Much more about today’s word at my Persian and Arabic blogs. Suffice to say that “Dzhokhar” has its roots in the Arabic word jawhar, which derives from an earlier Persian word, gawhar. Both have the double meaning of “essence” and “jewel,” though Persian later imported jawhar from Arabic to mean “essence.” Since I was doing the word at the other two blogs, I would be remiss not to note that it also exists in Turkish, as cevher (“jev-her”), where its primary meaning is “substance” or “essence,” but where it also has the meaning of “jewel” (though more often used would be mücevher, a Turkish transliteration of another Arabic form of jawhar) and, interestingly, “ore,” which may reflect an archaic meaning because, as far as I know, neither jawhar nor gawhar means “ore” in modern Arabic or Persian.
Turkish Word a Day 