the civil and religious leader of a Muslim state considered to be a representative of Allah on earth; "many radical Muslims believe a Khalifah will unite all Islamic lands and people and subjugate the rest of the world"
More properly "khalifa," or successor to the prophet, the title of the political and religious leader of Islam; In the time immediately after Muhammad, there was a relatively clear succession of caliphs, but in later generations multiple caliphs, each ruling a part of the Islamic world, claimed the title; it has become a title with a great deal of symbolic power but little political might
or Calif A title given to the successors of Mahomet Among the Saracens a caliph is one vested with supreme dignity The caliphat of Bagdad reached its highest splendour under Haroun al Raschid, in the ninth century For the last 200 years the appellation has been swallowed up in the titles of Shah, Sultan, Emir, and so on (Arabic, Khalifah, a successor; khalafa, to succeed )
From Arabic khalifa, meaning head of the Islamic community in the line of the Prophet's successors This title is used to designate the successor of the Prophet in that person's capacity as temporal and spiritual leader of the Islamic community
A Caliph was a Muslim ruler. the caliph of Baghdad. a Muslim ruler, especially in the past (calife, from khalifah ; because a caliph is regarded as a successor of Mohammed). Arabic khalfah ("deputy" or "successor") Title given to those who succeeded the Prophet Muhammad as real or nominal ruler of the Muslim world, ostensibly with all his powers except that of prophecy. Controversy over the selection of the fourth caliph, Al, eventually split Islam into the Sunnite and Shite branches. Al's rival, Muwiyah I, established the Umayyad dynasty of caliphs, which produced 14 caliphs (661-750). The Abbsid dynasty (750-1258), the most widely observed caliphate, associated with 38 caliphs, moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad. The Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258 effectively ended the dynasty. Other Muslim leaders created caliphates with limited success. The Ftimid dynasty proclaimed a new caliphate in 920; Abd al-Rahmn III announced one in opposition to both the Abbsids and the Fimids in 928. A scion of the Abbasid line was set up by the Mamlk dynasty as a sort of puppet caliph after 1258. This caliphate exercised no power whatsoever, and, from 1517 until it was abolished by the Republic of Turkey in 1924, it resided in Istanbul under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Modern Muslim militants consider the abolition of the caliphate a catastrophic event, and its return has been a central pillar of their political program
A leader of Muslins in both a spiritual and political sense; in theory, there should be only one, but in fact, after the loss of power by the Abbasid caliph in the tenth century, a Sunni caliphatae was established at Cordoba (925-1030) and a Shia calphate was established by the Fatimids (915-1171) With the murder of the last Abbasid caliph at Baghdad in 1258, a shadow caliphate survived in Egypt until the Turkish conquest of 1517 The claim of the later Turkish sultans to the caliphate was not legitimate