1584.—
"Great kings of Barbary and my portly bassas."
Marlowe, Tamburlane the Great,
1st Part, iii. 1.
c. 1590.—"Filius alter Osmanis, Vrchanis frater, alium non habet in Annalibus titulum, quam Alis bassa: quod bassae vocabulum Turcis caput significat."—Lennclavius, Annales Sultanorum Othmanidarum, ed. 1650, p. 402. This etymology connecting bāshā with the Turkish bāsh, 'head,' must be rejected.
c. 1610.—"Un Bascha estoit venu en sa Cour pour luy rendre compte du tribut qu'il luy apportoit; mais il fut neuf mois entiers à attendre que celuy qui a la charge ... eut le temps et le loisir de le compter...."—Pyrard de Laval (of the Great Mogul), ii. 161.
1702.—"... The most notorious injustice we have suffered from the Arabs of Muscat, and the Bashaw of Judda."—In Wheeler, ii. 7.
1727.—"It (Bagdad) is now a prodigious large City, and the Seat of a Beglerbeg.... The Bashaws of Bassora, Comera, and Musol (the ancient Nineveh) are subordinate to him."—A. Hamilton, i. 78.
BASIN, s. H. besan. Pease-meal, generally made of [Gram] (q.v.) and used, sometimes mixed with ground orange-peel or other aromatic substance, to cleanse the hair, or for other toilette purposes.
[1832.—"The attendants present first the powdered peas, called basun, which answers the purpose of soap."—Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, Observations, i. 328.]