slaves came from different ethnic backgrounds: Kurds, Persians, Romans (Byzantine), and Africans. But, currently, the Aghwaat left in both Mecca and Madinah all come from Ethiopia.
Aghawat, plural, and singular Agha (Arabic: أغاوات plural and آغا singular) were individuals who serve in the holy mosques in Mecca and Madinah. They had to be eunuchs and at least have a minimum amount of Islamic knowledge. They were stated to not be enslaved people; but instead, as free individuals who serve, by choice, the two holy mosques. Historically, Aghawat were non-Muslim slaves came from different ethnic backgrounds: Kurds, Persians, Romans (Byzantine), and Africans. But, currently, the Aghwaat left in both Mecca and Madinah all come from Ethiopia.
== Etymology == It is unclear why the word "Agha" was used to refer to the servants since the word exists in many languages and has slightly different meanings in each of those languages: Kurdish: "Agha" is used to refer to seniors and leaders. Turkish: In Eastern Turkish, "Agha" means older brother. In Western Turkish, "Agha" means master or leader. Persian: "Agha" means the leader of the family. Mongols: The Mongols used the word "Agha" to refer to the older brother.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).