caliph

• khalifa, khalīfa (stricter transliterations)
• caleef, calif, kaleefa, kalif, kaliph, khalif, khaleefeh (all archaic)

From Middle English calife, caliphe, from Old French caliphe, from Medieval Latin calipha, from Arabic خَلِيفَة (ḵalīfa, “caliph”) and خَلِيف (ḵalīf, “successor”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈkeɪlɪf/, /ˈkælɪf/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• Audio (Southern England)

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• Rhymes: -eɪlɪf

caliph (plural caliphs)

1. The political leader of the Muslim world; the successor of the prophet Muhammad's political authority.

   Hypernym: cleric

   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.

   • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Coronation”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, pages 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:...

• chapli, haplic