saraf

• (obsolete): xaraffe, xaraffo, charaff, xaraf, xaroff, xeraffo, sarraf, saraff, serof, seraff

From Urdu صراف‎ (sarrāf) and Persian صراف‎ (sarâf), from Arabic صَرَّاف‎ (ṣarrāf).

• IPA^(key): /saˈɹɑːf/

saraf (plural sarafs)

1. A provider of financial services in the Middle East and in South Asia, especially (historical) during the early modern and colonial period.
   • 1598, William Phillip translating Jan Huygen van Linschoten as Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies, Bk. i, Ch. xxxiii, p. 66:

     There is in euery place of the street exchangers of mony, by them called Xaraffos, which are all christian Iewes.

   • 1811, John Pinkerton translating Carsten Niebuhr as "Travels in Arabia" in A General Collection of Voyages and Travels..., Vol. X, p. 71:

     He sent us to receive the money from his Saraf, or banker.

   • 1877, James Carlile McCoan, Egypt As It Is, p. 115:

     The mâmour... till the recent reform appointing a Controller-General of Receipts, received the taxes from the saraffs.

   • 1897 July, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, p. 24:

     They [Armenians] prospered as our ‘Sarrafs’.

• banker, moneychanger, cashier, usurer

• shroff, Saraf

• “saraf, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909.

• Safar

Borrowed from Arabic صَرَّاف‎ (ṣarrāf).

saraf m (Latin spelling, Hebrew spelling סאראף‎)

1. money changer