Harač

[Dušan Vukotić]

Turkish word haraççı, during the Ottoman Empire, meant "tax paid by
non-Moslems". The same word exist in Persian ( خراج kharaj tax, a
tribute, toll). There are the Persian words شریتا sharītā (king) and
شاهوار shāhwār (noble, royal) as well as Sharukeen (Sargon) that can
be related to Latin Caesar -aris (Ger. Keiser, Russ. царь). On the
other hand, there is the Persian transitive verb آراستن (arastan)
with the meaning 'to arrange, to put in order, to tidy, decorate',
which is obviously a cognate to English arrange and Serbian urediti
(arrange; uređenje 'system, regime, order') and ukrasiti (to
decorate).

Comparing Turkish haraç (racketeering, extortion) to the Serbian word
harati (plunder, ravage) we can come to the conclusion that these two
words are closely related.

Finally, Serbian word carina (toll, tax) seems to be derived from the
noun car (tsar, emperor) - the tax that must be paid to the emperor.
My question is: is it possible that the words for kings like Lat. rex,
Slavic kralj, Russ. tsar, Pers. Sharukeen were all derived from the
same ur-basis or the same agglutinated proto IE form *hor-gon? :-)