The Sublime Porte is a French translation of the Arabic ali bab. It means magnificent gate. It is a synecdochic metonym; synecdoche is using a part of a thing to stand for the whole thing, like “wheels” for “car”. Metonomy is using a word closely associated with a thing to represent the thing, as in “nice ride” where ride means ‘car’ b/c that’s what you do in a car.
The sublime porte was a monumental portal where tribunals were held that governed the Ottoman Empire.
The word ali in Urdu means the same as in Arabic: high, sublime, but bab means only chapter of a book, not door.
This is all a propos of nothing. I just never knew where The Sublime Porte came from. Its ties to Urdu come via Arabic.
Pat’s Polemics
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