caliph
See also: Caliph
English
Alternative forms
- khalifa, khalīfa (stricter transliterations)
- caleef, calif, kaleefa, kalif, kaliph, khalif (all archaic)
Etymology
From Middle English calife, caliphe, from Old French caliphe, from Medieval Latin calipha, from Arabic خَلِيفَة (ḵalīfa, “caliph”) and خَلِيف (ḵalīf, “successor”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈkeɪlɪf/, /ˈkælɪf/
Audio (UK) (file) Audio (UK) (file) - Rhymes: -eɪlɪf
Noun
caliph (plural caliphs)
- The political leader of the Muslim world; the successor of the prophet Muhammad's political authority.
- 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], OCLC 21345056, page 148-149:
- It carries us to the East, and the stately halls of the caliphs rise on the mind's eye; and we think over the thousand and one stories which made our childhood so happy, and stored up a world of unconscious poetry for our future years:...
- The Abbasid caliphs patronized art and science beside religious developments ushering in the Islamic Golden Age when their capital Baghdad began to flourish as a center of knowledge, culture and trade.
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Derived terms
- anticaliph
- Calipha
- caliphal
- caliphate
- caliphdom
- Caliphess
- caliphhood
- caliphian
- Caliphism
- Caliphist
- caliphship
Translations
political leader of the Muslim world
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Anagrams
- chapli, haplic