Table of Contents

• KAʿBA-YE ZARDOŠT

  Gerd Gropp

  “Kaʿba of Zoroaster,” an ancient building at Naqš-e Rostam near Persepolis.

• KABĀB

  Etrat Elahi

  popular dish which traditionally consists of meat cut in cubes, or ground and shaped into balls; these are threaded onto a skewer and broiled over a brazier of charcoal embers.

• KABIR-KUH

  Majdodin Keyvani

  one of the long ranges of the Zagros mountains, lying between Iran’s two western provinces of Loristan and Ilām.

• KABISA

  Simone Cristoforetti

  Arabic term used in calendrical context; “intercalary,” “embolismal.” It is applied to several readjustments that occurred in the Iranian solar calendar.

• KĀBOL MAGAZINE

  Wali Ahmadi

  a monthly magazine with the full title Kābol:ʿElmi, adabi, ejtemāʿi, tariḵi. The periodical was founded by the Kabul Literary Society (Anjoman-e Adabi-e Kābol), 1931-40.

• KĀBOLI

  Rawan Farhadi and J. R. Perry

  the colloquial Persian spoken in the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, and its environs. It has been a common and prestigious vernacular for several centuries, since Kabul was long ruled by dynasts of Iran (the Safavids) or India (the Mughals) for whom Persian was the language of culture and administration.

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• KĀBOLI, ʿAbdallāh Ḵᵛāja

  Maria Szuppe

  (also known as Kāboli Naqšbandi and Heravi), historiographer and poet of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. 

• KABUL

  Multiple Authors

  (Kābol), capital of Afghanistan, also the name of its province and a river.

• KABUL i. GEOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE

  Andreas Wilde

  Kabul is part of a system of high level basins, the elevation of which varies from 1,500 to 3,600 meters, extends—geographically speaking—beyond the administrative borders of the present-day province.

• KABUL ii. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

  Xavier de Planhol

  Before the period of war and unrest in Afghanistan that started in 1978, almost all the functions concerned with governing the country and directing its international relations were concentrated in Kabul. This primacy among Afghan cities is due to an exceptionally favorable geographical site.

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• KABUL iii. HISTORY FROM THE 16TH CENTURY TO THE ACCESSION OF MOḤAMMAD ẒĀHER SHAH

  May Schinasi

  Kabul was a small town until the 16th century, when Ẓahir-al-Din Bābor (1483-1530), the first of the Great Mughals, made it his capital.

• KABUL iv. URBAN POLITICS SINCE ẒĀHER SHAH

  Daniel E. Esser

  The first master plan marked an important attempt to reorganize the spatial structure of the city. A first revision was authorized in 1971.

• KABUL v. MONUMENTS OF KABUL CITY

  Jonathan Lee

  This article focuses on the major monuments in and around the Old City of Kabul and the most significant Dorrāni dynastic monuments and mausolea.

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• KABUL LITERARY SOCIETY

  Wali Ahmadi

  (Anjoman-e adabi-e Kābol), the first official academic and cultural association of Afghanistan, 1930-40.

• KABUL MUSEUM

  Carla Grissmann

  popular name of the National Museum of Afghanistan. A modest collection of artifacts and manuscripts already existed in the time of King Ḥabib-Allāh (r. 1901–19). In 1931 the collection was finally installed in a building in rural Darulaman (Dār-al-amān), eight kilometers south of Kabul City.

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• KABUL RIVER

  Andreas Wilde

  in eastern Afghanistan. It forms one of Afghanistan’s four major river systems and is the only Afghan river that flows, as tributary of the Indus, into the sea.

• KĀČI

  Etrat Elahi and Majdodin Keyvani

  a traditional Persian dish generally made of rice flour, cooking oil, sugar diluted in water, and turmeric or saffron with a sprinkling of golāb (rosewater) to give it a pleasant scent.

• KADAGISTĀN

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  an eastern province of the Sasanian empire. The clearest evidence for the existence of such a province is provided by a bulla bearing the impression of a seal.

• ḴĀDEM MIṮĀQ

  Amir Hossein Pourjavady

  (1907-1958), musician, teacher, conductor, and composer.

• ḴĀDEM-E BESṬĀMI

  Kioumars Ghereghlou

  Moḥammad Ṭāher b. Ḥasan, local historian, calligrapher, and poet of the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I.

• KADIMI

  Ramiyar P. Karanjia

  a Zoroastrian sect (Ar. qadim “old, ancient”). The movement emerged in 18th-century India.

• KADḴODĀ

  Willem Floor and EIr.

  principal meaning “headman,” from Middle Persian kadag-xwadāy, lit. “head of a household."

• KADPHISES, KUJULA

  Osmund Bopearachchi

  (1st cent. CE), first Kuṣān king, founder of the Kuṣāna dynasty in Central Asia and India, as indicated by the legend written in Gāndhāri and Kharoṣṭhī.

• KAEMPFER, ENGELBERT

  Detlef Haberland

  German physician and traveler to Russia, the Orient, and the Far East (1651-1716).

• KAĒTA

  William W. Malandra

  an Avestan word whose approximate meaning is ‘soothsayer.’

• KAFIR KALA

  Boris Litvinsky

  (Kāfer Qalʿa), ancient settlement and one of the largest archeological monuments of the Vakhsh river valley, on the western outskirts of Kolkhozabad, Tajikistan. The city (šahrestān) together with the citadel form a square, each side 360 m long, oriented approximately to the cardinal points.

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• ḴAFRI, ŠAMS-AL-DIN

  George Saliba

  (d.1550), one of the most competent of all the mathematical astronomers and planetary theorists of medieval Islam.

• KAFTARI WARE

  C. A. Petrie

  distinctive ceramic vessels dated to the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE, primarily found in Fārs.

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• KĀFUR

  Cross-Reference

  See  CAMPHOR.

• ḴĀGINA

  Etrat Elahi

  a traditional Persian dish; most of the recipes are very similar to those for making a plain omelet.

• KAHAK

  Farhad Daftary

  Markazi Province, a village located about 35 km northeast of Anjedān and northwest of Maḥallāt in central Iran, with ruins of a fairly large caravanserai.

• KĀHI KĀBOLI

  Majdoddin Keyvani

  (d. 1580), poet at the courts of the Mughal sultans Homāyun and Akbar.

• KAIFENG

  Donald D. Leslie

  medieval capital of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) and home of a Judeo-Persian community.

• KAJAKAY DAM

  Siddieq Noorzoy

  dam built on the Helmand River as a part of the multi-faceted projects aimed at the development of the Helmand Valley.

• KĀK

  Etrat Elahi and Eir.

  a general term applied to several kinds of flat bread or small, often thin, dry cakes variously shaped and made.

• KĀKAGI

  Arley Loewen

  the customs and characteristics of a kāka—a vagabond or vigilante characterized by the ideals of chivalry, courage, generosity, and loyalty.

• KĀKĀʾI

  Philip G. Kreyenbroek

  a term used both for a tribal federation and for a religious group in Iraqi Kurdistan. 

• KĀKĀVAND

  Pierre Oberling

  a Lor tribe of the Delfān group, settled in the Piškuh region of Luristan (Lorestān), as well as west of Qazvin and in the Ṭārom region.

• ḴĀKI ḴORĀSĀNI, EMĀMQOLI

  S. J. Badakhchani

  Ismaʿili poet and preacher of 17th-century Persia (d. after 1646). He was born in Dizbād, a village in the hills half way between Mashhad and Nišāpur.

• ḴĀKI ŠIRĀZI, ḤASAN BEG

  Kioumars Ghereghlou

  (d. 1612), Persian historian and bureaucrat, whose chronicle, titled Aḥsan al-tavāriḵ, is a general history of pre-Islamic and Islamic dynasties of Iran, the Indian Subcontinent, and Central Asia.

• KAKRAK

  Matteo Compareti

  a Buddhist site comprised of a group of caves, in Bāmyān Province, Afghanistan, discovered at the end of the 19th century.

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• ḴĀKSĀR

  Zahra Taheri

  a strictly popular order of Persian dervishes, favored by artisans and shopkeepers. The name “Ḵāksār” (lit. ‘dust-like’) was probably chosen to figuratively denote a lowly, humble, and modest person.

• ḴĀKŠI

  Bahram Grami

  a medicinal plant from the mustard family. Two kinds have been identified, the common and the bitter one which is considered weed. The effects are believed to be on heart, voice, throat, and diarrhea.

• KĀKUYIDS

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  [KAKWAYHIDS], a dynasty of Deylamite origin that ruled in western Persia, Jebāl, and Kurdistan about 1008-51 as independent princes.

• KALĀBĀḎI

  Cross-reference

  See ABŪ BAKR KALĀBĀḎĪ.

• ḴALAF B. AḤMAD

  C. E. Bosworth

  b. Moḥammad, Abu Aḥmad (d. 1009), Amir in Sistān of the “second line” of Saffarids, who ruled between 963 and 1003.

• ḴALAJ

  Multiple Authors

  a tribe which originated in Turkistan and settled approximately 250 km to the southwest of Tehran. 

• ḴALAJ i. TRIBE

  Pierre Oberling

  tribe originating from Turkistan, generally referred to as Turks but possibly Indo-Iranian.

• ḴALAJ ii. Ḵalaji Language

  Michael Knüppel

  spoken by the Ḵalaj tribe, in the 1960s and 1970s numbering approximately 20,000 people.

• KALĀNTAR

  Willem Floor

  “chief, leader,” from the late 15th century onwards, particularly the local official (mayor) in charge of the administration of a town.

• KALĀNTARI, PARVIZ

  Nojan Madinei

  (b. Zanjān, 22 March 1931; d. Tehran, 20 May 2016), painter, graphic designer, writer, and a pioneering illustrator of Iranian children’s books.

• KALĀRESTĀQ

  Habib Borjian

  (or Kalār-rostāq), and Kalārdašt, historical district in western Māzandarān. i. The District and Sub-District.  ii. The Dialect.

• KALĀRESTĀQ i. The District and Sub-District

  Habib Borjian

  This predominantly mountainous district extends along the Caspian coast from the Namakābrud (Namakāvarud) river on the west to the Čālus river on the east.

• KALĀRESTĀQ ii. The Dialect

  Habib Borjian

  The Caspian vernaculars spoken in Kalārestāq, together with those of Tonekābon district, may not be properly classified as either Māzandarāni or Gilaki but serve as a transition between these two language groups.

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• KALĀT-E NĀDERI

  Xavier de Planhol

  Several references to kalāt in the tragic episode of the young Forud in Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma are thought to refer to this. Its earliest mention in historical accounts comes from the Mongol period, when the fourth Il-khan of Iran, Arḡun Khan built a defensive work at the south approach that still bears his name (“Gate of Arḡun”).

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• KALBĀSI

  Hamid Algar

  Ḥāj Moḥammad Ebrāhim (b. Isfahan, 1766; d. Isfahan, 1845), prominent Oṣuli jurist, influential in the affairs of Isfahan during the reigns of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah and Moḥammad Shah.

• ḴĀLEDI, Mehdi

  E. Naḵjavāni

  Persian violinist and songwriter (1919-1990). As a violinist, Ḵāledi was known for his command of traditional Persian music and its innovative interpretation. As a composer, he was admired for the range of his rhythmically varied and elegiac songs.

• KALEMĀT-E MAKNUNA

  Moojan Momen

  (The Hidden Words), a collection of aphorisms (71 in Arabic and 82 in Persian) by Bahāʾ-Allāh on spiritual and moral themes, dating from 1274/1857-58 and considered one of his most important writings.

• ḴĀLEQI, RUḤ-ALLĀH

  Hormoz Farhat

  (1906-1965),  Persian music educator, composer, and music scholar. Through his teaching, admiration for the polyphonic richness of Western music was transmitted to some of his pupils.

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• ḴĀLEṢIZĀDA, MOḤAMMAD B. MOḤAMMAD-MAHDI

  Mina Yazdani

  (1890-1963), a contemporary Iraqi-Iranian reformist cleric and political activist in anti-British protests and proponent of political power for the Shiʿite jurists in 20th-century Iran, who probably influenced Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers.

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• KALHOR

  Pierre Oberling

  a Kurdish tribe in the southernmost part of Persian Kurdistan. The last of the great Kalhor chiefs was Dāwud Khan, who ruled the tribe in the early 1900s.

• KALHOR, Mirzā Mohammad-Reżā

  Maryam Ekhtiar

  (1829-1892), one of the most prominent 19th-century Persian calligraphers, often compared to such great masters of nastaʿliq as Mir ʿAli Heravi and Mir ʿEmād Sayfi Qazvini.

• ḴALIFA SOLṬĀN

  Rudi Matthee

  (1592/93-1654), grand vizier under Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1588-1629) and then again under Shah ʿAbbās II (r. 1642-66).

• ḴALIL SOLṬĀN b. MIRĀNŠĀH b. TIMUR

  Beatrice Forbes Manz

  Timurid ruler (1405-09). He became active in the military on the Indian campaign in 1398-99 and played a prominent part in the seven-year campaign of 1399-1404.

• ḴALIL, MOḤAMMAD EBRĀHIM

  Wali Ahmadi

  Afghan scribe, calligrapher, poet and historian. Ḵalil studied privately with his parents and excelled in the art of calligraphy, especially the nastaʿliq and šekasta styles.

• ḴALIL-ALLĀH ŠAH

  Nasrollah Pourjavady

  (or Sayyed) BORHĀN-AL-DIN (b. 1373-74, d. 1455-56), the only son of the Sufi master, Šāh Neʿmat-Allāh Wali of Kermān.

• KALILA WA DEMNA

  Multiple Authors

  a  collection of didactic animal fables, with the jackals Kalila and Demna as two of the principal characters.  The story cycle originated in India between 500 BCE and 100 BC, and circulated widely in the Near East.

• KALILA WA DEMNA i. Redactions and circulation

  Dagmar Riedel

  The oldest extant versions of the story cycle are preserved in Syriac and Arabic, and originate from the 6th and 8th century, respectively, as translations of a lost Middle Persian version.

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• KALILA WA DEMNA ii. The translation by Abu’l-Maʿāli Naṣr-Allāh Monši

  Mahmoud Omidsalar

  Naṣr-Allāh’s Persian version of the Kalila wa Dimna is not a translation in the strict sense of the term, but a literary creation in its own right. 

• KALILA WA DEMNA iii. ILLUSTRATIONS

  Bernard O’Kane

  a collection of didactic animal fables, with the jackals Kalila and Demna as two of the principal characters.

• ḴALILI, ʿABBĀS

  Ḥasan Mirʿābedini

  (1895-1971),  political activist, journalist, translator, poet and novelist. 

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• ḴALILI, ḴALIL-ALLĀH

  Wali Ahmadi

  Ḵalili was born to Moḥammad Ḥosayn Khan Ḵalili, a state treasurer affiliated with the court of Amir Ḥabib-Allāh Khan. He was greatly interested in scholarship, an interest which he inculcated in his son. Upon the murder of the Amir on 19 February 1919, Mostawfi-al-Mamālek was arrested and swiftly executed.

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• KALIM KĀŠĀNI

  Daniela Meneghini

  (b. ca. 1581-85, d. 1651), Persian poet and one of the leading exponents of the “Indian style” (sabk-e hendi).

• KALIMI

  Amnon Netzer

  the word used to refer to the Jews of Iran in modern Persian usage. The word “kalimi” derives from the Arabic root KLM meaning to address, to speak, but the appellation in this context is derived directly from the specific epithet given to the prophet Moses as Kalim-Allāh.

• ḴALIQ LĀHURI

  Stefano Pello

   Indo-Persian poet of the 18th-century, probably a Sikh.

• Ḵalḵāl

  Cross-reference

  See KHALKHAL.

• ḴALḴĀLI, Sayyed ʿAbd-al-Raḥim

  Hushang Ettehad and EIr

  Ḵalḵāli remained, to the end of his life, a loyal member of the democratic current and a close confidant of Sayyed Ḥasan Taqizādeh, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (Ferqa-ye ejtemāʿiyun-e ʿāmmiyun) in the First Majles (1906-08), and later of Iran’s Democrat Party (Ferqa-ye demokrāt-e Irān) in the Second Majles.

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• ḴĀLKUBI

  Willem Floor

  (or ḵāl kubidan, kabud zadan “tattooing”), that is, making a permanent mark on the skin by inserting a pigment, is one of the oldest methods of body ornamentation.  The earliest evidence of tattoos in the Iranian culture area is the almost completely tattooed body of a Scythian chief in Pazyryk Mound

• KALLA-PĀČA

  Etrat Elahi

  a traditional dish made of sheep’s head and trotters and cooked over low heat, usually overnight. The combination of one sheep’s head and four trotters is called a set of kalla-pāča.

• KALLAJUŠ

  Etrat Elahi & EIr.

  an old Iranian dish, also pronounced kālajuš, kālājuš, kaljuš in different parts of Iran. The compound term kāljuš is composed of kālmeaning unripe, connoting cooked rare, and juš (boiling).

• ḴĀLU

  Pierre Oberling

  a small Turkic tribe of Kermān province.  According to the Iranian Army files (1957), this tribe once lived in the vicinity of Bardsir and Māšiz, southwest of Kermān.

• KALURAZ

  TADAHIKO OHTSU

  Almost all the objects excavated by Hakemi are now kept in Iran National Museum (Tehran). They are exhibited and open to the public. Since they had been archeologically reported only with photographs, in 2005 Japan-Iran joint researchers carried out new archeological studies for about 50 objects from the Kaluraz site.

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• KAMĀL ḴOJANDI

  Paul Losensky

  (ca. 1320-1401), Persian poet and Sufi also known as Shaikh Kamāl.

• KAMĀL PĀŠĀ-ZĀDA, ŠAMS-AL-DIN AḤMAD

  T. Yazici

  (1468-1534), prolific Ottoman scholar, author of several works in and on Persian. A native of Edirne, he studied under the local mufti, Mollā Loṭfi, and subsequently taught at the madrasas of Edirne, Uskup (Skoplje) and Istanbul.

• KAMAL, REZA

  Cross-Reference

  (better known as Sharzad), dramatist and translator. See SHARZAD.

• KAMĀL-AL-DIN EṢFAHĀNI

  David Durand-Guédy

  poet from Isfahan, noted for his mastery of the panegyric. His full name is given by Ebn al-Fowaṭi as Kamāl-al-Din Abu’l-Fażl Esmāʿil b. Abi Moḥammad ʿAbd-Allāh b. ʿAbd-al-Razzāq al-Eṣfahāni.

• KAMĀL-AL-DIN ḤOSAYN

  Colin Paul Mitchell

  ḤĀFEŻ-E HARAVI, a prominent Safavid calligrapher during the reign of Shah Tˈahmāsp I (r. 1524-76).

• KAMĀL-AL-MOLK, MOḤAMMAD ḠAFFĀRI

  A. Ashraf with Layla Diba

  (ca. 1859–1940), Iranian painter of the European academic style during the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods. He descended from a family that had produced a number of artists since the Afsharid period.

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• KAMĀLI BOḴĀRĀʾI

  Nasrollah Pourjavady

  ʿAmid Kamāl-al-Din, a court poet, musician, and calligrapher at the court of Sultan Sanjar, the Saljuqid king (r. 1097-1118), during his rule in Khorasan.

• KAMĀNČA

  Stephen Blum

  The kamānča has a spherical sound cavity of mulberry or walnut wood, covered with sheepskin. Most instruments have four steel strings and are played with a horsehair bow. As the name of the Iraqi joza suggests, its sound cavity is made of coconut, covered with sheepskin or fish skin.

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• KĀMI AḤMED ÇELEBI

  Osman G. Özgüdenlī

  Ottoman scholar, judge, writer, and translator. He was born in Edirne (his birth date is unknown) and known as Mesnevi-hānzāde (Maṯnawi-ḵvānzāda).

• KĀMI MEHMED-I KARAMĀNI

  Osman G. Özgüdenlī

  Ottoman scholar, judge, poet, and translator. He was born in Karaman (Qaramān) in central Anatolia.

• ḴAMĪS DYNASTY

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀL-E ḴAMĪS.

• KĀMRĀN B. SHAH MAḤMUD

  Christine Nöelle-Karimi

  Sadōzāy ruler of Herat (r. 1826-42). His career coincided with the waning of Sadōzāy power and the rise of the Moḥammadzāy dynasty in the 1820s.

• KĀMRĀN MIRZĀ

  Sunil Sharma

  In his Haft eqlim, Aḥmad Amin-Rāzi devotes a long section to Kāmrān Mirzā in which he extols the prince’s bravery, generosity, and piety. The historian Badāʾuni also praises him as a courageous and learned man, renowned as a poet, but who was led to ruin by excessive drinking, while Abu’l-Fażl portrays him as a treacherous ingrate.

• KĀMRĀN MIRZĀ NĀYEB-AL-SALṬANA

  Heidi Walcher

  (1856-1929), the third surviving son of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah, he was the minister of war and commander of the armed forces, and intermittently governor of Tehran and a number of provinces.

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• ḴAMRIYA

  Majdoddin Keyvani

  (pl. ḵamriyāt), poems with thematic contents chiefly about wine.

• ḴAMSA OF AMIR ḴOSROW

  Sunil Sharma

  a quintet of poems in the mathnawi form written by Amir Ḵosrow between 1298 and 1302, as a response to Neẓāmi’s immensely popular Panj ganj (Five Treasures).

• ḴAMSA OF JAMĀLI

  Paola Orsatti

  a suite of five mathnawis, composed in response to the Ḵamsa by Neẓāmi (1141-1209). This Ḵamsa exists in a unique manuscript in the India Office Library, London.

• ḴAMSA OF NEẒĀMI

  Domenico Parrello

  the quintet of narrative poems for which Neẓāmi Ganjavi (1141-1209) is universally acclaimed.

• ḴAMSA TRIBE

  Pierre Oberling

  a tribal confederacy formed in the 19th century comprising five large tribes in Fārs province.

• KAMSARAKAN

  C. Toumanoff

  Armenian noble family that was an offshoot of the Kāren Pahlav, one of the seven great houses of Iran claiming Arsacid origin.

• ḴĀN-E ĀREZU, Serāj-al-din ʿAli (Article 1)

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀRZU.

• Ḵān-e Ārezu, Serāj-al-din ʿAli (ARTICLE 2)

  Prashant Keshavmurthy

  (1688-1756), a Persian-language philologist, lexicographer, literary critic and poet from North India.

• ḴĀN-E ḴĀNĀN

  Cross-Reference

  (d. 1627), Mughal general and statesman. See ʿABD-AL-RAḤĪM ḴĀN ḴĀNĀN.

• ḴĀNĀ QOBĀDI

  Philip G. Kreyenbroek and Parwin Mahmoudweyssi

  (fl. ca.1700-1759 or 1778), Gurāni poet and one of the major members of the school of Gurāni poetry that is said to have been founded by Yusof Yaskā.

• ḴĀNA-YE EDRISIHĀ

  SOHEILA SAREMI

  Ḵāna-ye Edrisihā is told from the alternating perspectives of four people: Mrs. Edrisi, symbol of a lost aristocracy; her daughter Laqā, trapped in a tangled web of old beliefs, traditions, and customs; her intellectual grandson Vahhāb, living a miserable life in an ocean of books; and Yāvar, the faithful servant, living in past memories.

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• KANAF

  Bahram Grami

  (Hibiscus cannabinus L.), an annual herbaceous plant of the Malvaceae family, yielding a soft fiber from the stem bark. Its fiber is used primarily for making gunnysacks and burlap. The first gunny mill (guni bāfi) in Persia was established in 1933 in Rašt by the private sector.

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• ḴĀNAQĀH

  Gerhard Böwering and Matthew Melvin-Koushki

  an Islamic institution and physical establishment, principally reserved for Sufi dervishes to meet, reside, study, and assemble and pray together as a group in the presence of a Sufi master (Arabic, šayḵ, Persian, pir), who is teacher, educator, and leader of the group.

• KANDAHAR

  Multiple Authors

  the second most important city in the country and the capital of Kandahar province. This entry is divided into seven parts: i. Historical geography to 1979.  ii. Pre-Islamic monuments and remains. iii. Early Islamic period.  iv. From the Mongol invasion through the Safavid era.  v. In the 19th century.  vi. 20th century, 1901-73.  vii. From 1973 to the present.

• KANDAHAR i. Historical Geography to 1979

  Xavier de Planhol

  The oasis clearly was destined to give rise to a major city that would control these rich lands with their grain fields, orchards, and gardens and manage the irrigation system they required. This urban center was situated near the top of the alluvial cone, where the Arḡandāb river runs from the mountains.

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• KANDAHAR ii. Pre-Islamic Monuments and Remains

  Gérard Fussman

  The ancient city of Kandahar lay along the Qaytul ridge, west of the modern city and was emptied of its population by Nāder Shah in 1738.

• KANDAHAR iii. Early Islamic Period

  Minoru Inaba

  Kandahar and its surroundings have been an important junction connecting Iran and India since ancient times.

• KANDAHAR v. In the 19th Century

  Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

  city in southern Afghanistan (lat 31°36′28″ N, long 65°42′19″ E), the second most important in the country and the capital of Kandahar province.

• KANDAHAR vi. 20th Century, 1901-73

  M. Jamil Hanifi

  city in southern Afghanistan (lat 31°36′28″ N, long 65°42′19″ E). Kandahar expanded substantially during the second half of the 20th century by attracting rural labor and by developing new residential quarters (šahr-e naw) and public buildings. 

• KANDAHAR vii. From 1973 to the Present

  Antonio Giustozzi

  Mohammad Daoud Khan took power in July 1973, his ban on party political activities hit Kandahar too.

• KANDAHAR iv. From The Mongol Invasion Through the Safavid Era

  Rudi Matthee and Hiroyuki Mashita

  There are various reasons why, despite the manifest weaknesses of the Safavid army, Kandahar surrendered to the Safavids.

• ḴANDAQ

  Michael G. Morony

  a Persian loanword in Arabic meaning a trench or a moat (lit. “dug”), possibly also a wall or an enclosure.

• KANGA, MANECK FARDOONJI

  Firoze M. Kotwal and Jamsheed K. Choksy

  (1908-1988), Parsi scholar of Zoroastrianism and Iranian languages. He held the position of Secretary of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute in Bombay for 15 years and edited its Journal. He served as Professor of Avestan Studies at the University of Bombay. 

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KANGARLU

  P. OBERLING

  a Turkic tribe of Azerbaijan and the Qom-Verāmin region of central Persia. 

• KANGAVAR

  Wolfram Kleiss

  town in eastern Kermanshah Province, on the modern road from Hamadan to Kermanshah, identical with a trace of the silk road. Isidorus of Charax (1st century CE) referred to it as Congobar and mentioned a temple of Anāhitā (Anaitis) there. The site has ruins of debated date and nature.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KANGDEZ

  Pavel Lurje

  (lit. “Fortress of Kang,”), a mythical, paradise-like fortress in Iranian folklore. There are different and often contradictory descriptions of Kang, Kangdež and several similar place names in Pahlavi literature and the epics of the Islamic period.

• KANI, ḤĀJ MOLLĀ ʿALI

  Hamid Algar

  Shiʿi scholar whose power and prominence in the affairs of Tehran for more than four decades earned him the semi-official title of raʾis al-mojtahedin (“chief of the mojtaheds”), as well as accusations of inordinate greed.

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• KANJAKI

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  language mentioned in the 11th-century Turkish lexicon of Maḥmud al-Kāšḡari as being spoken in the villages near Kāšḡar.

• ḴANJAR BEG, Mirzā

  Zeyaul Haque

  (d. 1567), a poet and scholar of sixteenth-century Mughal India, who attained a significant place in the history of Indo-Persian poetry due to his famous maṯnawi.

• ḴĀNOM

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a title for highborn women in the pre-modern Turkish and Persian worlds. In early Islamic Turkish, it was used for a khan’s wife or a princess, hence as a higher title than begüm.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  an institute with a wide range of cultural, artistic, and educational activities for children and adolescents, founded in December 1965.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN i. Establishment of Kanun

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  Kanun’s goal was to produce and offer support and services for children in better settings than the grim and austere school classrooms.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN ii. Libraries

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  an institute with a wide range of cultural, artistic, and educational activities for children and adolescents, founded under the patronage of Queen (Shahbanou) Farah Pahlavi in December 1965.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN iii. Book Publishing

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  Shirvanlu, rightly convinced that the few already known children’s writers were not the sole answer to Kanun’s children’s book project, approached many writers of adult literature—novelists, translators, dramatists, essayists in social sciences, and scholars in humanities—and invited them to try their hand in this new field.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN iv. International Film Festivals

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  Many world-renowned  artists and masters were invited to to participate as International Jury members for the festivals.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN ix. From 1979 to 2009: An Overview

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  Due to Iran’s rapid urbanization and in order to cope with the increasing demands for cultural centers, Kanun needed to develop and to expand its centers.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN v. Film Production: 1970-77

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  Kanun productions were the first experience of film direction for a number of today’s best-known Iranian directors. All internationally recognized Iranian animation film directors started their work at Kanun, and many have continued to cooperate with it.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN vi. Music and Sound Production

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  In less than eight years, the Center for the Production of Records and Cassettes for Children and Young Adults produced five collections of quality recordings.

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• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN vii. Visual Arts Training Center

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  The Visual Arts Training Center became a real entity long after each artistic training program was created and was in operation.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KĀNUN-E PARVAREŠ-E FEKRI-E KUDAKĀN VA NOWJAVĀNĀN viii. The Pioneers and Promoters

  Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam

  Aḥmad-Reżā Aḥmadi, avant-garde poet, started as a writer for Kanun. He was appointed as manager of the sound recording production section at the behest of Kanun’s managing director in 1970.

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• KAPADIA, DINSHAH DORABJI

  Burzine K. Waghmar

  Parsi scholar and educator. He was promoted in 1919 as a commissioner of the Indian Educational Service and taught mathematics in Poona and Bombay.

• KAPISA

  Cross-Reference

  (Kāpiśa), the ancient region of Kabul. See BEGRAM.

• ḴĀQĀNI ŠERVĀNI

  Anna Livia Beelaert

  a major Persian poet and prose writer (b. Šervān, ca. 521/1127; d. Tabriz, between 582/1186-87 and 595/1199).

• ḴĀQĀNI ŠERVĀNI i. Life

  Anna Livia Beelaert

  (1127-1186/1199), major Persian poet and prose writer.

• ḴĀQĀNI ŠERVĀNI ii. Works

  Anna Livia Beelaert

  a major Persian poet and prose writer (b. Šervān, ca. 521/1127; d. Tabriz, between 582/1186-87 and 595/1199). Ḵāqāni’s fame rests on his qaṣidas, of which, in Żiāʾ-al-Din Sajjādi’s edition, there are one hundred and thirty-two.

• KĀR KIĀ

  Yukako Goto

  or Kiā, a Zaydi family from the eastern flank (Bia-piš) of Gilān, as well as the local dynasty founded by this family that dominated East Gilān and Deylamestān from the 770s/1370s to 1000/1592.

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• KĀR-NĀMA-YE BALḴ

  J. T . P. de Bruijn

  a short maṯnavi by Sanāʾi of Ghazna (d. 1131), containing panegyric as well as satirical verses addressed to, or describing, people from various layers of Ghaznavid society.

• KĀR-NĀMAG Ī ARDAŠĪR Ī PĀBAGĀN

  C. G. CERETI

  short prose work written in Middle Persian. It narrates the Sasanian king Ardašīr I’s life story—his rise to the throne, battle against the Parthian king Ardawān, and conquest of the empire. 

• KARABALGASUN

  Toshio Hayashi, Y. Yoshida

  or Khar Balgas “Black ruined city” in Mongolian. This entry consists of two sections: i. The site  ii. The inscription.

• KARABALGASUN i. The Site

  Toshio Hayashi

  archeological site of a capital of the Uighur Khaghanate (second half of the 8th century to first half of the 9th century). Karabalgasun is located in the Orkhon valley, 320 km west of Ulan Bator (Ulaanbaatar), 30 km north of Karakorum.

• KARABALGASUN ii. The Inscription

  Y. Yoshida

  The trilingual inscription at Karabalgasun, in Old Turkic, Sogdian, and Chinese, of the eighth Uighur qaghan in Mongolia commemorates the qaghan’s (Old Turkic ḵaḡan, qaḡan) own military achievements and those of his predecessors.

• KARAFTO CAVES

  Hubertus von Gall

  an ensemble of artificially cut rock chambers dated to the 4th or 3rd century BCE, in Kordestān Province, 20 km west of Takab. The site is of considerable importance because of its Greek inscription, one of the very few examples preserved in situ in Persia.

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• KARĀʾI

  P. Oberling

  a Turkic-speaking tribe of Azerbaijan, Khorasan, Kermān and Fārs.

• KARAJ

  Multiple Authors

  a town in Tehran province, located 36 km west of the city of Tehran on the western bank of the Karaj River (lat 35° 46ʹ N, long 50° 49ʹ E; elev., 1,360 m).

• KARAJ i. Modern City

  Bernard Hourcade

  The area of Karaj has been inhabited since the Bronze Age at Tepe Khurvin, and the Iron Age at Kalāk on the left bank of the Karaj River.

• KARAJ ii. Population

  Habibollah Zanjani

  Since the 1976 census, when Tehran was no longer counted within the boundaries of Central (Markazi) province and formed its own province, Karaj has been one of its sub-provinces. 

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KARAJ DAM

  Cross-reference

  See AMIR KABIR DAM (forthcoming online).

• KARAJ RIVER

  Bernard Hourade

  the second major permanent river of the central Iranian plateau after the Zāyandarud river.

• KARAKI

  Rula Jurdi Abisaab

  Nur-al-Din Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAli b. Ḥosayn b. ʿAbd-al-ʿĀli, known as Moḥaqqeq al-Ṯāni or Moḥaqqeq ʿAli (1464-1533), a major Imamite jurist.

• KARĀMA

  Erik S. Ohlander

  “(saintly) marvel, wonder, or miracle” in Arabic (pl. karāmāt).

• KARAPAN

  William Malandra

  (or Karpan), designation of members of a class of daivic priests opposed to the religion of Zarathustra.

• ḴᵛĀRAZMŠĀH

  Cross-Reference

  title assumed by various rulers of Ḵᵛārazm (Chorasmia). See CHORASMIA ii. In Islamic times and ĀL-E AFRĪḠ.

• KARBALA

  Meir Litvak

  a city in Iraq, situated about 90 km southwest of Baghdad. It is one of the four Shiʿite shrine cities (with Najaf, Kāẓemayn, and Sāmarrāʾ) in Iraq known in Shʿite Islam as ʿatabāt-e ʿaliāt or ʿatabāt-e moqaddasa.

• KÁRDAKES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  the name of a Persian military unit mentioned several times by Greek and Roman authors, nearly always in relation to the Achaemenid period (cf. Huyse, p. 199, n. 6).

• KĀRGĀNRUD

  Cross-Reference

  the northernmost and largest of the five traditional Ṭāleš khanates (Ḵamsa-ye Ṭavāleš) in western Gilān.

• KARGAR, DARIUSH

  Forogh Hashabeiky and Behrooz Sheyda

  (1953-2012), Iranist, fiction writer, and journalist. Kargar’s later works of fiction, written in Sweden, participate in the more modern spectrum of writing in the twentieth century and are characterized by his experimentations with disrupted chronology, non-linear plots, and interrupted language reminiscent of stream of consciousness.

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• KĀRGOZĀR

  Morteza Nouraei

  a term used from the early 19th century until the abolishment of capitulation (kāpitulāsion) in 1927 to refer specifically to an agent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was charged with regulating relations between Iranian subjects and foreigners.

• KARIM DEVONA

  Keith Hitchins

  pen-name of Abdul-Karim Qurbon, Tajik folk poet (1878-1918).

• KARIM KHAN ZAND

  John R. Perry

  (ca. 1705-1779), “The Wakil,” ruler of Persia (except Khorasan) from Shiraz during 1751-79. The Zand were a pastoral tribe of the Lak branch of the northern Lors, ranging between the inner Zagros and the Hamadān plains, centered on the villages of Pari and Kamāzān in the vicinity of Malāyer.

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• KĀRIN

  Parvaneh Pourshariati

  one of the seven great families of the Parthian and Sasanian periods.

• KĀRIZ

  Xavier de Planhol

  underground irrigation canals, also called qanāt. The kārēz conducts water from the level of an aquifer to the open air by means of simple gravity in order to distribute it to lower areas.

• KĀRIZ i. Terminology

  Xavier de Planhol

  underground irrigation canals, also called qanāt.

• KĀRIZ ii. TECHNOLOGY

  Xavier de Planhol

  The technology of kārēz exploits a difference in grade between a tunnel and the groundwater table, so it ends at an elevation higher than that of the water table. In Iran the average grade may be around 0.5 percent.

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• KĀRIZ iii. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXTS

  Xavier de Planhol

  The major significance of the kārēz lies in its continuous discharge throughout the year. In contrast, irrigation systems that rely on surface water runoff can completely cease to discharge water during the dry season.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KĀRIZ iv. ORIGIN AND DISSEMINATION

  Xavier de Planhol

  One very common technique is an underflow channel in a river valley, which captures water from the shallow aquifer formed by seepage from the watercourse.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KĀRIZ v. KĀRĒZ IN THE LATE 20TH CENTURY AND THEIR PROSPECTS

  Xavier de Planhol

  In 1990 it was estimated that the kārēz technique supplied water to around 1.5 million hectares of the planet’s total irrigated surface area, which constituted only the minor portion of approximately 0.6 percent.

• KARḴEH RIVER

  Eckart Ehlers

  the third longest river in Iran after the rivers Karun and Safidrud, flowing in the western provinces of the country. It rises from the Zagros mountain range. 

• KARNĀ

  Stephen Blum

  designation of three types of musical instrument, the most prestigious being long trumpets made of brass, gold, silver, or other metals. Two regional instruments of Iran are also called karnā. Like the metal karnā, the long reed trumpet of Gilān and Māzandarān lacks fingerholes.

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• KARRĀMIYA

  Aron Zysow

  the adherents to a theological and legal movement with a broad following in Khorasan and Afghanistan from the 10th to the 13th centuries, with its intellectual center in Nishapur (Nišāpur). 

• KARSĀSP

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  Avestan dragon-slayer, son of Sāma, and eschatological hero. In the Pahlavi and Zoroastrian Persian traditions, several heroic feats are connected with him.

• KARŠIFT

  Céline Redard

  a mythical bird mentioned in the Avesta and other Zoroastrian texts.

• KARSĪVAZ

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø, Mahmoud Omidsalar

  in the old Iranian epic tradition the brother of the Turanian king, Afrāsiāb, and the man most responsible for the murder of the Iranian prince Siāvaš. 

• KART DYNASTY

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀL-E KART.

• KARTIR

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  a prominent Zoroastrian priest  in the second half of the 3rd century CE, known from his inscriptions and mentioned in Middle Persian, Parthian, and Coptic Manichean texts.

• KARTLI

  George Sanikidze

  region occupying most of eastern Georgia. The original name of Georgia (Sakartvelo) and the Georgian people (Kartvelebi) derive from Kartli. 

• KARUN RIVER i. Geography and Hydrology, ii

  Habib Borjian

  the largest river and the only navigable waterway in Iran. It rises in the Baḵtiāri Zagros mountains west of Isfahan, flows out of the central Zagros range, traverses the Khuzestan plain, and joins the Shatt al-Arab. 

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• KARUN RIVER iii. The Opening of the Karun

  Shabaz Shahnavaz

  With the intensification of the Anglo-Russian rivalry in the late 1800s over Iran’s geopolitical position and commercial resources, Great Britain began to exert immense pressure on the shah’s government to provide it with access to the Karun trade route. 

• KĀŠĀNI, ʿABD-AL-RAZZĀQ KHAN

  Mangol Bayat

  18th-century governor of Kashan under the Zand dynasty. 

• KĀŠĀNI, SAYYED ABU’L-QĀSEM

  Ali Rahnema

  (1877-1962), the leading political cleric during the critical period of 1941-53. Until the departure of Reza Shah in 1941, Kāšāni stayed on the sidelines of domestic Iranian politics. Mohammad Reza Shah ascended to his father’s throne on 16 September.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KĀŠEF ŠIRĀZI

  J. T . P. de Bruijn

  Persian writer on ethics and poet of the Safavid period (b. Karbalā, ca. 1592; d. Ray, ca. 1653). 

• KĀŠEF-AL-ḠEṬĀʾ, JAʿFAR

  Hamid Algar

  (1743-1812), Shiʿi scholar and jurist, broadly influential in both Iraq and Persia. His cognomen, meaning “remover of the veil,” alludes to one of his best known works.

• KĀŠEF-AL-ḠEṬĀʾ, MOḤAMMAD ḤOSAYN

  Hamid Algar

  (1877-1954), descendant of the great Shiʿite jurist of the early Qajar period, Sheikh Jaʿfar Kāšef-al-Ḡeṭāʾ, prodigious and versatile author, teacher, and lecturer.

• KĀŠEF-AL-SALṬANA

  Ranin Kazemi

  also known as Čāykār (tea planter), Qajar diplomat, reformer, author, constitutionalist, and promoter of tea cultivation (1865-1929)

• KĀŠEFI

  Osman G. Özgüdenlı

  (d. 15th century), author of the epic poem Ḡazā-nāma-ye Rum on the lives of the Ottoman sultans Morād II (r. 1421-44 and 1446-51) and Moḥammad II (r. 1444-46 and 1451-81).

• KĀŠEFI, KAMĀL-AL-DIN ḤOSAYN WĀʿEẒ

  M. E . Subtelny

  prolific prose-stylist of the Timurid era, religious scholar, Sufi figure, and influential preacher (b. Sabzavār, ca. 1436-37; d. Herat, 1504-5).

• KĀSEMI, NOṢRAT-ALLĀH

  Mostafa Alamouti and EIr.

  (1908-1996), physician, poet, writer, orator, and politician.

• KAŠF AL-ASRĀR

  Cross-reference

  wa ʿoddat al-abrār of Abu’l-Fażl Rašid-al-Dīn Meybodi. See MEYBODI.

• KAŠF AL-LOḠĀT WA’L-EṢṬELĀḤĀT

  Solomon Bayevsky

  (Revealing [of the meaning] of words and terminology), title of a Persian dictionary compiled in India before 1608.

• KAŠF AL-MAḤJUB of Hojviri

  Jawid Mojaddedi

  the only surviving work of Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAli b. ʿOṯmān Hojviri (d. between 1073 and 1077) and the oldest surviving independent manual of Sufism written in Persian.

• KAŠF AL-MAḤJUB of Sejzi

  Hermann Landolt

  (“Unveiling the hidden”), the Persian version of an Ismaʿili treatise originally written in Arabic by the 10th century dāʾi. 

• KAŠF AL-ẒONUN

  Kioumars Ghereghlou

  (“Unveiling of suppositions”), a major bibliographical dictionary in Arabic, composed by Kāteb Čelebi Moṣṭafā b. ʿAbd-Allāh, also known as Ḥāji Ḵalifa (1609-57).

• KAŠF O ŠOHUD

  Cyrus Ali Zargar

  (“unveiling and witnessing”), terms commonly used by Muslim mystics to describe the acquisition of esoteric knowledge and the constant first-hand encountering of the divine presence. 

• KAŠF-E ḤEJĀB

  Cross-reference

  See VEILING AND UNVEILING. Forthcoming.

• KAŠFI, MIR MOḤAMMAD ṢĀLEḤ ḤOSAYNI

  Sunil Sharma

  (d. 1651), calligrapher and poet in Mughal India. Authored several works in verse and prose.

• KĀŠḠARI, SAʿD-AL-DIN

  Hamid Algar

  (d. 1456), propagator of the Naqšbandi order in Timurid Herat, noteworthy primarily as the initiator ofʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Jāmi into the path.

• KASHAN

  Multiple Authors

  historical city and a sub-province of the province of Isfahan on the north-south axial route of central Iran.

• KASHAN i. GEOGRAPHY

  Habibollah Zanjani and EIr.

  Kashan is poor in flora and fauna. The most typical plants are bushes and shrubs spreading over the steppes, but the landscape becomes richer with increased elevation; Characteristic trees are pine, cypress, black poplar, elm, and ash.

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• KASHAN ii. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

  Xavier de Planhol

  To the northeast of the well-watered mountain ranges of western and southern Iran, a line of bountiful oases which have given rise to important urban areas stretches along the piedmont bordering the desert basins of central and southeastern Iran.

• KASHAN iii. History to the Pahlavi Period

  Mehrdad Amanat

  of the city to the Pahlavi period.

• KASHAN iv. POPULATION

  Habibollah Zanjani

  In line with the general trends in Iran’s demography, the urban population in Kashan has continued to increase, while the rural population has steadily decreased. Such trends have been more significantly felt in Kashan Sub-province than the rest of the country.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KASHAN v. ARCHITECTURE (1) URBAN DESIGN

  Mohammad- Reza Haeri and EIr.

  The city of Kashan, similar to other older Iranian cities, preserved its traditional architectural features and urban design into the early 20th century.

• KASHAN v. ARCHITECTURE (2) HISTORICAL MONUMENTS

  Mohammad- Reza Haeri and EIr.

  The Zayn-al-Din Minaret is a rare Kashan landmark surviving from the Saljuqid period. Its height, which is recorded at one time to have reached 47 meters, is now only about 22 meters.

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• KASHAN v. ARCHITECTURE (3) TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURE

  Mohammad- Reza Haeri and EIr.

  In line with the trend towards modernization in Iran’s recent history, most residential houses built by the middle classes in Kashan since 1950 comprise all or some of the following units: entrance, courtyard, living room, reception room, kitchen, lavatory, bath, bedroom, storage, staircase, and hall.

• KASHAN v. ARCHITECTURE (4) HISTORIC MANSIONS

  EIr.

  The design and major components of the historic mansions follow the general pattern of traditional architecture, but with larger spaces and more detailed architectural craftsmanship and luxurious elements.

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• KASHAN vi. THE ESBANDI FESTIVAL

  Habib Borjian

  An elaborate festival held in the Kashan region on the eve of the month Esfand.

• KASHAN vii. KASHAN WARE

  Margaret S. Graves

  Kashan, with its high-quality ceramic production in the medieval period, appears to have been a major site for the manufacture of fine wares between the 1170s and 1220s as well as later 13th and early 14th centuries.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KASHAN viii. RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES (1) JEWISH COMMUNITY

  Mehrdad Amanat

  Kashan was home to an important Jewish community and cultural center starting at least in the Safavid period.

• KASHAN viii. RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES (2) BAHAI COMMUNITY

  Mehrdad Amanat

  Like many Bahai communities in Iran, Kashan Bahais can trace their roots to the early years of the Babi movement.

• KASHAN ix. THE MEDIAN DIALECTS OF KASHAN

  Habib Borjian

  In the past few decades, rural Kashan has rapidly been shifting to Persian; most villages have already been partly or entirely persianized, and practically all Rāji speakers are bilingual.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KASHAN ix. THE MEDIAN DIALECTS OF KASHAN (2) URBAN JEWISH DIALECT

  Habib Borjian

  Kashan may be characterized as exclusively Persian speaking and Muslim from the time when the city was abandoned by its Jewry, who spoke a variety of Central dialects.

• KASHGAR

  Pavel Lurje

  (Kāšḡar), town in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, in the westernmost extremity of the Tarim Basin.

• KASHMIR

  Multiple Authors

  This entry is divided into five articles: i. Introduction. ii. Persian language in Kashmir. iii. Persian language in the state administration. iv. Persian elements in Kashmiri. v. Persian influence on Kashmiri art.

• KASHMIR i. INTRODUCTION

  Siegfried Weber

  Iranian influence in and beyond the region of Kashmir is a long-term phenomenon. Inscriptions in Sogdian, Parthian, and Middle Persian demonstrate pre-Islamic contacts there with Iranian-speakers.

• KASHMIR ii. PERSIAN LANGUAGE IN KASHMIR

  Siegfried Weber

  Persian was the basis of administrations all over western Asia and the highly prestigious language at the courts. Hence, Persian learning radiated into Kashmir and found a fertile soil after the initial impulse.

• KASHMIR iii. PERSIAN LANGUAGE IN THE STATE ADMINISTRATION

  Siegfried Weber

  Officially Persian became the court language in Kashmir during the 14th and 15th centuries.

• KASHMIR iv. Persian Elements in Kashmiri

  Omkar N. Koul

  Kashmir may have had cultural and trade relations with Persia from ancient times, but the influence of Persian language and culture did not dominate until the introduction of Islam during the 14th century.

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• KASHMIR v. PERSIAN INFLUENCE ON KASHMIRI ART

  Mehrdad Shokoohy

  The Iranian influence on the art and architecture of Kashmir is indirect, appearing in ancient times via Hellenistic and Kushan culture and later through Muslim India. 

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KASHTARITI

  M. Dandamayev

  (kaš-ta-ri-ti, Old Iranian Khshathrita), a city lord of Karkashshi in the Central Zagros mountains. during the reign of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE).

• KĀŠI

  Cross-Reference

  and Kāšisāzi. See CERAMICS xiv. THE ISLAMIC PERIOD, 11TH-15TH CENTURIES.

• KĀŠI, ḠIĀṮ-AL-DIN

  George Saliba

  ḠIĀṮ-AL-DIN JAMŠID B. MASʿUD B. MOḤAMMAD (ca. 1386-1429), mathematician, astronomer, and scientific instrument-maker of the highest rank.

• KĀŠI, MUSĀ KHAN

  Houman Sarshar

  Jewish master of Persian classical music, teacher, and innovative kamānča player also known for his mellow singing voice.

• ḴAṢIBI

  Yaron Friedman

  (d. 969), founder of Noṣayrism. The mystical Shiʿite sect whose present-day followers in Syria and southern Turkey call themselves ʿAlawis.

• KAŠK

  Francoise Aubaile-Sallenave

  (Ar. kešk, Turk. keşk), Persian term used primarily for a popular processed dairy food but also applied to various grain products, both in Iran and widely in the Middle East.

• KAŠKUL

  Pending

  an oval-shaped bowl carried by dervishes. Forthcoming online.

• KAŠKUL-E ŠAYḴ BAHĀʾI

  Devin J. Stewart

  the title of a large literary anthology compiled by Shaikh Bahāʾ-al-Din Moḥammad ʿĀmeli, commonly known as Shaikh Bahāʾi, the gifted polymath and leading jurist of the Safavid empire during most of the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1587-1629).

• KAŠKULI BOZORG

  Pierre Oberling

  one of the five major tribes of the Qashqāʾi (Qašqāʾi) tribal confederacy of Fārs province.

• KASMĀʾI, MIRZĀ ḤOSAYN

  Pezhmann Dailami

  (1862-1921), a constitutionalist active in the revolutionary movement in Gilan (1915-20), led by Mirzā Kuček Khan Jangali.

• KAŠMIRI, BADR-AL-DIN

  Devin Deweese

  a prolific writer active in Central Asia during the second half of the 16th century; he was closely linked with the eminent Juybāri shaikhs of Boḵārā.

• KASRA’I, HOSAYN SIAVASH

  Hušang Ettehād

  (1939-2003), a prolific, creative artist who produced many original works and never fell under the influence of other painters.

• KASRA’I, Siavash

  Kāmyār ʿĀbedi

  While still in high school, Kasra’i made friends with such political figures as Moḥsen Pezeškpur and Dāriuš Foruhar, and was influenced by their nationalistic sentiments. As a college student, however, he became enthralled by the ideals of a just and classless society based on Marxist doctrines, and became a loyal member of the Tudeh Party.

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• KASRAVI, AḤMAD

  Multiple Authors

  influential social thinker, prominent historian, a pioneer of Iran’s linguistic studies, well-known social and religious reformer with a sense of prophetic mission, and prolific author.

• KASRAVI, AḤMAD i. LIFE AND WORK

  Ali Reżā Manafzadeh

  born in Ḥokmāvār, a poor rural quarter in the suburbs of Tabriz, to Ḥāji Mir Qāsem, a small merchant in a family of religious functionaries.

• KASRAVI, AḤMAD ii. ASSASSINATION

  Moḥammad Amini

  The surge in activities of Islamic groups and the intensification of the rhetoric of mullahs at mosques coincided with the escalation and sharpening of Kasravi’s criticism of the foundation of Shiʿite concepts and values.

• KASRAVI, AḤMAD iii. AS HISTORIAN

  Alireza Manafzadeh

  At the time when Kasravi began to write history, most historical research in Iran was carried out within the framework of political historiography with a nationalist purpose.

• KASRAVI, AḤMAD iv. AS LINGUIST

  Pending

  Pending online.

• KASRAVI, AḤMAD v. AS SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REFORMER

  Mohammad Amini

  Kasravi founded the “Society of Free Men” (Bāhamād-e āzādegān), announced his call for pākdini (pure faith)—born out of his sense of prophetic mission—and became the most outspoken intellectual against religious superstition and illusion. 

• KASRAVI, AḤMAD vi. ON MYSTICISM AND PERSIAN SUFI POETRY

  Lloyd Ridgeon

  By the turn of the 20th century the Sufi tradition in Iran no longer enjoyed the popularity and following that it attracted in previous centuries.

• KASRAVI, AḤMAD vii. A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SURVEY

  EIr. and M. Amini

  Aḥmad Kasravi was a prolific writer. From the age of 25, when he began to write in Tabriz in 1915, until his assassination 30 years later in 1946.

• ḴĀṢṢ BEG

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  ARSLĀN B. PALANG-ERI, Turkish ḡolām who became the ḥājeb “chamberlain” and court favorite of the Great Saljuq Sultan Masʿud b. Moḥammad b. Malek Šāh (r. 1134-52).

• ḴĀṢṢ O ʿĀM

  Cross-Reference

  See CLASS SYSTEM iv. MEDIEVAL PERIOD.

• ḴĀṢṢA

  Willem Floor

  The so-called ḵāleṣa or public crown lands (confiscated or abandoned land) was part of the ḵāṣṣa holdings, and often the dividing line between the two was blurred. Both stood in contrast to amlāk-e divāni or mamālek, which referred to state lands. During the 18th century the term ḵāṣṣa, as well as divāni and mamālek, fell into disuse.

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• KAŠŠI, ABU ʿAMR MOḤAMMAD

  Liyakat Takim

  an Imami traditionist and an important figure in Shiʿite biographical literature (rejāl).

• KASSITES

  Ran Zadok

  a people who probably originated in the Zagros and who ruled Babylonia in the 16th-12th centuries BCE.

• KAŠVĀD

  Mahmoud Omidsalar

  the name of the ancestor of the Gōdarziān clan of heroes in the Šāh-nāma.

• KĀṮ

  Habib Borjian

  the old capital of Chorasmia, situated by the Oxus/Āmu Daryā river. Kāṯ owes both its glory and demise to the Oxus, an unending source of sustenance as well as destruction in human history.

• KATA

  Etrat Elahi and EIr

  a simple, everyday rice dish characteristic for the Caspian provinces, Gilan and Mazanderan.

• KATĀYUN

  Mahnaz Moazami

  a mythological figure in the Šāh-nāma and in the Bundahišn. In the Šāh-nāma, Katāyun is the daughter of the emperor of Rum who marries Goštāsp while he is in exile.

• KĀTEB

  Cross-Reference

  "secretary, scribe." See DABIR.

• ḴAṬIB

  Cross-Reference

  See ḴOṬBA, EMĀM-E JOMʿA.

• ḴAṬIB ROSTAM DEDE

  Osman G. Özgüdenli

  Ottoman Sufi, writer, and poet, author of the Wasila al-maqāṣed elā aḥsan al-marāṣed, a Persian-Turkish dictionary.

• KATIBA

  Cross-Reference

  "inscription." See CALLIGRAPHY.

• KAṮĪR DYNASTY

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀL-E KAṮĪR.

• KATIRĀ

  Amir Kiumarsi and Bahram Grami

  (gum tragacanth), a plant exudate widely used as a natural emulsifier and thickener by the food, drug, and other industries. It is also called ṣamḡ-e qannād.

• ḴATM AL-ḠARĀʾEB

  Anna Livia Beelaert

  the only maṯnawi written by the poet Ḵāqāni Šervāni; its final version dates from 552/1157. 

• ḴAṬMI

  Ahmad Aryavand and Bahram Grami

  (or ḵeṭmi), “marshmallow,” Althaea officinalis L. of the family Malvaceae (the mallow family), an important pharmaceutical plant.

• ḴATNA

  Cross-reference

  See CIRCUMCISION.

• KATPATUKA

  Cross-reference

  See CAPPADOCIA.

• ḴAṬṬ-E FĀRSI

  Cross-reference

  See IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS. (3) WRITING SYSTEMS.

• ḴAṬṬ-E MIḴI

  Cross-reference

  See CUNEIFORM SCRIPT.

• ḴAṬṬĀBIYA

  Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi

  an extremist Shiʿite sect named after Abu’l-Ḵaṭṭāb al-Asadi (killed ca. 755) who for some time was an authorized representative of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādeq (d. ca. 765) in Kufa.

• ḴATTĀʾI, ʿALI-AKBAR

  Cross-reference

  See ḴETTĀʾI, ʿALI-AKBAR (pending).

• KATTĀN

  Cross-reference

  See LINEN (pending).

• ḴAṬṬĀTI

  Cross-reference

  See CALLIGRAPHY.

• ḴĀTUN

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a title of high-born women in the pre-modern Turkish and Persian worlds.

• ḴĀTUNĀBĀDI, MIR ʿABD-AL-ḤOSAYN

  Kioumars Ghereghlou

  (1630-94), Persian historian and author of the chronicle Waqāyeʿ al-senin wa’l-aʿwām.

• ḴĀTUNI, ABU ṬĀHER

  cross-reference

  See ABU ṬĀHER ḴĀTUNI.

• KĀVA

  Mahmud Omidsalar

  the name of a heroic blacksmith in the Šāhnāma who rebels against the tyrant Żaḥḥāk and helps Ferēdun wrest the kingdom from him.

• KĀVA NEWSPAPER

  Iraj Afšār

  In this period, Germany, with no apparent interests in Iran, was favored by nationalist Iranians, who believed that it was the one that could free Iran from the political and economic domination of Great Britain and Russia.  The name of the paper recalled Kāva, the legendary hero who rose against Żaḥḥāk, the bloodthirsty tyrant.

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• ḴĀVARĀN-NĀMA

  Multiple Authors

  a Persian religious epic poem composed by Ebn Ḥosām Ḵᵛāfi or Ḵusfi.

• ḴĀVARĀN-NĀMA i. The Epic Poem

  Julia Rubanovich

  (ḴĀVAR-NĀMA) a Persian religious epic poem composed by Ebn Ḥosām Ḵᵛāfi or Ḵusfi.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• ḴĀVARĀN-NĀMA ii. The Illustrated Manuscripts

  Raya Shani

  illustrated manuscripts of Ḵāvarān-nāma from Iran, Turkey, and India

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• ḴĀVARI KĀŠĀNI

  Mehrdad Amanat

  preacher, poet, journalist, and constitutional activist. Ḵāvari learned the fundamentals of traditional learning from his preacher father, Sayyed Hāšem Wāʿeẓ.

• KAVI

  cross-reference

  See KAYĀNIĀN.

• ḴĀVIĀR

  Cross-reference

  See CAVIAR.

• KAVIR

  Cross-Reference

  Persian word meaning "desert." See DESERT.

• KĀVUS

  Cross-reference

  See KAYĀNIĀN.

• KAWĀD I

  Nikolaus Schindel

  Sasanian king, son of Pērōz I. This entry is divided into two sections:  i. Reign. ii. Coinage.

• KAWĀD I i. Reign

  Nikolaus Schindel

  The reign of Kawād I, lasting with an interruption of some three years from 488 to 531, is a turning point in Sasanian history.

• KAWĀD I ii. Coinage

  Nikolaus Schindel

  Since the reign of Jāmāsp interrupts the two regnal periods of Kawād I, and because of marked differences between the two, they should be treated separately. Kawād employs only one obverse and one reverse type during his first reign. The obverse shows the king’s bust to the right wearing a crown consisting of a crescent and two mural elements. 

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• KAWĀD II

  Cross-Reference

  Sasanian king (r. 628), son of  ḴOSROW II.   See ŠIRUYA (entry pending).

• ḴAWARNAQ

  Renate Würsch

  a medieval castle built in the vicinity of the ancient city of al-Ḥira by Laḵmid rulers of Iraq to whose name frequent references has been made in pre-modern Persian literary works.

• KAY

  Cross-reference

  See KAYĀNIĀN.

• KAY KĀVUS

  Cross-reference

  See KAYĀNIĀN.

• KAY ḴOSROW

  Cross-reference

  See KAYĀNIĀN.

• KAY-ḴOSROW KHAN

  Hirotake Maeda

  (1674-1711), Georgian royal prince of the Kartlian branch, also known as Ḵosrow Khan.

• KAY QOBĀD

  Cross-reference

  See KAYĀNIĀN.

• ḴAYĀL, Mir Moḥammad-Taqi

  Mohammad Sohayb Arshad

  (d. 1759), Indian author of a collection of historical and fictitious stories composed in Persian in fifteen volumes over fourteen years and titled Bustān-e ḵayāl.

• KAYĀNIĀN

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  (Kayanids), in the early Persian epic tradition a dynasty that ruled Iran before the Achaemenids, all of whom bore names prefixed by Kay from Avestan kauui.

• KAYĀNIĀN i. Kavi: Avestan kauui, Pahlavi kay

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  Kavi is the Indo-Iranian term for “(visionary) poet.”  The term may be older than Indo-Iranian, if Lydian kaveś and the Samothracean title cited by Hesychius as koíēs or kóēs are related.

• KAYĀNIĀN ii. The Kayanids as a Group

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  References to the kauuis in the Avesta are found in the yašts in the lists of heroes who sacrificed to various deities for certain rewards.

• KAYĀNIĀN iii. Kauui Kauuāta, Kay Kawād, Kay Kobād (Qobād)

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  Kauui Kauuāta has no epithets in the Avesta to describe him, and the descriptions in the Pahlavi sources are mostly vague. His seed is from the xwarrah; he was the first to establish kingship in Iran; he was godfearing and a good ruler. According to a notice in the Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr, he may have married Wan, daughter of Gulaxš.

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• KAYĀNIĀN iv. “Minor” Kayanids

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  The Avesta contains no information on Aipi.vahu, Aršan, Pisinah, and Biiaršan, but, according to the Pahlavi tradition, Abīweh was the son of Kawād and the father of Arš, Biyarš (spelled <byʾlš>), Pisīn, and Kāyus.

• KAYĀNIĀN v. Kauui Usan, Kay-Us, Kay Kāvus

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  The story of Kay Us’s madness is found in two versions. According to the Bundahišn, his mind was disturbed so that he tried to go up and do battle with the sky, but he fell down and the xwarrah was stolen from him; he devastated the world with his army, until they caught and bound him by deception in the land of Šambarān.

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• KAYĀNIĀN vi. Siiāuuaršan, Siyāwaxš, Siāvaš

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  Siiāuuaršan, “the one with black stallions,” is listed in the Avesta in Yašt 13.132 as a kauui and the third with a name containing aršan “male.” 

• KAYĀNIĀN vii. Kauui Haosrauuah, Kay Husrōy, Kay Ḵosrow

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  According to Ṯaʿālebi, having brought order to the earth, worrying that he might be subjected to hubris like several of his predecessors, Kay Ḵosrow left to wander, and no one heard any more from him.

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• KAYĀNIĀN viii. Kay Luhrāsp, Kay Lohrāsb

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  In the Avesta, Vištāspa’s father is Auruuaṯ.aspa, who is mentioned only once, when Zarathustra asks Anāhitā for the ability to make Vištāspa, son of Auruuaṯ.aspa, help the daēnā along with thoughts, words, and deeds, a wish he is granted. 

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• KAYĀNIĀN ix. Kauui Vištāspa, Kay Wištāsp, Kay Beštāsb/Goštāsb

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  The name Vištāspa presumably means “he who gives the horses free rein” (víṣitāso áśvāḥ “horses let loose or given free rein”), which agrees with the description of Vištāspa as the prototypical winner of the chariot race in Yašt 5.132.

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• KAYĀNIĀN x. The End of the Kayanids

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  In the Pahlavi texts. The Bundahišn only records that, when Wahman, son of Spandyād, came to the throne, Iran was a wasteland, and the Iranians were quarreling with one another.

• KAYĀNIĀN xi. The Kayanids and the Kang-dez

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  According to the Pahlavi texts, Kay Siāwaxš built the Kang castle (Kang-diz) by miraculous power (Pahlavi Rivāyat: with his own hands, by means of the [Kavian] xwarrah and the might of Ohrmazd and the Amahrspands).

• KAYĀNIĀN xii. The Kavian XˇARƎNAH

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  The nature of the Avestan xᵛarənah and its three subtypes, the Aryan (airiiana), the “unseizable” (? axᵛarəta), and the Kavian (kāuuaiia).

• KAYĀNIĀN xiii. Synchronism of the Kayanids and Near Eastern History

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  The desire of the medieval historians to fit all the ancient narratives into one and the same chronological description of world history from the creation led them to coordinate the Biblical, Classical, and Iranian sources.

• KAYĀNIĀN xiv. The Kayanids in Western Historiography

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  Henry C. Rawlinson contrasted the “distorted and incomplete allusions to Jemshíd and the Kayanian monarchs” with “authentic history,” and Friedrich Spiegel called the Kayanids partly purely mythical, partly legendary.

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• KAYĀNSĪH

  A. Panaino

  Pahlavi form of the name of a mythical sea, Av. Kąsaoiia-, connected in tradition with the Hāmun lake. According to Later Av. sources it is from the Kąsaoiia that the Saošiiaṇt Astuuat̰.ərəta- will rise. 

• KAYFI SABZAVĀRI

  Sunil Sharma

  Persian poet, also known as Kayfi Sistāni and Kayfi Now-Mosalmān.

• KAYHAN

  EIr.

  a leading daily newspaper published in Tehran from 1942 until the 1979 Revolution. Since then, it has been published under the patronage of the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. Kayhan of London was foundedin 1984 as a weekly newspaper; it has continued to be published as a monarchist newspaper for Iranians in Diaspora.

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• KAYKĀVUS B. ESKANDAR

  J.T.P. de Bruijn

  author of a famous Mirror for Princes, best known as the Qābus-nāma, although other, more general titles such as Naṣiḥat-nāma, or Pand-nāma, also occur in the sources. 

• KAYKĀVUS B. HAZĀRASP

  Cross-reference

  See BADUSPANIDS.

• ḴAYMA

  Cross-reference

  See TENTS.

• KAYOMARṮ

  Cross-reference

  See GAYŌMART.

• ḴAYRḴᵛĀH HERĀTI

  Farhad Daftary

  Nezāri Ismaʿili dāʿi, author, and poet (15th-16th centuries).

• KAYSĀNIYA

  Sean W. Anthony

  occasionally referred to also as Moḵtāriya, the Shiʿite sectarian movement(s) emerging from the Kufan revolt of Moḵtār b. Abi ʿObayd Ṯaqafi in 66-67/685-87.

• ḴAZʿAL KHAN

  Shahbaz Shahnavaz

  (Shaikh Ḵazʿal, also known as Moʿez-al-Salṭana, Sardār Aqdas), chieftain of the Banu Kaʿb tribe of Khuzestan (1861-1936).

• KĀZARUNIYA

  Hamid Algar

  a Sufi order (ṭariqat) so named after Abu Esḥāq Kāzaruni, alternatively designated as Esḥāqiya, especially in Turkey, or more rarely as Moršediya.

• KĀẒEM, MUSĀ

  Cross-reference

  Imam. See MUSĀ B. JAʿFAR (pending).

• KĀẒEM RAŠTI

  Armin Eschraghi

  (d. 1844), student and successor of Shaikh Aḥmad b. Zayn-al-Din Aḥsāʾi and head of the Šayḵi movement.  The main sources for Rašti’s biography are some of his own works which contain autobiographical information.

• KĀẒEM RAŠTI, MALEK-AL-AṬEBBĀʾ

  Hormoz Ebrahimnejad

  one of the high-ranking traditional physicians in 19th-century Iran.

• KAZEMAYN

  Meir Litvak

  a suburban town in the northwest of Baghdad and one of the four Shiʿite shrine cities in Iraq, known in Shiʿi Islam as ʿatabāt-e ʿāliāt.

• KĀẒEMI, ḤOSAYN

  Vida Nassehi-Behnam

  (1924-1996), painter. He was part of a group of painters who started a modern movement in painting in Persia. They opened the first art gallery, Apādānā, in Tehran (1949) where they offered courses in painting and organized lectures and exhibitions. It became also a meeting place for artists and intellectuals.

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• ḴĀZENI, ABU’L-FATḤ

  Faiza Bancel

  astronomer, mathematician, and mechanist originally from the city of Marv in Khorasan.

• KAZERUN

  Multiple Authors

  city and sub-province in the province of Fars, west of Shiraz. This entry is divided into the following three sections: i. Geography. ii. History. iii. Old Kazerun dialect.

• KAZERUN i. Geography

  Jean Calmard

  Kazerun is located in the southwestern Zagros range, which is oriented northwest-southeast in the normal folding zone and is seismically active.  Kazerun comprises contrasting climates; there is a cold zone in the mountainous north, with summits up to 3,000 m, and a warm zone in the south, with elevations less than 2,000 m.

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• KAZERUN ii. History

  Jean Calmard

  From late Safavid times, European travelers provided valuable information on Kazerun (variously spelled) and its region. 

• KAZERUN iii. Old Kazerun Dialect

  ʿAlī Ašraf Ṣādeqī

  The old dialect of the city of Kazerun was commonly used by the local people up to around the 14th-15th centuries. 

• KĀZERUNI FAMILY

  Habib Borjian

  Kāzeruni’s fortune was made through his investments in the textile industry, which had long been a major industry in Isfahan but had lost ground to British and Russian cotton imports.  Kāzeruni stood out among the nationalist merchants and landowners who launched new campaigns to revive Isfahan’s cotton production and textile industry.

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• ḴAZINADĀR

  Willem Floor

  title of the royal treasurer since the early Islamic period.

• KĒD

  NICHOLAS SIMS-WILLIAMS

  Pahlavi and Bactrian word with meanings ranging from “soothsayer” to “priest,” probably derived from OIran.

• KÉGL, SÁNDOR

  Miklos Sarkozy

  (b. Szúnyog, Hungary, 1 December 1862; d. Áporka, Hungary, 28 December 1920), Hungarian orientalist, polymath, and bibliophile who devoted a major part of his studies to Persian literature.

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• KELĀRDAŠT

  Cross-reference

  (or Kalārdašt), see KALĀRESTĀQ.

• ḴELʿAT

  Willem Floor

  (Ar. ḵelʿa, pl. ḵelaʿ), term used in Iran, India, Central Asia for gifts, but in particular a robe of honor.

• KELIDAR

  Mohammad Reza Ghanoonparvar

  a monumental novel of nearly three thousand pages in five volumes consisting of ten books published over the period 1978-84 by Maḥmud Dawlatābādi, the noted Iranian novelist and ardent social realist.

• KELIM (GELIM)

  Sumru Belger Krody

  a kind of flat-woven carpet employed by settled and nomadic families for a host of uses, primarily but not exclusively for covering household items and furnishing the interior of dwellings.

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• KEMĀḴ

  Hurivash Ahmadi Dastgerdi and EIr.

  a town and fortress in eastern Anatolia that was often involved in the border wars of the early Islamic period.

• KENT, ROLAND GRUBB

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  American scholar of Indo-European studies, who specialized also in Old Persian studies. He went to Berlin and Munich universities to continue for two years his classical studies, including (apart from the languages) Greek epigraphy, history, and archeology.

• KÉPES, GÉZA

  András Bodrogligeti

  (1909-1989), Hungarian poet and translator of Persian poetry. He was the son of a blacksmith and proud of his origins, claiming that the legacy of his father’s craftsmanship as a skilled artisan.

• KEPHALAIA

  Iain Gardner

  genre of literature developed by the Manichean communities in the early Sasanian empire, primarily preserved by two papyrus codices in Coptic translation from Egypt dating to the early fifth century CE.

• ḴERAD-NĀMA

  Dariush Kargar and EIr.

  title given to a compilation of Persian texts on practical philosophy dated to the 6th/12th century.

• KEREŠMA

  Gen’ichi Tsuge

  a musical term denoting a guša, or a metric section within a guša, based on any dastgāh.

• KERIYA

  Alain Cariou

  Because of the Chinese government program for urban development, Uighur neighborhoods are consistently demolished to make way for straight avenues and banal, modern buildings.  Moreover, the Chinese government is promoting the migration of Han Chinese.

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• KERMAN

  Multiple Authors

  province of Iran located between Fars and Sistan va Balučestān; also the name of its principal city and capital.

• KERMAN i. GEOGRAPHY

  Habib Borjian

  Kerman Province is situated in southeast Iran. It is divided into two distinct macroclimates, sardsir (cold) in the upland north and garmsir (warm) in the lowland south, generally speaking.

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• KERMAN ii. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

  Xavier de Planhol and Bernard Hourcade

  The Kerman basin, in which Kerman City is situated, is located at an elevation of about 1,700 m with land sloping very gently from northwest to southeast.  It is entirely surrounded by a series of high massifs.

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• KERMAN iii. POPULATION

  Habibollah Zanjani and 
Mohammad-Hossein Nejatian

  In 1956, the total population of the province was around 789,000 persons (of whom, 127,624 then belonged to Bandar Abbas), while in the 2011 population and housing census, it had increased to nearly 2,939,000.

• KERMAN v. HISTORY FROM THE ISLAMIC CONQUEST TO THE COMING OF THE MONGOLS

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  The Armenian geography written in the second half of the 8th century and traditionally attributed to Moses of Khoren places Kerman in the southern quarter of the Sasanian empire.

• KERMAN vii. HISTORY IN THE SAFAVID PERIOD

  Rudi Matthee

  Kerman is one of the few places in Iran that had long generated local Persian-language chronicles, and the 17th century was no exception. 

• KERMAN viii. HISTORY IN THE AFSHARID AND ZAND PERIOD

  James M. Gustafson

  Between the fall of the Safavids and the rise of the Qajar dynasty (ca. 1722-94), Kerman maintained a measure of stability and security under local rulers despite the rise and fall of dynastic states across the Iranian plateau.

• KERMAN ix. HISTORY IN THE QAJAR PERIOD

  James M. Gustafson

  Kerman's geographical position on the periphery of the Qajar empire (1795-1925), was at the center of numerous significant developments in this important transitional period in Iran's history.

• KERMAN xiv. Jewish Community of Kerman City

  Nahid Pirnazar and EIr

  In the late 18th century, according to the account of the Jewish community of Yazd compiled by Molla Aqābābā Damāvandi a century later, severe drought caused its members to move to Rafsanjān and Sirjān and the villages around Kerman. Thus the Jewish Quarter of nineteenth-century Kerman became mainly an offshoot of the community in Yazd.

• KERMAN xv. CARPET INDUSTRY

  James M. Gustafson

  Since the late 19th century, Kerman’s hand-woven, knotted pile carpets are widely regarded as among the finest in the world by art historians and collectors for the quality of their materials and workmanship. 

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• KERMAN xvi. LANGUAGES

  Habib Borjian

  The province of Kerman is characterized by two indigenous languages, Persian in the mountainous north and Garmsiri in the lowland south, supplemented by the Median-type dialects spoken by the Zoroastrian, Jewish, and possibly Turkish residence of the city of Kerman.

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• KERMANSHAH

  Multiple Authors

  a province in western Iran; also the name of its principal city and capital.

• KERMANSHAH i. GEOGRAPHY

  Habib Borjian

  Kermanshah Province, situated in western Iran, spreads over an area of 25,000 km² (9,560 square miles, roughly the size of Vermont), or 1.5 percent of the total area of the country.

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• KERMANSHAH iv. HISTORY TO 1953

  Jean Calmard

  The town and province of Kermanshah are located on the strategic travel route, later known as the “Khorasan Highway,” linking Mesopotamia to the Iranian plateau. This route was militarily and commercially important even in antiquity.

• KERMANSHAH vii. LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS

  Habib Borjian

  Kermanshah is linguistically characterized by a triad of Kurdish, Gurāni, and Persian within a multifaceted, areal-tribal-social setting; supplemented by Neo-Aramaic spoken in pockets by area Jewry, as well as an isolated Turkic dialect spoken in the Sonqor valley.

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• KERMANSHAH viii. THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

  Nahid Pirnazar

  Surviving the obscure period of the Middle Ages, the Jews of Kermanshah were not affected by the forced conversions under the Safavids.

• ḴERQA

  Erik S. Ohlander

  term for the tattered cloak, robe, or overshirt traditionally worn by the Sufis as a symbol of wayfaring on the mystical path.

• KEŠ

  Pavel Lurje

  (Kešš, Kašš), an important ancient and medieval city, located in the upper Kaškā-daryā valley, now Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan.

• KEŠAʾI DIALECT

  Habib Borjian

  the dialect spoken in the village of Keša, near Naṭanz, in Isfahan Province.

• Kesāʾi Marvazi

  J. T. P. de Bruijn

  (also vocalized Kasāʾi), 10th-century Persian poet.

• ḴEṢĀLI ČELEBI

  Osman G. Özgüdenli

  Ḥosayn, Ottoman poet and writer born in Budapest at an unknown date.  His divān is the only source of information about his life.

• KETĀB AL-ʿĀLEM WA’L-ḠOLĀM

  David Hollenberg

  (The Book of the sage and the youth), a work attributed to the Ismaʿili missionary Jaʿfar b. Manṣur-al-Yaman (d. ca. 960).

• KETĀB AL-EṢLĀḤ

  Shin Nomoto

  an early Ismaʿili work in Arabic by Abu Ḥātem Rāzi (d. 933-34).

• KETĀB AL-FOTUḤ

  ELTON L. DANIEL

  an important early Arabic historical text by Ebn Aʿṯam Kufi (d. 314/926?), which was translated, at least in part, into Persian towards the end of the 6th/12th century.

• KETĀB AL-NAQŻ

  Kazuo Morimoto

  a Twelver Shiʿite polemical work in Persian produced in Ray in the third quarter of the twelfth century by Qazvini Rāzi.

• KETĀB AL-RIĀŻ

  Faquir M. Hunzai

  a book by Ḥamid-al-Din Kermāni (d. after 411/1020), an Ismaʿili missionary, analyzing two other Ismaʿili texts, the Eṣlāḥ of Abu Ḥātem Rāzi (d. after 322/933-4) and the Noṣra of Abu Yaʿqub Sejestāni (d. after 360/970).

• KETĀB-E IQĀN

  Sholeh Quinn and Stephen N. Lambden

  a major work of Mirzā Ḥosayn-ʿAli Nuri Bahāʾ-Allāh (d. 1892) in defense of the religious claims of Sayyed ʿAli-Moḥammad the Bāb.

• KETĀBḴĀNA-YE MELLI-E TĀJIKESTĀN

  Evelin Grassi

   the National Library of Tajikistan. With its 28-stack rooms, the library has a capacity for ten million books. Manuscript holdings span seven centuries (13th-19th centuries) and include the works of outstanding Persian classical authors.

• ḴEṬĀY-NĀMA

  RALPH KAUZ

  “Book on China,” written by Seyyed ʿAlī Akbar Ḵeṭāʾī in Istanbul.

• KEYVĀNLU TRIBE

  Pierre Oberling

  a Kudish tribe of Khorasan. It was one of those Kurdish tribes that Shah ʿAbbās I forced to migrate from western Persia around 1600 for the purpose of fighting off the incursions of the Uzbeks.

• ḴEŻR

  Anna Krasnowolska

  a prophet known to Islamic written tradition and folklore, whose worship in Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia is connected with local calendar beliefs and fertility cults.

• KHACHIKIAN, Samuel

  Jamsheed Akrami

  Khachikian’s first film was Bāzgašt (The Return), a romantic melodrama that pitted a hardworking village boy serving an affluent family in the city against the family’s spoiled son in a rivalry over a young woman. The mawkish story shared formula of Iranian films of the period, but was technically more polished and fast-paced.

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• KHADEMI, Ali Mohammad

  Chapour Rassekh

  Khademi joined the Air Force in 1938, and continued pilot training. He was the first Iranian to receive a commercial pilot license from the British Civil Aviation Authority in 1948, and in 1957 he completed a training course at the U.S. Air Force University in Montgomery, Alabama.

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• KHADIV-JAM, HOSEYN

  EIr

  (1927-1986), Iranian translator and scholar of Persian and Arabic. His major publications range from translation of contemporary Arabic scholarship on Islamic philosophy to the critical edition of a number of major works in the fields of medieval philosophy and pre-modern history of Iran.

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• KHAGAN

  Étienne de la Vaissière

  a title that entered Persian and was used by medieval Muslim historians in reference to various rulers.

• KHAKSAR, Mansur

  Khosrow Davami

  poet, writer, editor and political activist. Khaksar had two eminent Persian poets, Maḥmud Mošref Tehrāni and Ḥassan Pastā, as his teachers in the last two years of high school. In 1959, his first poem was published in Omid-e Irān, a noted weekly journal published by Moḥammad Āṣemi in Tehran.

• KHALAJ

  Cross-Reference

  tribe and language. See ḴALAJ.

• KHALCHAYAN

  Lolita Nehru

  in Surxondaryo prov., southern Uzbekistan, site of a settlement and palace of the nomad Yuezhi, with paintings and sculptures of the mid-1st century BCE. The Yuezhi, and perhaps other nomad groups, overthrew the Hellenistic Greek dynasty which had ruled there since the mid-3rd century as successor to the post-Achaemenid governments of Alexander and the Seleucids.

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• KHALESI, MAHDI

  Omid Ghaemmaghami, and Mina Yazdani

  (1860-1925), a leading, outspoken, Kāẓemayn-based Shiʿite jurist from Iraq, whose close involvement in anti-British politics and opposition to British occupation in Iraq resulted in his exile to Iran.

• KHALILI, Abbas

  Cross-Reference

  (1895-1971), political activist, journalist, translator, poet and novelist. See ḴALILI, ʿABBĀS.

• KHALKHAL

  Multiple Authors

  southeasternmost district of Azerbaijan. 

• KHALKHAL i. The Town and District

  Marcel Bazin

  Mentions of Khalkhal and of some of its subdistricts and localities appeared relatively late in medieval geographical and historical chronicles. 

• KHALKHAL ii. Basic Population Data, 1956-2011

  Mohammad Hossein Nejatian

  Khalkhal has experienced a high rate of population growth, increasing more than sevenfold from a population of 5,422 in 1956 to 41,165 in 2011. 

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• KHAN

  Gene R. Garthwaite

  (ḵān), a Turkish high title indicating nobility.

• KHANLARI, PARVIZ

  ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Āḏarang and EIr

  scholar of Persian language and literature, poet, essayist, translator, literary critic, university professor, and founding editor of the periodical Soḵan.

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• KHANLARI, ZAHRA

  Zahra Khanloo

  (1913-1990), author, translator, literary scholar, and university professor. She was among the first women in Iran to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1939.

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• KHANSARI, MOHAMMAD

  Alvand Bahari

  (1922-2010), Persian logician and scholar and a permanent member of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature; his works range from Manṭeq-e ṣuri to translations of Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories and a critical edition of Mollā Ṣadrā’s Iqāẓ-al-nāʾemin.

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• KHARG ISLAND

  Multiple Authors

  an island and a district of Bušehr Province in the Persian Gulf.

• KHARG ISLAND i. Geography

  Habib Borjian

  situated in Persian Gulf at about 30 miles northwest of the port of Bušehr and 20 miles west of the port of Ganāva, stretches about 5 miles longitudinally and half of that at its widest point.

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• KHARG ISLAND ii. History and archeology

  D.T. Potts

  island in the Persian Gulf, situated at about 30 km northwest of Bandar-e Rig and 52 km northwest of Bušehr.

• KHARG ISLAND iii. Developments since the 1950s

  G. Mirfendereski

  In the years following World War II, Kharg was sparsely populated and Ḵārgu was uninhabited. Its preeminence as Iran’s principal oil export terminal began in the early 1950s when the island was connected to the Gačsārān oilfield on the mainland by way of the coastal town of Ganāva.

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• KHARGA OASIS

  Henry P. Colburn

  (Ar. Ḵārja), largest oasis in the Egyptian Western Desert, under Persian control during the Achaemenid Period.

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• KHARIJITES IN PERSIA

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  sect of early Islam which arose out of the conflict between ʿAli b. Abi Ṭāleb (r. 656-61) and Moʿāwiya b. Abi Sufyān (r. 661-80).

• KHATLON

  Habib Borjian

  one of the three provinces of Tajikistan, located in the southwestern part of the country. It was created in 1988 and consolidates the former provinces of Kulāb and Kurgan Tepe.

• KHAYYAM, OMAR

  Multiple Authors

  (ʿOMAR ḴAYYĀM, 1048-1131), celebrated polymath and poet, author of the Rubaiyat (Robāʿiāt).

• KHAYYAM, OMAR vi. Illustrations Of English Translations Of The Rubaiyat

  William H. Martin and Sandra Mason

  The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam contain some of the best-known verses in the world. The book is also one of the most frequently and widely illustrated of all literary works. The stimulus to illustrate Khayyam’s Rubaiyat came initially from outside Persia, in response to translations in the West.

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• KHAYYAM, OMAR ix. Translations into Italian

  Mario Casari

  The reception of Khayyam’s poetic work in Italy, as in the rest of Europe, was the result of the translation and rewriting of the English poet Edward FitzGerald (d. 1883) in the years 1859-79.  In Italy the more scholarly approach to Khayyam’s work by a few dedicated Iranists proceeded at a fitful pace over many decades.

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• KHAYYAM, OMAR xiii. Musical Works Based On The Rubaiyat

  William H. Martin and Sandra Mason

  The enduring popularity of the verses in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is reflected in the large number of musical works they have inspired.

• KHAYYAM, OMAR xiv. Impact On Literature And Society In The West

  Jos Biegstraaten

  The first scholar outside Persia to study Omar Khayyam was the English orientalist, Thomas Hyde (1636-1703).

• KHAYYAM, OMAR xv. As Mathematician

  Bijan Vahabzadeh

  Three mathematical treatises of Omar Khayyam have come down to us: (1) a commentary on Euclid’s Elements; (2) an essay on the division of the quadrant of a circle; (3) a treatise on algebra; he also wrote (4) the treatise on the extraction of the nth root of the numbers, which is not extant.

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• KHORASAN i. ETHNIC GROUPS

  Pierre Oberling

  The population of Khorasan is extremely varied, consisting principally of Persians, Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Mongols, Baluch, and smaller groups of Jews, Gypsies, and Lors.

• KHORDEH AVESTĀ

  William W. Malandra

  “The Little Avesta,” the name given to a collection of texts used primarily by the laity for everyday devotions.

• KHORRAMABAD

  Multiple Authors

  sub-province and capital city of Lorestan Province.

• KHORRAMABAD ii. Population, 1956-2011

  Mohammad Hossein Nejatian

  This article deals with the following population characteristics of Khorramabad: population growth from 1956 to 2011, age structure, average household size, literacy rate, and economic activity status.

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• KHORRAMSHAHR

  Multiple Authors

  (ḴORRAMŠAHR), a port city at the confluence of the Karun river and the Shatt al-Arab.

• KHORRAMSHAHR i. PHYSICAL AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

  Eckart Ehlers

  (ḴORRAMŠAHR), a port city at the confluence of the Karun river and the Shatt al-Arab.

• KHORRAMSHAHR ii. POPULATION, 1956-2011

  Mohammad Hossein Nejatian

  This article deals with the population growth of Khorramshahr from 1956 to 2011, age structure, average household size, literacy rate, and economic activity status.

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• KHOTAN

  Multiple Authors

  town (lat 37°06′ N, long 79°56′ E) and major oasis of the southern Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, historically an important kingdom with an Iranian-speaking population. 

• KHOTAN i. Geography

  Alain Cariou

  Located between the Kunlun mountains and the edge of the Taklamakan desert, the city of Khotan is today a major administrative center of the Khotan Prefecture, a vast area mostly concentrated in the piedmont oasis.

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• KHOTAN ii. HISTORY IN THE PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

  Hiroshi Kumamoto

  ancient Buddhist oasis/kingdom on the branch of the Silk Road along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim basin, in present-day Xinjiang, China.

• KHOTAN iv. KHOTANESE LITERATURE

  Mauro Maggi

  the body of writings contained in a large number of manuscripts and manuscript folios and fragments written from the 5th to the 10th century in the Khotanese language, the Eastern Middle Iranian language of the Buddhist Saka kingdom of Khotan on the southern branch of the Silk Route (in the present-day Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China).

• KHUJAND

  Keith Hitchins

  (Ḵojand), city in northwestern Tajikistan on the middle course of the Syr Daryā River, about 150 km south of Tashkent and near the entrance to the Farḡāna valley.

• KHUZESTAN viii. Dialects

  Colin MacKinnon

  The dialects spoken by the Iranian folk of the province appear to be of two basic types: Dezfuli-Šuštari, spoken in those two cities, and Baḵtiāri.

• KHWARAZMSHAHS i. Descendants of the line of Anuštigin

  Clifford Edmund Bosworth

  After the Saljuq takeover in Khwarazm in the early 1040s, the Saljuq Sultans appointed various governors in the province, including several Turkish ḡolām commanders.

• KIĀ, ṢĀDEQ

  Habib Borjian

  Kiā’s primary achievement was promotion and publicizing of a Persian national identity that embraced the pre-Islamic heritage—not atypical of his contemporaries who had received their formal education during the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi.  He taught and published, winning him reputation in society and eventually an appointment as the language academy’s president.

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• KIĀNI, Sayyed NĀDERŠĀH

  S. J. Badakhchani

  (d. 1970), 20th century Ismaʿili poet and writer of Afghanistan, born in Kulāb, southwestern Tajikistan. 

• KIDARITES

  Frantz Grenet

  a dynasty which ruled Tukharistan and later Gandhāra, probably also part of Sogdiana; the initial date is disputed (ca 390 CE for some modern authors, ca. 420-430 for others).

• KIEFFER, CHARLES MARTIN

  Daniel Septfonds

  (1923-2015), French linguist and ethnographer of Afghanistan.

• KILIZU

  Antonio Invernizzi

  capital of the Assyrian province of the same name, near the mound Qaṣr Šemāmok in northern Mesopotamia, where a Parthian necropolis was brought to light.

• KIMIĀ

  Pierre Lory

  “Alchemy.” Externally, the purpose of alchemy was the conversion of base metals like lead into silver or gold by means of long and complicated operations leading to the production of a mysterious substance, the ‘philosopher’s stone,’ able to operate the transmutation. 

• KING OF THE BENIGHTED

  NASRIN RAHIMIEH & DANIEL RAFINEJAD

  As Milani describes in his afterword to the English translation, Golshiri incrementally sent handwritten pages of the manuscript to Milani in California in the guise of personal letters, “to avoid the ever-watchful gaze of the Islamic censors.”

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• Kingship ii. Parthian Period

  Edward Dąbrowa

  Parthian kingship started with the Arsacids monarchy and was an original form of Oriental kingship. The royal ideology was created by combining elements of different provenance; Greek elements were systematically removed or relegated to be replaced by Iranian traditions.

• ḴIRI

  Ahmad Aryavand and Bahram Grami

  wallflower, a widely cultivated, sweet-smelling, ornamental plant of the mustard family, which often grows on old walls, rocks, and quarries, particularly limestone.

• KIRSTE, Johann Ferdinand Otto

  Michaela Zinko

  Johann Kirste received his primary and secondary education in Graz, and after graduating from high school (Gymnasium) in 1870, he enrolled at the University of Graz to study Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit with Karl Schenkl. From 1872 until 1874, in the traditional manner of the time, Kirste studied at several German universities to broaden his training.

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• KISH ISLAND

  D. T. Potts

  (Ar. Qeys), small island in the lower Persian Gulf, noted for its palm gardens.

• KOBRAWIYA i. THE EPONYM

  Hamid Algar

  Abu’l-Jannāb Aḥmad b.ʿOmar Najm-al-Din Kobrā, eponym of the Kobrawiya, was born in Ḵᵛārazm in 1145 or possibly a decade later.

• KOBRAWIYA ii. THE ORDER

  Hamid Algar

  The crystallization of a given line of Sufi tradition as an “order” should not be understood as imposing on all the spiritual descendants of the eponym a definitive and permanently binding choice of methods and emphases.

• ḴODĀYDĀDZĀDA, BĀBĀ-YUNOS

  Habib Borjian

  (b. ca. 1870-75, d. 1945), Tajik folk poet and singer. His exceptional skill in singing the Guruḡli stories on the dotār (a long-neck lute) won him great reputation throughout Tajikistan. According to his biographer, his performance would take hours from evening to dawn, with only short breaks to relax and eat, for several nights in a row. 

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• KOFRI

  Aḥmad Golčin Maʿāni

  pen name of the poet-calligrapher MAWLĀNĀ AMIR-ḤOSAYN TORBATI (d. 1607).

• KOFRI, Moḥammad Kermānšāhi

  Shireen Mahdavi

  (1829-1908), physician and surgeon, the son of Pir Moḥammad Zāreʿ, a merchant.

• KOH-I-NOOR

  Iradj Amini

  (Kuh-e Nur; lit. “Mountain of Light”), the most celebrated diamond in the world, with rich legendary and historical associations.

• ḴOʾI, MIRZĀ ʿALIQOLI

  Ulrich Marzolph

  (1815-ca. 1856), the most prolific illustrator of Persian lithographed books in the Qajar period. Educated in Tabriz, he published an edition of the Ḵamsa‑ye Neẓāmi.

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• ḴOJANDIS OF ISFAHAN

  David Durand-Guédy

  a prominent family of Šāfeʿi ulema, who were settled in Isfahan by the Saljuq grand vizier Neẓām-al-Molk.  They turned into the most important family and political actor in that city during the Saljuq period and continued to play a significant role up to the Mongol invasion.

• ḴOJESTĀNI, Aḥmad b. ʿAbd-Allāh

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  (d. 882), commander of the Taherids in Khorasan, and after the Ṣaffarid occupation of Nishapur in 873, a contender for power.

• KOJUR

  Multiple Authors

  historical district in the central Alborz, northwestern Māzandarān.  i. Historical geography.  ii. Language and culture.

• KOJUR i. Historical Geography

  Habib Borjian

  The historical district of Kojur covers roughly a quadrangle bounded by the Caspian Sea on the north, the Čālus River on the west, Nur valley on the south, and Suledeh valley on the east. 

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• KOJUR ii. Language

  Habib Borjian

  Two major languages of native Caspian and Kurdish dialects are spoken in Kojur. The Caspian dialect is structurally Mazandarani with some divergence. The Kurdish dialect is spoken by the Kurdish immigrants and remains unstudied.

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• KOJUR iii. The Calendar

  Habib Borjian

  The Ṭabari or Deylami year observed in Kojur consists of twelve months, thirty days each, plus five intercalary days called petak, concluding the year.

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• KOLAYNI

  Etan Kohlberg

  (d. 941), Abu Jaʿfar Moḥammad b. Yaʿqub b. Esḥāq Rāzi,  prominent Imami traditionist.

• KOLUKJĀNLU

  Pierre Oberling

  a Kurdish tribe in the Ḵalḵāl region of eastern Azerbaijan.

• KONDORI, MOḤAMMAD B. MANṢUR

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  (b. ca. 1024, d. 1064), vizier to Ṭoḡrel Beg (r. 1040-63), the first sultan of the Great Saljuqs, and, briefly, to Ṭoḡrel’s successor Alp Arslān (r. 1063-72).

• KONOW, STEN

  Fridrik Thordarson

  Konow was an all-around Indologist, whose extensive scholarly work covers most branches of Indian studies. His occupation with Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, where he edited half a dozen of volumes on various languages, resulted in a long series of studies of Tibeto-Burman, Munda and Dravidian languages.

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• KORA-SONNI

  Pierre Oberling

  a tribe in western Persian Azerbaijan.

• ḴORĀSĀNI, ĀḴUND

  Cross-Reference

  See AḴŪND MOLLĀ MOḤAMMAD-KĀẒEM ḴORĀSĀNĪ.

• ḴORĀSĀNI, MOLLĀ ṢĀDEQ

  Vahid Rafati

  (d. 1874), teacher, defender and promulgator of the Babi-Bahai faiths.

• KORK

  Rudi Matthee

  soft wool, also called Kermān wool, used for the manufacture of fine clothing and felt hats.

• KÖROĞLU

  Multiple Authors

  also Göroḡly, name of an early-17th-century folk hero and poet, whose stories are mainly known among the Turkic peoples; passed into the folk literature of the Armenians, Georgians, Kurds and Bulghars, and the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan and Khorasan.

• KÖROĞLU i. LITERARY TRADITION

  Hasan Javadi

  There are at least 17 versions of the Köroǧlu/Göroḡly tradition about a heroic bandit minstrel, but the Turkic versions of the story among the Azerbaijanis, the Turks of Anatolia, and the Turkmen, are most similar to each other regarding language and plot.

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• KÖROĞLU ii. PERFORMANCE ASPECTS

  Ameneh Youssefzadeh

  The traditional venues for the performance of the Köroǧlu/Goroḡli epic are life-cycle celebrations, private gatherings, and teahouses. In Azerbaijan and northern Khorasan, from the 17th century up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978, teahouses played a pivotal role in the diffusion and the preservation of the epic.

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• KOROSH

  Multiple Authors

  the name of a tribe scattered across southwestern Iran, whose language is closely related to southern varieties of Balochi.

• KOROSH i. The Korosh people

  Maryam Nourzaei, Erik Anonby, and Carina Jahani

  Korosh communities are found in villages near large towns and cities, and in the suburbs of these cities, across southwestern Iran. Their traditional livelihood is based on camel and goat husbandry.

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• KOROSH ii. Linguistic Overview of Koroshi

  Maryam Nourzaei, Carina Jahani, and Erik Anonby

  Koroshi can be described as a distinct subgroup within the Balochi macro-language, although it shares many features with southern dialects of Balochi. The Koroshi spoken in Fars Province (the ‘northern’ dialect) differs to some extent from varieties of the southern dialect.

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• ḴORRAMIS

  Patricia Crone

  adherents of a form of Iranian religion often identified as a survival or revival of the Zoroastrian heresy, Mazdakism.

• ḴORRAMIS IN BYZANTIUM

  Evangelos Venetis

  Iranians who fought the ʿAbbasid caliph Moʿtaṣem be’llāh (r. 833-41) and enrolled in the Byzantine army of the iconoclast emperor Theophilos I (r. 829-42).

• ḴORŠĀH B. QOBĀD ḤOSEYNI, NEẒĀM-AL-DIN

  Kioumars Ghereghlou

  a Hyderabad-based diplomat and historian of Iranian descent best known for his composition of a universal chronicle in Persian in the name of the Qoṭbšāhi ruler, Ebrāhim (r. 1550-80).

• ḴORŠĀH, ROKN-AL-DIN

  Farhad Daftary

  (1230-1257), Nezāri Ismaʿili imam and the last lord of Alamut.

• ḴOŠ MAḤAL

  Phillip B. Wagoner

  Tughluqid audience hall in the Deccan.

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• KOŠĀNIYA

  P. Lurje

  a medieval Sogdian town to the west of Samarkand. Its name is most probably related to the Yuezhi Kušān dynasty and its claimed heirs, such as the Kidarites.

• ḴOSROW I

  Multiple Authors

  Sasanian king (r. 531-79), son of Kawād I.

• ḴOSROW I i. LIFE AND TIMES

  Multiple Authors

  Sasanian king (r. 531-579). i. Life and Times (forthcoming).

• ḴOSROW I ii. REFORMS

  Zeev Rubin

  a series of reforms in Sasanian taxation and military organization, probably initiated already under Kawāḏ I.

• ḴOSROW I iii. COINAGE

  Nikolaus Schindel

  The reign of Ḵosrow I (531-79) is generally regarded as the heyday of the Sasanian empire, but his coinage marks the nadir of Sasanian coin art. The most noteworthy features are innovations in reverse typology. In the first type, the assistant figures are shown frontally, a totally new depiction; and they hold what appears to be a spear.

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• ḴOSROW II

  James Howard-Johnston

  the last great king of the Sasanian dynasty (590-628 CE). The principal extant history of the period, written in Armenia in the early 650s, was appropriately entitled The History of Khosrow. He is rightly accorded a great deal of space in the Šāh-nāma of Ferdowsi.

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• ḴOSROW KHAN GORJI QĀJĀR

  Hirotake Maeda

  (1785/86-1857), an influential eunuch (Ḵᵛāja) of the Qajar era, who lived in the period spanning the reigns Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah (r. 1797-1834) to Nāṣer-al-Din Shah (r. 1848-96).

• ḴOSROW MALEK

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  the last sultan of the Ghaznavid dynasty, in northwestern India, essentially in the Panjab, with his capital at Lahore. Various honorifics are attributed to him in the historical sources, in the verses of poets eulogizing him, and in the legends of his coins in the collections of the British Museum and Lahore

• ḴOSROW MIRZĀ QĀJĀR

  George Bournoutian

  (1813-1875), the seventh son of Crown Prince ʿAbbās Mirzā, who led an official Iranian delegation to the Tsarist court in St. Petersburg.

• ḴOSROW O ŠIRIN

  Paola Orsatti

  the second poem of Neẓāmi’s Ḵamsa, recounting the amorous relationship between the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II Parviz (r. 590-628 CE), and the beautiful princess Širin.

• ḴOSROWŠĀH B. BAHRĀMŠĀH

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  penultimate ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty, apparently still in Ghazna until the dynasty found its last home at Lahore in northwestern India at a date around or soon after the time of his death.

• ḴOṬBA

  Tahera Qutbuddin

  (oration, speech, sermon), a formal public address performed in a broad range of contexts by Muslims across the globe, rooted in the extemporaneously composed discourses of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia.

• ḴOTTAL

  Clifford Edmund Bosworth

  a province of medieval Islamic times on the right bank of the upper Oxus river in modern Tajikistan. A region of lush pastures, Ḵottal was famed for horse-breeding.

• KRÁMSKÝ, JIRÍ

  Jiri Bečka

  (1913-1991), Czech general linguist who specialized in Persian language studies. He then studied English and Persian (the latter under Professor J. Rypka) at the Charles University, Prague. 

• Křikavová, Adéla

  Jiri Bečka

  (1938-2002), Czech scholar of Iranian and particularly Kurdish studies.

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• KRYMSKIĬ, Agfangel Efimovich

  Natalia Chalisova

  (1871-1942) Ukrainian orientalist, author of over 1,000 works on the history and culture of Iran, Arab countries, Turkey, the Khanate of the Crimea, and Azerbaijan.

• KUFA

  Meir Litvak

  a city south of Baghdad.

• KUFTA

  Etrat Elahi

  popular Persian dish usually made of ground lamb or beef, and more recently, ground chicken or turkey in a mixture of herbs, spices, or other ingredients. There are two kinds of kufta: with rice and without.

• KUH-E ḴᵛĀJA

  Soroor Ghanimati

  a well preserved archeological site of chiefly Sasanian date, in the delta of the Helmand River, in the Iranian province of Sistān, near Zābol. The sacred precinct is located on the monumental upper part of the site and has inevitably attracted most attention.

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• KUHPĀYA

  Multiple Authors

  piedmont district east of Isfahan province, historically known as Vir.

• KUHPĀYA i. The District

  Habib Borjian

  Kuhpāya is a large piedmont boluk (3,000 km²) separated from Ardestān on the north and Nāʾin on the east respectively by the Fešārk and Kuhestān chains, extensions of the Karkas range.

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• KUHPĀYA ii. The Dialect

  Habib Borjian

  The dialects spoken in the Kuhpāya district belong to the Central Dialects, but in a narrower sense they are grouped together with the welāyati “provincial” idioms around the city of Isfahan.

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• KUKADARU, JAMSHEDJI SORAB

  Michael Stausberg and Ramiyar P. Karanjia

  (1831-1900), Parsi Zoroastrian priest. He was renowned for his spiritual powers, in particular with respect to healing and divination.

• KULĀB

  Habib Borjian

  or Kōlāb, city and former province (the greater part of medieval Ḵottal[ān]) of Tajikistan.

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• KULĀBI DIALECT

  Habib Borjian

  a distinct variant of Tajik spoken in Kulāb and adjoining districts.

• KUNDA(G)

  Mahnaz Moazami

  a demon in Zoroastrian literature;  in the Avesta, Sraoša or Ātar is implored to cast it into hell; in Middle Persian books, it is the steed of the sorcerers.  

• ḴUR

  Habib Borjian

  oasis on the southern border of the Great Desert in central Persia; the administrative center of the sub-province of Ḵur and Biābānak.

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• KURDISH LANGUAGE i. HISTORY OF THE KURDISH LANGUAGE

  Ludwig Paul

  from Old and Middle Iranian times, no predecessors of the Kurdish language are yet known; the extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to no earlier than the 16th century CE.

• KURDISH LANGUAGE ii. HISTORY OF KURDISH STUDIES

  Joyce Blau

  The article provides a brief account of Kurdish studies, which is a relatively recent academic field. The earliest studies of the Kurdish language and civilization were carried out by missionaries.

• KURDISH TRIBES

  Pierre Oberling

  Kurdish tribes are found throughout Persia, eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq, but very few comprehensive lists of them have been published.

• KURDISH WRITTEN LITERATURE

  Philip G. Kreyenbroek

  Written, “elevated” poetry traditionally played a less prominent role in Kurdish society than folk poetry (q.v.) did. The number of written literary works in Kurdish is far smaller than in the surrounding cultures.

• KURDOEV, QENĀTĒ

  Joyce Blau

  (1909-1985), Kurdish philologist and university professor.

• KURGAN TEPE

  Habib Borjian

  (Qūrḡonteppa in Tajik orthography; Kurgan-Tyube in Russian), provincial capital and former province of Tajikistan.

• KURUNI

  Pierre Oberling

  a Kurdish tribe of Kurdistan and Fārs. Most of the tribe was transplanted from Kurdistan to Fārs by Karim Khan Zand during the 1760s.

• KUŠ-NĀMA

  Jalal Matini

  part of a mythical history of Iran written between 1108 and 1111, dealing with the eventful life of Kuš the Tusked.

• KUSA

  Anna Krasnowolska

  a carnival character known to the medieval and modern folklore of central and western Persia.

• KUSHAN DYNASTY

  Multiple Authors

  the line of rulers in Bactria, Central Asia and northern India from the first century CE.

• KUSHAN DYNASTY i. Dynastic History

  A. D. H. Bivar

  During the first to mid-third centuries CE, the empire of the Kushans (Mid. Pers. Kušān-šahr) represented a major world power in Central Asia and northern India.

• KUSHAN DYNASTY ii. Inscriptions of the Kushans

  N. Sims-Williams and H. Falk

  The inscriptions issued by the Kushan rulers or in areas under their rule include texts in Bactrian, written in Greek script, and in Prakrit written in Brāhmī or Kharoṣṭhī script. Naturally enough, the Bactrian inscriptions are mostly found in Bactria and the Indian inscriptions in the Kushan territories to the south and east of the Hindu Kush.

• KUSHAN DYNASTY iii. Chronology of the Kushans

  H. Falk

  Dates in South Asia usually lack precision. Only in post-Kushan times do we meet with dates which are verifiably precise up to the day. The reason is that years can start in spring, the Indian way, or in the autumn, the Macedonian way. Years start with a certain month, but months can start with the full moon or with the new moon.

• KUSHAN DYNASTY iv. Coinage of the Kushans

  Robert Bracey

  The coins issued under these kings are presented in chronological order. The gradual visual evolution of the designs should make the numismatic connection apparent.

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• KUSHAN DYNASTY vi. Archeology of the Kushans: in India

  J. Pons

  The history of Kushan archeology south of the Hindu Kush probably begins in 1830 with the exploration of Maṇikiāla by G.-B. Ventura. 

• KUSHAN DYNASTY ix. Art of the Kushans

  Jessie Pons

  Artistic productions fall mainly into: works in the service of the dynasty and works in the service of religion—Buddhism, but also Brahmanism and Jainism. There exist few if any common features between statues of rulers from Khalchayan and a Buddhist relief from Gandhara.

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• KUSHANSHAHS

  Multiple Authors

  the title of rulers, known between the 3rd-century Sasanian conquests and the 4th/5th-century Hunnic invasions, in parts of eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and Gandhāra.

• KUSHANSHAHS i. History

  Étienne de La Vaissière

  The very first surely dated occurrence of the title Kushanshah seems to be in the Paikuli inscription of the Sasanian Narseh ca. 293 CE. It would show a reduction in status of the kings of the former Kushan territory from “king of kings” to “king,” itself linked with a Sasanian overlordship.

• KUSHANSHAHS ii. Kushano-Sasanian Coinage

  Nikolaus Schindel

  The name Kušāno-Sasanian is applied to coin issues in gold, silver, and bronze struck by rulers bearing Sasanian dynastic names who call themselves Kušānšāhs.

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• ḴUŠNAWĀR/ḴUŠNAWĀZ

  EIr.

  name given in some sources for the Hephthalite ruler who defeated the Sasanian king Pērōz.

• ḴUSRAW Ī KAWĀDĀN UD RĒDAK-ĒW

  Mahnaz Moazami

  a Pahlavi treatise of wisdom-literature genre; the story of an orphan of a priestly family who presents himself to the king of kings, Ḵosrow I or Ḵosrow II.

• KUSTĪG

  J. K. Choksy and F. M. Kotwal

  the Pahlavi term used to designate the “holy cord or girdle” worn around the waist by both male and female Zoroastrians after they have been initiated into the faith.

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• KUŠK

  Xavier de Planhol

  name of several places and a river in Afghanistan.

• ḴᵛĀJANURI, EBRĀHIM B. ḤABIB-ALLĀH

  Majdoddin Keyvani

  lawyer, politician, author, translator, journalist, psychologist, and founder of the popular psychoanalytical center of Panā[h] in Tehran.

• ḴᵛĀJAVAND

  Pierre Oberling

  a Kurdish tribe in the Caspian province of Māzandarān. According to L. S. Fortescue, the tribe “was originally brought from Garrūs and Kurdistān by Nādir Shāh.”

• ḴᵛĀJAZĀDA ASʿAD EFENDI

  Tahsin Yazıcı

  (1570-1625), Ottoman šayḵ-al-Eslām, poet, and translator of Saʿdi’s Golestān. He was the second son of Ḵᵛāja Saʿd-al-Din Efendi Eṣfahāni, the famous Ottoman historian, statesman, and šayḵ-al-Eslām.

• ḴᵛĀJU KERMĀNI

  J. T. P. de Bruijn

  (1290-ca. 1349), Persian poet and mystic. Ḵᵛāju was undoubtedly a versatile poet of great inventiveness and originality.

• ḴᵛĀNSĀLĀR

  Willem Floor

  title by which the supervisor and other workers of the kitchen department of the royal palace were known in the Ghaznavid and Saljuq periods.

• ḴᵛĀNSĀR

  Multiple Authors

  historical district and town in Isfahan province.

• ḴᵛĀNSĀR i. Historical Geography

  Habib Borjian

  historical district and town in Isfahan province.

• ḴᵛORMUJ

  Dénes Gazsi

  town and administrative center of Dašti Sub-province in Bušehr Province on the Persian Gulf.

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• Ḵādem Misāq, Hymn of Motherland (sorud-e mihan)

  music sample

• Ḵāleqi, Ey Irān

  music sample

• Kāleqi, Mey-e nāb

  music sample

• Kara Bašimuna Nana

  music sample

• Ḵorasan - Dekr Hāji Majnun Šāh

  music sample

• Köroğlu (1)

  music sample

• Köroğlu (2)

  music sample

• Köroğlu Story, The: an Excerpt

  music sample

• K~ CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Cross-Reference

  list of all the figure and plate images in the letter K entries.