Table of Contents

  • 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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