Chapter CALAY to CALEEFA of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

about 3 miles along the eastern bank of the river.”—Orme, repr. ii. 71.

1702.—“The next Morning we pass’d by the English Factory belonging to the old Company, which they call Golgotha, and is a handsome Building, to which were adding stately Warehouses.”—Voyage to the E. Indies, by Le Sieur Luillier, E. T. 1715, p. 259.

1726.—“The ships which sail thither (to Hugli) first pass by the English Lodge in Collecatte, 9 miles (Dutch miles) lower down than ours, and after that the French one called Chandarnagor.…”—Valentijn, v. 162.

1727.—“The Company has a pretty good Hospital at Calcutta, where many go in to undergo the Penance of Physic, but few come out to give an Account of its Operation.… One Year I was there, and there were reckoned in August about 1200 English, some Military, some Servants to the Company, some private Merchants residing in the Town, and some Seamen belong to Shipping lying at the Town, and before the beginning of January there were 460 Burials registred in the Clerk’s Books of Mortality.”—A. Hamilton, ii. 9 and 6.

c. 1742.—“I had occasion to stop at the city of Firáshdánga (Chandernagore) which is inhabited by a tribe of Frenchmen. The city of Calcutta, which is on the other side of the water, and inhabited by a tribe of English who have settled there, is much more extensive and thickly populated.…” —’Abdul Karím Khán, in Elliot, viii. 127.

1753.—“Au dessous d’Ugli immédiatement, est l’établissement Hollandois de Shinsura, puis Shandernagor, établissement François, puis la loge Danoise (Serampore), et plus bas, sur la rivage opposé, qui est celui de la gauche en descendant, Banki-bazar, où les Ostendois n’ont pû se maintenir; enfin Colicotta aux Anglois, à quelques lieues de Banki-bazar, et du même côté.”—D’Anville, Eclaircissemens, 64. With this compare: “Almost opposite to the Danes Factory is Bankebanksal, a Place where the Ostend Company settled a Factory, but, in Anno 1723, they quarrelled with the Fouzdaar or Governor of Hughly, and he forced the Ostenders to quit.…”—A. Hamilton, ii. 18.

1782.—“Les Anglais pourroient retirer aujourd’hui des sommes immenses de l’Inde, s’ils avoient eu l’attention de mieux composer le conseil suprême de Calecuta.”²— Sonnerat, Voyage, i. 14.

CALEEFA, s. Ar. Khalifa, 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 (Khalifa-ji). 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 Khalifa, according to Prof. Sayce, means ‘to change,’ and another derivative, khalif, ‘exchange or agio’ is the origin of the Greek [Greek Text] kolluboz (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