KIPĀ , (also gipā), a traditional Iranian food made with a sheep’s tripe or its small intestine filled with minced meat, rice, split peas, a sprinkling of salt, and such spices as cinnamon, caraway seeds, pepper, and, sometimes, other ingredients. The tripe and intestines are first thoroughly washed. The edges of the stuffed tripe are stitched up and then it is cooked in heated fat. All the stuffing comes under the general term maṣāleḥ. This practice of sewing the opening of the tripe after being filled with maṣāleḥ goes back some centuries, as attested by the opening verse of one of the parodist Bosḥāq Aṭʿema’s (d. 1423 or 1427; q.v.) ḡazals, parodying the poet Saʿdi’s well-known ḡazal :

No kāči [similar to halwā, q.v.] can be made with these seeds that we have sown.No kipā can be sewn with this thread that we have woven (Bosḥāq Aṭʿema, p. 164).

The compiler of the 19th-century Farhang-e Ānandrāj states that gipā is the Persian form of the Turkish kipā (Moḥammad Pādšāh, s.v. kipā and gipā) whereas Dehḵodā suggests that kipā may be a contracted form of kalla pā or kalla pāča (s.v. kipā), which is Persian. Moḥammad Pādšāh adds that kipā is a kind of pilau; and Mirzā ʿAli-Akbar Āšpazbāši, under his “Second Table” that introduces different kinds of rice, gives a thorough description of the ingredients of kipā pilau and the way it is made (p. 16). Kipā seems to have been very popular in the past. Bosḥāq Aṭʿema mentions it over fifty times both in his poetry and prose (see, e.g., pp. 28, 38, 110, 136, 195, 229, passim). In his treatise called “Kār-nāma,” Bāvarči Baḡdādi presents the recipes for over a dozen gipā, including chicken gipā, mutton gipā, and squash gipā (pp. 166-72). The maker/vendor of kipā was called kipā-paz, kipā foruš, or kipāʾi. As traditionally kipā was prepared and sold by kalla-paz along with sheep’s cooked head and trotters, kalla-paz and kipā-paz were interchangeably used (Dehḵodā, s.v. kipā-paz).

In spite of its popularity for centuries, in recent decades kipā has practically disappeared from the places where it was once abundantly available.