Table of Contents

• 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

  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

  In Persian literature Kalila wa Demna has been known in different versions since the 6th century CE. The complex relations between the extant New Persian versions, and a lost Middle Persian translation have been studied since 1859 when the German Indologist Theodor Benfey, published a translation of extant Sanskrit versions of the Pañcatantra.

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• 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

  Hasan Mirabedini

  political activist, journalist, translator, poet, and novelist (b. Najaf, 1895; d. Tehran, 1971).

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• ḴALILI, ḴALIL-ALLĀH

  Wali Ahmadi

  renowned 20th-century Afghan poet in Dari (Persian), literary historian, scholar, and high-ranking official. Ḵalili is regarded as one of the last great vestiges of the traditional Persianate culture in Afghanistan, where erudition and classical training were particularly valued.

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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.

• ḴALḴĀLI, Sayyed ʿAbd-al-Raḥim

  Hushang Ettehad and EIr

  (d. 1942), well-known constitutionalist, journalist, government official, bookseller, and publisher, and the editor of the collected poems of Ḥafeẓ.

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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

  archeological site (lat 36°54′ N, long 49°28′ E) 1.1 km west of Rostam Ābād city, 11.7 km northeast of Rudbār in Gilan Province.

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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.

• 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), widely acclaimed 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, including his paternal great-grandfather, Mirzā Abu’l-Ḥasan Mostawfi, a court painter during the reign of Nāder Shah Afshar (r. 1736-47) and Karim Khan Zand (r. 1750-79).

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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

  (lit. “small bow”), the most common term throughout much of the Iranian world for a spike fiddle with a small, often spherical, resonating chamber.

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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

  second son of the founder of the Mughal empire, Ẓahir-al-Din Moḥammad Bābor and of Golroḵ Begom, and half-brother of the emperor Homāyun.

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• 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.

• ḴAMSA-ye 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-ye 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.

• 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

  Prashant Keshavmurthy

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

• 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

  A novel in two volumes, Ḵāna-ye Edrisihā is set in 1910s, and takes place in a house in Ashkhabad (ʿEšqābād), the capital city of the Republic of Turkmenistan.

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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

  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.

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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 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.

• 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.

• ḴANDAQ

  Michael G. Morony

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