In English, a saray (Arabic: السراي; Turkish: sarayı, seray), with the variant saraya or seraya (السرايا), is a castle, palace or government building which was considered to have particular administrative importance in various parts of the former Ottoman Empire, such as the Arab provinces, Cyprus, etc. Seray may also be spelt serail in English, via French influence, in which case the L is (in principle) silent.
The term saray is Turkish, and comes from the Persian word سرای (sarāy) meaning "palace". However, in English it corresponds to the Arabic term,
with its particular historic meaning, and it does not correspond to "saray" in Persian; in such cases the corresponding English term is simply "palace". The same logic would generally be applied to Punjabi, for example Akbari Sarai in Lahore, Punjab, would be more obviously described as a palace than as a saray.Saraya is also used as a military unit title in the Arab world. In this case the Arabic is سرية, a different word from "saraya" as in a building. The etymology is also different from the building: The etymology of سرية is from Arabic and communicates the idea of a "private group". However the plural is سرايا (saraya) indistinguishable from the term "saraya" which is a variant (in the singular) of saray (the building).
The normal translation for سرية is "company" (see: Company (military unit)) but in the case of the "Lebanese Resistance Saraya", the term is often arbitrarily translated as "brigades".
Another example is the Syrian "Defense Saraya".
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