Also wálee, waly. [Arab. wāli (classical Arab. wālin), subst. use of pres. pple. of wala to be foremost.] The governor of a province: = VALI.
1811. trans. Niebuhr’s Trav. Arab., lxxxiv. in J. Pinkerton, Coll. Voy., X. 107. Every petty district … has its governor. If not a prince, or one of the higher nobility, this governor is called Wali and Dola.
1839. E. W. Lane, Arab. Nts. (1859), I. v. 350. The Wálee inflicted upon him a hundred lashes, and banished him from the city.
1857. W. K. Tweedie, Rivers & Lakes of Script., 24. And how comes it to pass that a Mohammedan Wali disfigures the scene [etc.]?
1883. Schaff-Herzog, Encycl. Relig. Knowl., II. 1164 (Stanf.). Jerusalem is the seat of a mutasarrif under the waly of Syria.
