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Caliph   /kˈæləf/   Listen
Caliph

noun
(Written also calif, kaliph, kalif, khalif)
1.
The civil and religious leader of a Muslim state considered to be a representative of Allah on earth.  Synonyms: calif, kalif, kaliph, khalif, khalifah.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Caliph" Quotes from Famous Books



... rule of the Abassides that such an impulse was given to learning of every kind, and that the Arabian school of philosophy, which has left behind it such glorious records of its greatness, was founded. The Caliph Al-Mansour was the first, so far as we know, who earnestly encouraged the cultivation of learning; but it was to Haroun Al-Raschid, A.D. 786-808 (?), that the Arabians owed the establishment of a college of philosophy. He invited learned men to his kingdom from ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear

... suspected that the project involved their separation, but when Mr Mac-Morlan hastened to explain that she would be a guest at Woodbourne for some time, he rubbed his huge hands together, and burst into a portentous sort of chuckle, like that of the Afrite in the tale of the Caliph Vathek. After this unusual explosion of satisfaction, he remained quite passive in all the rest of ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... Ab[u] Tamm[a]m at Horns, and by him was commended to the authorities at Ma'arrat un-Nu'm[a]n, who gave him a pension of 4000 dirhems (about L90) yearly. Later he went to Bagdad, where he wrote verses in praise of the caliph Motawakkil and of the members of his court. Although long resident in Bagdad he devoted much of his poetry to the praise of Aleppo, and much of his love-poetry is dedicated to Alwa, a maiden of that city. He died at Manbij Hierapolis in 897. His poetry was collected and edited ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... hundred and eighty years, being destroyed by Chosroes II., of Persia, in A.D. 614, but was soon succeeded by another structure not so grand as its predecessor. In 1010, in the "reign of the mad caliph Hakem," the group of churches was entirely destroyed, and the spot lay desolate for thirty years, after which another church was erected, being completed in eight years. This building was standing in ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... fight. And to be short, they went on farther sacking and conquering, euen vnto the Soldan of Aleppo his dominions, and now they haue subdued that land also, determining to inuade other countries beyond it: neither returned they afterward into their owne land vnto this day. [Sidenote: The Caliph of Baldach.] Likewise the same armie marched forward against the Caliph of Baldach his countrey, which they subdued also, and exacted as his handes the daylie tribute of 400. Byzantines, besides Balkakines and other giftes. Also euery yeare they send messenters vnto the Caliph mouing ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... of Champtoce he lived with all the splendour of an eastern caliph. He kept up a troop of two hundred horsemen to accompany him wherever he went; and his excursions for the purposes of hawking and hunting were the wonder of all the country around, so magnificent were the caparisons of his steeds and the dresses of his retainers. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... one of the world's great philosophers, was lazy. Only yesterday our friend the Caliph showed us an extraordinarily interesting thing. It was a little leather-bound notebook in which Boswell jotted down memoranda of his talks with the old doctor. These notes he afterward worked up into the immortal Biography. And lo and behold, what was the very first entry in ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... sleeping? Had he drank too much wine at the Golden Crown, and had it all gone to his head? Was it a scene of earnest enchantment, or were fairy-tales true? Like Abou Hasson when he awoke in the palace of the facetious Caliph of Bagdad, he had no notion of believing his own eyes and ears, and quietly concluded it was all an optical illusion, as ghosts are said to be; but he quietly resolved to stay there, nevertheless, and see how the dazzling ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... bed with all manner of quaint imaginations. Much of the pleasure of the Arabian Nights hinges upon this Asmodean interest; and we are not weary of lifting other people's roofs, and going about behind the scenes of life with the Caliph and the serviceable Giaffar. It is a salutary exercise, besides; it is salutary to get out of ourselves and see people living together in perfect unconsciousness of our existence, as they will live when ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of appendix—for "grown-ups"—to the Veillees du Chateau, and is supposed to have incorporated parabolically many of the lessons of the French Revolution (it appeared in 1795). But though its three volumes and eleven hundred pages deal with Charlemagne, and the Empress Irene, and the Caliph "Aaron" (Haroun), and Oliver (Roland is dead at Roncevaux), and Ogier, and other great and beloved names; though the authoress, who was an untiring picker-up of scraps of information, has actually consulted ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Alraschid—(that is, he would have felt so had he ever heard of the Arabian potentate)—a monarch in disguise affably observing and promenading the city. And let us be sure there was a Mesrour in his train to knock at the doors for him and run the errands of this young caliph. Of course he met with scores of men in life who neither flattered him nor would suffer his airs; but he did not like the company of such, or for the sake of truth undergo the ordeal of being laughed at; he preferred toadies, generally speaking. "I like," says he, "you know, those ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of teeth with gold foil is recorded in the oldest known book on dentistry, Artzney Buchlein, published anonymously in 1530, in which the operation is quoted from Mesue (A.D. 857), physician to the caliph ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... lately gave Was fit, I know, for Bagdad's caliph; I used it only once to shave, When it was taken by the bailiff. Than thou didst give I bring back less; But hear the truth, without more dodging— The landlord's been with a distress, And positively ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... as curious and much more authentic than its earlier. Tarik, as we have told in the previous tale, had been sent to Andalusia by Musa, the caliph's viceroy in Africa, simply that he might gain a footing in the land, whose conquest Musa reserved for himself. But the impetuous Tarik was not to be restrained. No sooner was Roderic slain and his army dispersed than the Arab cavaliers ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... One pleasant afternoon, the Caliph of Bagdad was sitting comfortably on his sofa: he had slept a little, (for it was a hot day,) and looked quite bright after his nap. He was smoking a long rose-wood pipe, and sipping coffee, which was poured out ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen

... emu, from their cocoa nooks,— What time the granite sentinels that watch The mouths of cavern-temples hail the first Faint star, and feel the gradual darkness blend Their august lineaments;—what time Haroun Perambulated Bagdat, and none knew He was the Caliph who knocked soberly By Giafar's hand at their gates shut betimes;— What time prince Assad sat on the high hill 'Neath the pomegranate-tree, long wearying For his lost brother's step;—what time, as now, Along our English sky, flame-furrows cleave And break the quiet of ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... day and saw its contents in ashes, amid a scene of silence, of people hurrying away with infants and valuable objects, of firemen hopelessly playing on the burned masterpieces, there was one thought that came into every mind—one parallel! It was Omar the caliph ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... father's temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature she drew from Anne Boleyn. Splendour and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favour. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity remained, even to ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... had prepared the opera with great care and loving devotion, but at the eleventh hour had to hand his baton to his youthful assistant, Walter Damrosch. The beautiful work had only four representations. The original cast was as follows: Caliph, Josef Beck; Mustapha, Wilhelm Sedlmayer; Margiana, Sophie Traubmann; Bostana, Charlotte Huhn; the Barber, Emil Fischer. "Die Puppenfee," ballet by J. Hassreiter and F. Gaul, music by Joseph Bayer, followed the opera and was conducted ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... in European fashion; but were bears accustomed from father to son to the whip and chain; moreover, he stood as the orthodox head of their faith, and left their mir (the village commune) untouched.—Finally, at the other extremity of Europe, and even outside of Europe, in the seventh century the caliph, in the fifteenth century a sultan, a Mahomet or an Omar, a fanatical Arab or brutal Turk, who had just overcome Christians with the sword, himself assigned the limits of his own absolutism: if the vanquished were reduced to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the narrative a list of names, which are of no great interest: we may mention among them, Nineveh, whence the traveller returned towards the Euphrates; and finally that he reached Baghdad, the residence of the Caliph. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... were not all ambition of the kind fated to be blind to precept and example. When he arrived in Africa, instead of meeting with kindness and sympathy, he was seized and thrown into prison by the caliph of Fez, Benimerin, as though he had been his vassal. He was accused of being the cause of the dissensions and downfall of the kingdom of Granada, and, the accusation being proved to the satisfaction of the king of Fez, he condemned the unhappy El Zagal to perpetual darkness. A basin of ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... performed in New York might put our patent theatres a little to the blush, at least on the score of variety. Rokeby; the Tempest; John of Paris; the Barber of Seville; the Caliph of Bagdad, performed, and the Freischuetz in preparation, at one theatre. The principal female singers are all English—Mrs. Austin, Mrs. Knight (formerly Miss Povey), and Madame Feron. The American editor's remarks on the two last named ladies, and on ballad singing in general, are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... the Caliph Omar proclaiming throughout the kingdom, at the taking of Alexandria, that the Koran contained everything which was useful to believe and to know, and therefore he commanded that all the books in the Alexandrian ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the rest. She is as divinely good as she is divinely beautiful," and away he rattled toward Pushton as happy as if his old box wagon were a golden chariot, and he a caliph of Arabian story on whom had just shone the lustrous eyes of the Queen of the East. Then as the tumult in his mind subsided, questioning thoughts as to the cause of her blush came trooping through his mind, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... fate of Turkey has passed from the control of the Turk and is being decided by an alien clique of infidels, renegades, political freemasons[1] and Jews, in whose hands the Caliph is a helpless tool, and to whom the teachings of Christ and of Mohammed are mere worn-out superstitions. In fact, the Committee is in its essence non-Turkish and non-Moslem. In the name of a secret society, based openly upon the subversive ideas of the wilder French Jacobins, and not shrinking ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... this thing, first. Is it indeed true speaking, as I have heard, that the Caliph el Walid the First, in Hegira 88, sent to Mecca an immense present of gold and silver, forty camel-loads of small cut gems and a hundred thousand miskals in ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... the East, is a genuine revelation of the Orient. The picture lacks nothing. It casts you back at once into your forgotten boyhood, and again you dream over the wonders of the Arabian Nights; again your companions are princes, your lord is the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, and your servants are terrific giants and genii that come with smoke and lightning and thunder, and go as a storm goes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Jerusalem were animated by religious zeal and local associations, and did not, till after a doubtful siege of several months, yield the holy city to the Saracens. The event soon justified the prudent foresight of Heraclius in removing the Cross from the danger of Mahometan masters. The Caliph of Omar experienced some difficulties in the construction of a mosque at Jerusalem: he immediately supposed those difficulties to be supernatural, and, by the advice of the Jews, destroyed a great ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various

... to dine the Lion of the East, Commander of the Faithful, &c. &c., the most exalted Caliph Hastings, on this day sevennight, you will extremely oblige me by contributing towards the gorging ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... a world-famous city, the chief port of Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C., at one time a great centre of learning, and in possession of the largest library of antique literature in the world, which was burned by the Caliph Omar in 640; at one time a place of great commerce, but that has very materially decayed since the opening of the Suez Canal. Alexandria, from its intimate connection with both East and West, gave birth in early times to a speculative philosophy which drew its principles from eastern ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... cardinals yet? Do they feast with Lucrezia Borgia, or preach red republicanism to the Council of Ten? Do they sing, Behold how brightly breaks the morning with Masaniello? Do they laugh at Ulysses and skip ashore to the Syrens? Has Mesrour, chief of the Eunuchs, caught them with Zobeide in the Caliph's garden, or have they made cheese cakes without pepper? Friends of my youth, where in your wanderings have you tasted the blissful Lotus, that you neither come nor send ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... music, for which Mehemet Ali has an absolute passion, the beautiful Arabian horses and high-bred dromedaries, altogether form a blending of splendour and luxury which easily recall the golden days of Bagdad and its romantic Caliph. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various

... long since accepted the orthodox creed and were in close alliance with the Spanish bishops, they were detested by the provincials, whom they had reduced to serfdom and brutally oppressed. Within ten years the soldiers of the Caliph were masters of Spain and turned their attention to ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... had decided against him, Ali was not willing to let the matter rest there. He was determined to have justice done him, even though he were obliged to appeal to the Caliph himself. ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... the principle which prevails amongst Mohammedans of always appointing, first an officer, and then a caliph to that officer to do the work, the High Court of Charcas also appointed a commander to proceed to Paraguay, pending the time that Don Andres should feel inclined to start himself. As the caliph's name was Sebastian de Leon, it is ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... had not forgotten lumps of sugar for Calico and Caliph. Ernest had given his pony a high-sounding name. The intelligent beast was proud and dainty enough to deserve it. He was shy about coming for his lump, but when he once got the taste, he nosed around Chicken Little ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... flame is wasting its fuel; the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors. The vigor of Omar began to fail; the curls of beauty fell from his head; strength departed from his hands, and agility from his feet. He gave back to the caliph the keys of trust, and the seals of secrecy; and sought no other pleasure for the remainder of life than the converse of the wise and the gratitude of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... of the Emperor Titus burned it. Here the Emperor Hadrian built a temple to Jupiter and himself, and some one, perhaps the Christians, burned it. Here Mohammed came to pray, declaring that one prayer here was worth a thousand elsewhere. Here the Caliph Omar built a little wooden mosque, and the Caliph Abd-el-Melik replaced it with this great one of marble, and the Crusaders changed it into a Christian temple, and Saladin changed it back again ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... enormous expenditure of work is appalling to think of. Abulfeda describes the palace of the Caliph Moctader, on the banks of the Tigris, as being adorned with 38,000 pieces of tapestry, and of these 12,000 were of silk worked in gold. What a wealth of women had to be wasted in creating such a ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... arose, and for five or six months steadily continued, a consolation of that nature which hardly in dreams I could have anticipated. For even in dreams would it have seemed reasonable, or natural, that Laxton, with its entire society, should transfer itself to Manchester? Some mighty caliph, or lamp-bearing Aladdin, might have worked such marvels: but else who, or by what machinery? Nevertheless, without either caliph or Aladdin, and by the most natural of mere human agencies, this change ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... and devoted servant of the imperial family. Twice at the peril of his own life he saved the emperor from capture, if not from death, during the wars with the Saracens. Nevertheless, being accused of treason he fled to the court of Baghdad and took service under the Caliph Mutasim, until assured that ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... results, or failed to produce any, in the world as it was. They started for the Indies and found America. They diagnosed evil and hanged old women. They thought they could grow rich by always selling and never buying. A caliph, obeying what he conceived to be the Will of Allah, burned the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... face fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait. Beside, I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the head cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor: With him I proved no bargain driver, With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... especially, with great art and prudence. He conducted it as a politician would conduct a plot. His first application was to his own family. This gained him his wife's uncle, a considerable person in Mecca, together with his cousin Ali, afterwards the celebrated Caliph, then a youth of great expectation, and even already distinguished by his attachment, impetuosity, and courage.* He next expressed himself to Abu Beer, a man amongst the first of the Koreish in wealth and influence. The interest and example of Abu Beer drew in five other principal ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... reality, and the treaties and agreements of emperors and kings and statesmen have little of the permanence of certain more fundamental human realities. I was looking the other day at Sir Mark Sykes' "The Caliph's Inheritance," which contains a series of coloured maps of the political boundaries of south-western Asia for the last three thousand years. The shapes and colours come and go—now it is Persia, now it is Macedonia, now the Eastern Empire, now ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... perfectly, most fittingly in keeping was the sight of the Moors whom we began at once to see on the wharves and in the streets. They probably looked very much like the Moors who followed their caliph, if he was a caliph, into Spain when he drove Don Roderick out of his kingdom and established his own race and religion in the Peninsula. Moslem costumes can have changed very little in the last eleven or twelve hundred years, and these handsome fellows, who had come over ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... hourrah, or tempestuous surprise, but from a vast expedition, armaments by land and sea, fitted out elaborately in the early noontide of Mahometan vigour—and that assault, also, in the presence of the caliph and the crescent, was gloriously discomfited. Now if, in the moment of triumph, some voice in the innumerable crowd had cried out, "How long shall this great Christian breakwater, against which are shattered into surge and foam all the mountainous billows of idolaters and misbelievers, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... them the bones of their grand- mother,—i.e., stones of the earth.—See Ovid, Met. lib. i. fab. 7. 31. St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xvi. 7). 32. [Greek omitted] (St. Matt. xxvii. 5) means death by choking. Erasmus translates it, "abiens laqueo se suspendit." 33. Burnt by order of the Caliph Omar, A.D. 640. It contained 700,000 volumes, which served the city for fuel instead of wood for six months. 34. Enoch being informed by Adam the world was to be drowned and burnt, made two pillars, one of stone to withstand the ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... subdued Lombardy; conferred on pope Adrian the exarchate of Ravenna, the duchy of Spoletto, and many other dominions; took Pavia, (which had been honored with the residence of twenty kings,) and was crowned king of Lombardy in 774. The emir Abderamene in Spain, having shaken off the yoke of the caliph of the Saracens, in 736, and established his kingdom at Cordova, and other emirs in Spain setting up independency, Charlemagne, in 778, marched as far as the Ebro and Saragossa, conquered Barcelona, Gironne, and many other places, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... arbitrary, I will, with your Lordships' permission, read a passage which will show you that the magistrate is a responsible person. "If a supreme ruler, such as the Caliph for the time being, commit any offence punishable by law, such as whoredom, theft, or drunkenness, he is not subject to any punishment; but yet if he commit murder, he is subject to the law of retaliation, and he is also accountable in matters of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Koran and Hellenism no fusion was possible. Christianity had taken Hellenism captive, but Islam gave it no quarter, and the priceless library of Alexandria is said to have been condemned by the caliph's order to feed the furnaces of the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the origin of the Aconoclcasts is imprinted to the caliph Yezid and two Jews, who promised the empire to Leo; and the reproaches of these hostile sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy for restoring the purity of the Christian worship, (see Spanheim, Hist. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... approached the Caliph, for such was the high rank of the personage whom the sitting Moslem was intended to represent, and throwing himself prostrate on the ground, preferred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... and more carefully elaborated music of "Oberon." The story of the piece (always a main consideration in matters of art, with average English men and women) wanted interest, certainly, as compared with that of its predecessor; the chivalric loves and adventures of Huon of Bordeaux and the caliph's daughter were indifferent to the audience, compared with the simple but deep interest of the fortunes of the young German forester and his village bride; and the gay and brilliant fairy element of the "Oberon" was no sort of equivalent for the startling ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... that it could not exist, but had I made a thorough search for it; had I tried the Dey of Algiers. I answered no! Had I tried the Doge of Venice—the Elector of Saxony—the Begum of Oude—the Stadholder of Holland— the Peishwa of Poona—the Nabob of Bengal—the Caliph of Bagdad— the Inca of Peru, or the great Mogul. I looked at the Grand Mufti in speechless astonishment; he might as well have asked me if I had enquired of Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzer. I shook my head and rushed from his presence, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... did not exist as a whole until after the Prophet Muhammad's[14] death. It was then compiled by the order of Abu Bekr, the first Sunnite Caliph. Its contents were found written on palm leaves white stones, and other articles capable of being written on. The compilers depended, to a large extent, upon the memory of the prophet's first followers, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... governor, sovereign, monarch, president, king, potentate, dynast, lord, satrap, rajah, emir, caliph, burgrave, procurator, Pharaoh, interregent, despot, regent, dominator, arbiter, viceroy, vicegerent, autocrat, oligarch, liege lord, protector, kaiser, czar, dey, doge, mogul, pasha, bey, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... were to embrace Islam or to perish, and Jews and Christians, to both of whom was given the choice of the Koran, tribute, or death. They must buy the right to exercise their religion, if they refused to say that "Allah is God, and Mohammed is His prophet." Omar (634-644), the next caliph after Abubekr, and a leader distinguished alike for his military energy and his simplicity of manners and life, first brought all Arabia, which was impelled as much by a craving for booty as ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... sun, Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays On word and work irrevocably done, Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise, Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke. Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise I see my life-work through your partial eyes; Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs A higher value than of right belongs, You do but read between the written lines The finer grace ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Dec. 7, A.D. 671, seems to be associated with a comic tragedy. The Caliph Moawiyah had a fancy to remove Mahomet's pulpit from Medina to his own residence at Damascus. "He said that the walking-stick and pulpit of the Apostle of God should not remain in the hands of the murderers ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... saw how few the Frenchmen were, took fresh courage. And the Caliph, spurring his horse, rode against Oliver and smote him in the middle of his back, making his spear pass right through him. "That is a shrewd blow," he cried; "I have avenged my friends ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... horsed on the lightning's wing, flew thither from Mecca, joined the society of seventy thousand ministering spirits, and, having offered up his devotions to the throne of God, fixed the stone immovably in this holy site, around which the Caliph ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... distance of half an hour, from the high ground above Keires. The castle of Boszra bore W.S.W. that of Szalkhat E.S.S., and the Kelab Haouran N.E.; I was near enough to distinguish the castle, and the mosque which is called by the Mohammedans El Mebrek, from the lying down of the Caliph Othman's camel. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... me this man,' the caliph cried: the man Was brought, was gazed upon. The mutes began To bind his arms. 'Welcome, brave cords,' cried he; 'From bonds far worse Jaffar deliver'd me; From wants, from shames, from loveless household fears; Made a man's eyes friends ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... and they went forthwith and massacred the ambassadors. Livy suggests that this was an excuse alleged AFTER the commission of the deed; but gamesters are subject to such absence of mind that there is really nothing incredible or astonishing in the act. 'Sire,' exclaimed a messenger to the Caliph Alamin, 'it is no longer time for play—Babylon is besieged!' 'Silence!' said the caliph, 'don't you see I am on the point of giving checkmate?' The same story is told of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... not a perfect sphere—a suggestion the validity of which was not to be put to the test of conclusive measurements until about the close of the eighteenth century. The Arab measurement was made in the time of Caliph Abdallah al-Mamun, the son of the famous Harun-al-Rashid. Both father and son were famous for their interest in science. Harun-al-Rashid was, it will be recalled, the friend of Charlemagne. It is said that he sent that ruler, as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... independent sovereigns in the country, over whom he had little or no controul, so that it is very probable the commonwealth of letters suffered no great loss by the burning of the Chinese books. When the Caliph Omar commanded the Alexandrian library to be destroyed, which the pride and the learning of the Ptolemy family had collected from every part of the world, literature sustained an irreparable loss; but, although the tyrant had the power to consign to eternal oblivion the works ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... presently. "I bring you good news. The messengers to the Sultan Harun have returned with the ransom. Also this Caliph sends a writing signed by himself and his ministers, in which he swears by God and His Prophet that in consideration of our giving up our prisoners, among whom, it seems, are some great men, neither he nor his successors ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... saddle of El Mahdi on the hill-top beyond the bridge, and watched the day coming through the gateway of the world. It was a work of huge enchantment, as when, for the pleasure of some ancient caliph, or at the taunting of some wanton queen, a withered magus turned the ugly world into a kingdom of the fairy, and the lolling hangers-on started up on their elbows to see a green field spreading through the dirty city and ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... Clarens, not one word of Meillerie. Take it for granted that Ferney is burnt down, as it well might be without any harm to the picturesque; and that Jean Jacques never wrote, played the knave, or existed. If I were a Swiss Caliph Omar, I should make a general seizure, to be followed by a general conflagration, of every volume that has ever touched on the wit and wickedness of the one, or the intolerable sensibility of the other. I should next extend the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... on in this manner with his narrative to the caliph—'I thanked the man-animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much at home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the ocean; although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the world, by no means flat, but round like a pomegranate, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... their armies incomparably superior to those of any European, or any other Asiatic, power of that day. They conquered from the Yellow Sea to the Persian Gulf and the Adriatic; they seized the Imperial throne of China; they slew the Caliph in Bagdad; they founded dynasties in India. The fanaticism of Christianity and the fanaticism of Mohammedanism were alike powerless against them. The valor of the bravest fighting men in Europe was impotent to check them. They trampled Russia ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... what concerns us here is that they exactly reflect the mind of the Arabic science or pseudo-science of the time just preceding, so that their words may represent to us the state of Mohammedan thought between the eighth and twelfth centuries, between the writers at the Court of Caliph Almamoun (813-833) and Edrisi at the Court of King Roger ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... is ([Greek: a]) that we have got a new Brigadier. Our brigade manages its commanders on the principle of the caliph and his wives, and has not yet found a Sherazade. ([Greek: b]) that we have got a brigade M.O.O. ambulance. This is a luxury indeed. We are only just over twenty miles from C. now, so we hope to get through ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer



Words linked to "Caliph" :   swayer, khalif, Ali, Muslim, Moslem, ruler, khalifah



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