Table of Contents

  • KHAKSAR, Mansur

    Khosrow Davami

    poet, writer, editor and political activist. Khaksar completed his primary and secondary education in Abadan, and 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

    Multiple Authors

    The Khalaj are usually referred to as Turks, but Josef Marquart (pp. 251-54) claimed that they were remnants of the Hephthalite confederation. This entry is divided into two sections: i. Tribe Originating in Turkistan.  ii. Language.

  • KHALAJ i. TRIBE ORIGINATING IN TURKISTAN

    Pierre Oberling

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

  • KHALAJ ii. Language

    Michael Knüppel

    spoken by the inhabitants of Khalaj, located approximately 250 km to the southwest of Tehran.

  • 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.

    This Article Has Images/Tables.

  • KHALILI, Abbas

    Ḥasan Mirʿābedini

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

  • KHALKHAL

    Marcel Bazin

    the southeasternmost district of Azerbaijan.  Its main city and administrative center, Heruābād, is located at lat 37°28′ N, long 48°31′ E. 

  • KHARG ISLAND

    D.T. Potts

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

  • 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).

  • KHAYYAM, OMAR ix. 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.

    This Article Has Images/Tables.

  • KHAYYAM, OMAR x. 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 xi. 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).

  • 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.

  • KHORASANI

    Cross-Reference

    See AḴŪND MOLLĀ MOḤAMMAD-KĀẒEM ḴORĀSĀNĪ.

  • KHORESH

    Etrat Elahi

    (ḵoreš or ḵorešt), common dish consisting of pieces of meat fried with chopped onion, herbs or vegetables, and other ingredients.

  • 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 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.

  • 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.