BAZAAR, s. H. &c. From P. bāzār, a permanent market or street of shops. The word has spread westward into Arabic, Turkish, and, in special senses, into European languages, and eastward into India, where it has generally been adopted into the vernaculars. The popular pronunciation is băzár. In S. India and Ceylon the word is used for a single shop or stall kept by a native. The word seems to have come to S. Europe very early. F. Balducci Pegolotti, in his Mercantile Handbook (c. 1340) gives Bazarra as a Genoese word for 'market-place' (Cathay, &c. ii. 286). The word is adopted into Malay as pāsār, [or in the poems pasara].
1474.—Ambrose Contarini writes of Kazan, that it is "walled like Como, and with bazars (bazzari) like it."—Ramusio, ii. f. 117.
1478.—Josafat Barbaro writes: "An Armenian Choza Mirech, a rich merchant in the bazar" (bazarro).—Ibid. f. 111v.
1563.—"... bazar, as much as to say the place where things are sold."—Garcia, f. 170.
1564.—A privilege by Don Sebastian of Portugal gives authority "to sell garden produce freely in the bazars (bazares), markets, and streets (of Goa) without necessity for consent or license from the farmers of the garden produce, or from any other person whatsoever."—Arch. Port. Or., fasc. 2, 157.
c. 1566.—"La Pescaria delle Perle ... si fa ogn' anno ... e su la costa all' in contro piantano vna villa di case, e bazarri di paglia."—Cesare de' Federici, in Ramusio, iii. 390.
1606.—"... the Christians of the Bazar."—Gouvea, 29.
1610.—"En la Ville de Cananor il y a vn beau marché tous les jours, qu'ils appellent Basare."—Pyrard de Laval, i. 325; [Hak. Soc. i. 448].
[1615.—"To buy pepper as cheap as we could in the busser."—Foster, Letters, iii. 114.]
[ " "He forbad all the bezar to sell us victuals or else...."—Ibid. iv. 80.]