Table of Contents

  • 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 kubidankabud 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 kālajuškālājuškaljuš 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 muftiMollā 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.