Calafia is convinced to raise an army of women warriors and sail away from California with a large flock of trained griffins so that she can join a Muslim battle against Christians who are defending Constantinople.

Similarly, the name of Calafia's realm, California, likely originated from the same root, fabricated by the author to remind the 16th century Spanish reader of the reconquista, a centuries-long fight between Christian Iberians and Muslim Arabs that had recently concluded in Spain.

The character of Calafia is used by Rodríguez de Montalvo to portray the superiority of chivalry in which the attractive virgin queen is conquered, converted to Christian beliefs, and married off.

[4] Calafia is introduced as a regal black woman, courageous, strong of limb and large of person, full in the bloom of womanhood, the most beautiful of a long line of queens who ruled over the mythical realm of California.

She is said to be "desirous of achieving great things"; she wanted to see the world and plunder a portion of it with superior fighting ability, using her army of women warriors.

She commanded a fleet of ships with which she demanded tribute from surrounding lands, and she kept an aerial defense force of griffins, fabulous animals which were native to California, trained to kill any man they found.

[5] Landing near Constantinople, Calafia meets with other Muslim warrior leaders who were unable to remove King Amadis and his Christian allies from the city, and she tells them all to hold back and watch her manner of combat—she says they will be amazed.

The next morning, she and her women warriors mount their "fierce beasts" wearing gold armor "adorned with the most precious stones", advancing to invest the city.

Calafia led a picked group of women warriors to attack a city gate, one held by Norandel, the half-brother of King Amadis.

They struck at each other with sword and knife, and a general melee ensued, Calafia throwing knights from their horses and taking great blows on her shield.

[5] While being held prisoner, Calafia acknowledges the astonishing beauty of Leonorina, daughter of the Constantinople emperor and the intended bride of Esplandián, and resolves not to interfere with their union.

[5] The first voyage of Christopher Columbus in the late 15th century sparked a new interest in the search for "Terrestrial Paradise", a legendary land of ease and riches, with beautiful women wearing gold and pearls.

Around the year 1500 in his novel The Adventures of Esplandián, he writes: Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women without a single man among them, and they lived in the manner of Amazons.

[10] After the mutiny, Ximénez continued sailing north by northwest and, in early 1534, landed at what is known today as La Paz, Baja California Sur.

[5] Hale supposed that in inventing the names, Rodríguez de Montalvo held in his mind the Spanish word calif, the term for a leader of the Muslim people.

"[19] Polk characterized this theory as "imaginative speculation", adding that another scholar offered the "interestingly plausible" suggestion that Roland's Califerne is a corruption of the Persian Kar-i-farn, a mythological "mountain of Paradise" where griffins lived.

[20] In 1923, Prosper Boissonnade, Dean of Literature at the University of Poitiers, wrote that a fortified capital city in 11th century Algeria was built and defended by the Beni-Iferne tribe of Berber people.

[21] John William Templeton describes how Hernán Cortés' expedition in search of California had Africans as a third of his crew, including his second-in-command, Juan Garrido.

[22] Rodríguez de Montalvo's description of Calafia, her people and her country was based upon many centuries of stories of Amazons, groups of woman warriors who fought like men.

[23] The novel about Esplandián and Calafia's domain had a strong influence on the searching Conquistadors, who believed they might find a nation of women and riches somewhere at the edge of the known world.

[25] Male hostility to the woman warriors is expressed by Dictys of Crete who wrote that an Amazon queen "transgressed the boundaries of nature and of her sex.

[25] Jacques de Vitry, a Bishop of Acre, and a historian of the Crusades, wrote about Amazons who fought who were stronger than men because their vitality was not "consumed in frequent copulation.

[27] Columbus returned to Spain with the story of an island in the Lesser Antilles called "Matinino" (perhaps modern Martinique[28]) that was inhabited only by women, a tale told to him by many of the natives of the West Indies.

It was created for the opening of the hotel in 1926 by Maynard Dixon and Frank Van Sloun, and has been called "the first embodiment of Queen Califia" though criticized as showing her "haughty and aloof".

The regal central figure shows Queen Calafia depicted as a Mayan warrior-priestess, holding a spear in her left hand and examining a gyroscope in her right.

Most observers agreed in calling the central figure "California", describing it as a mother earth archetype, possibly harking back to portrayals of the Roman goddess Pomona, who stood for agricultural abundance.

The mural of Queen Calafia is featured at the top of the new African-American Freedom Trail brochure produced by ReUNION: Education-Arts-Heritage and San Francisco Travel in November 2013.

[42] In November 1975, the 11,000-capacity Plaza de Toros Calafia was completed, a bullfighting arena in the city of Mexicali, the capital of the Mexican state of Baja California.

He said, "One of the things we're trying to do is let people have the additional insight and appreciation for the contributions of African Americans to this wonderful country and more specifically to the state of California", adding that "the Queen Califia exhibit is particularly poignant.

Entitled Calafia: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise, it will showcase performance, visual arts and mixed media events to interrogate the concept of myth in California's origin story.