CALEEFA, s. Ar. Khalīfa, the Caliph or Vice-gerent, a word which we do not introduce here in its high Mahommedan use, but because of its quaint application in Anglo-Indian households, at least in Upper India, to two classes of domestic servants, the tailor and the cook, and sometimes to the barber and farrier. The first is always so addressed by his fellow-servants (Khalīfa-jī). In South India the cook is called [Maistry], i.e. artiste. In Sicily, we may note, he is always called Monsù (!) an indication of what ought to be his nationality. The root of the word Khalīfa, according to Prof. Sayce, means 'to change,' and another derivative, khālif, 'exchange or agio' is the origin of the Greek κολλύβος (Princ. of Philology, 2nd ed., 213).
c. 1253.—"... vindrent marcheant en l'ost qui nous distrent et conterent que li roys des Tartarins avoit prise la citei de Baudas et l'apostole des Sarrazins ... lequel on appeloit le calife de Baudas...."—Joinville, cxiv.
1298.—"Baudas is a great city, which used to be the seat of the Calif of all the Saracens in the world, just as Rome is the seat of the Pope of all the Christians."—Marco Polo, Bk. I. ch. 6.
1552.—"To which the Sheikh replied that he was the vassal of the Soldan of Cairo, and that without his permission who was the sovereign Califa of the Prophet Mahamed, he could hold no communication with people who so persecuted his followers...."—Barros, II. i. 2.
1738.—"Muzeratty, the late Kaleefa, or lieutenant of this province, assured me that he saw a bone belonging to one of them (ancient stone coffins) which was near two of their drass (i.e. 36 inches) in length."—Shaw's Travels in Barbary, ed. 1757, p. 30.
1747.—"As to the house, and the patrimonial lands, together with the appendages of the murdered minister, they were presented by the Qhalif of the age, that is by the Emperor himself, to his own daughter."—Seir Mutaqherin, iii. 37.
c. 1760 (?).—
"I hate all Kings and the thrones they sit on,
From the King of France to the Caliph of Britain."
These lines were found among the papers of Pr. Charles Edward, and supposed to be his. But Lord Stanhope, in the 2nd ed. of his Miscellanies, says he finds that they are slightly altered from a poem by Lord Rochester. This we cannot find. [The original lines of Rochester (Poems on State Affairs, i. 171) run: