The Caliphate is alive and kicking

doctoremma

...as the most populous state of the USA.

Yesterday I learned about a fictional character Caliphia (or Calipha), a brave female warrior who joined the Muslim battle against Christianity in Constantinople in the 15th C. Her name comes from Caliph.

Her home? California, a state whose name is therefore etymologically linked to the Caliphate.

Fun fact of the day, done.

hivizman

doctoremma wrote: »

...as the most populous state of the USA.

Yesterday I learned about a fictional character Caliphia (or Calipha), a brave female warrior who joined the Muslim battle against Christianity in Constantinople in the 15th C. Her name comes from Caliph.

Her home? California, a state whose name is therefore etymologically linked to the Caliphate.

Fun fact of the day, done.

This is the explanation provided by the Wikipedia article Origin of the name California. Here it is suggested that the name came from a Spanish novel Las Sergas de Esplandian, by Montalvo, published around 1510. In the novel, California was an island populated by beautiful Amazon warriors ruled by Queen Calafia.

The article suggests that the name Calafia itself came from a reference to a country called Califerne in the Chanson de Roland, the 11th century French epic poem, and Califerne is claimed by some to derive from Caliph.

The rather fantastical story of Calafia and her participation in the conquest, or as it's known in Turkey, the "opening" of Constantinople is told in more detail in the Wikipedia article entitled Calafia.

whydoc

The root for caliphate in arabic is kh-l-f خلف which is different from k-l-f كلف .
Caliph in arabic is a verb means loves or becomes red !

كلِفَ 2 / كلِفَ بـ يَكلَف ، كَلَفًا ، فهو كَلِف ، والمفعول مَكْلوف ( للمتعدِّي ) :
• كلِف المريضُ علت وجهَه حمرة كدرة .
• كلِف الأمرَ / كلِف بالأمر : أحبَّه وأُولِع به " كلِف ببعض مؤلّفاته ، - كلف بامرأة ، - كان الخليفة عبد الرحمن الناصر كَلِفًا بعمارة الأندلس ، - لا يكن حبُّك كَلَفًا ولا بغضك تلفًا : دعوة إلى التحكُّم في العواطف وعدم الإفراط " .
المعجم: اللغة العربية المعاصر

hivizman

whydoc wrote: »

The root for caliphate in arabic is kh-l-f خلف which is different from k-l-f كلف .
Caliph in arabic is a verb means loves or becomes red !

What we are observing here is the way in which Europeans, particularly those speaking languages such as French, heard Arabic words. The "kh" sound isn't very common at the beginning of words in Latin-based languages, and it tended to be heard as a "k" sound, which was written down as a hard "c". Similarly, the "f" consonant was written sometimes as an "f" but often as a "ph". So "khalifa" becomes written down as "calipha".

This is a bit like the common way in which "Qur'an" is written as "Koran", or even, in French, as "Coran".

The k-l-f consonsantal root also has a secondary meaning of imposing a duty or burden on someone. In the Qur'an, it tends to appear in this sense, for example, in the last verse of Surat al-Baqarah (2:286), which in Yusuf Ali's translation reads:

On no soul doth Allah Place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray:) "Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden Like that which Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith."