Nazar (amulet)
eye-shaped amulet believed to protect against the evil eye
A naẓar (from Arabic نَظَر [ˈnaðˤar], meaning 'sight', 'surveillance', 'attention', and other related concepts), or an eye bead, is an eye-shaped amulet believed to protect against the evil eye. The term is also used in Albanian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Hebrew, Hindi–Urdu, Kurdish, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Sindhi, Turkish, and other languages. In Turkey, it is known by the name nazar boncuğu (the latter word being a derivative of boncuk, "bead" in Turkic, and the former borrowed from Arabic), in Greece it is known as máti (μάτι, 'eye'). In Persian and Afghan folklore, it is called a cheshm nazar (Persian: چشم نظر) or nazar qurbāni (نظرقربانی). In India and Pakistan, the Hindi-Urdu slogan chashm-e-baddoor (چشم بدور, '[may the evil] eye keep away') is used to ward off the evil eye. In the Indian subcontinent, the phrase nazar lag gai is used to indicate that one has been affected by the evil eye.
The nazar was added to Unicode as U+1F9FF 🧿 NAZAR AMULET in 2018.
Amulet
A typical nazar is made of handmade glass featuring concentric circles or teardrop shapes in dark blue, white, light blue and black, occasionally with a yellow/gold edge. "The bead is made of a mixture of molten glass, iron, copper, water, and salt, ingredients that are thought to shield people from evil."
"According to Turkish belief, blue acts as a shield against evil and even absorbs negativity." In the Middle East and the Mediterranean, "blue eyes are relatively rare, so the ancients believed that people with light eyes, particularly blue eyes, could curse you with just one look. This belief is so ancient, even the Assyrians had turquoise and blue-eye amulets."
Eye bead
The Turkish boncuk (sometimes called a göz boncuğu or eye bead) is a glass bead characterized by a blue glass filled with a blue white and black dot superimposed on a white or yellow center.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nazar (amulet)” is eye-shaped amulet believed to protect against the evil eye. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nazar, amulet and eye-shaped, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “eye-shaped amulet believed to protect against the evil eye” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q582742. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Nazar (amulet)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Nazar (amulet) primary sources, Nazar (amulet) archive and Nazar research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nazar (amulet)”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Nazar (amulet)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.