Table of Contents

• 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.

• 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.

• KOLAYNI

  Etan Kohlberg

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

• KOLUKJĀNLU

  Pierre Oberling

  a Kurdish tribe in the Ḵalḵāl region of eastern Azerbaijan.

• KONDORI, MOḤAMMED 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

  (1867–1948), Norwegian orientalist,  an all-around Indologist, whose extensive scholarly work covers most branches of Indian studies.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• KORA-SONNI

  Pierre Oberling

  a tribe in western Persian Azerbaijan.

• KORK

  Rudi Matthee

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

• KÖROĞLU i. LITERARY TRADITION

  Hasan Javadi

  early-17th-century folk hero and poet, whose stories are mainly known among the Turkic peoples but have also passed into other folk literatures and circulate in Azerbaijan and Khorasan. Bards usually perform the Köroǧlu/Goroḡli epic to the accompaniment of a string instrument, such as the sāz, the dambura, or the dutār.

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• KÖROĞLU ii. PERFORMANCE ASPECTS

  Ameneh Youssefzadeh

  Bards usually perform the Köroǧlu/Goroḡli epic to the accompaniment of a string instrument, such as the sāz, the dambura, or the dutār.

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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).

• 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, an attribute encountered previously under Wahrām II (276-93).

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• ḴOSROW II

  James Howard-Johnston

  the last great king of the Sasanian dynasty (590-628) in the last few decades before the coming of Islam. The principal extant history of the period, written in Armenia in the early 650s, was appropriately entitled The History of Khosrow.

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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 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.

• ḴOTBA

  Cross-Reference

  See KHATIB AND KHOTBA (pending); FRIDAY PRAYER.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 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.

• ḴᵛĀJANURI, EBRĀHIM B. ḤABIB-ALLAH

  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.