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ḴĀDEM-E BESṬĀMI, Moḥammad Ṭāher b. Ḥasan, local historian, calligrapher, and poet of the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I (Ḵādem-e Besṭāmi’s exact dates are not known). His short history, entitled Fotuḥāt-e Feriduniya, describes the wars of Feridun Khan Čarkas (d. 1620-21), the eunuch Governor-General (amir-al-omarāʾ) of the province of Astarābād (known…

KADIMI, a Zoroastrian sect (Ar. qadim “old, ancient”); variant spellings are Kadmi, Qadmi, or Qadimi. The movement emerged in 18th-century India over the disagreement among priests whether to adjust the one-month discrepancy between the calendars of the Indian Zoroastrian (Parsi) and the Iranian Zoroastrian (Irani) communities. The Kadimis consider the…

KADḴODĀ, principal meaning “headman,” from Middle Persian kadag-xwadāy, lit. “head of a household, master of the house” (MacKenzie, p. 48; see also Vullers, II, p. 805a-b). During the medieval period, at least in post-Saljuq times, the term mainly referred to the headman of primary communal groups that were characterized by…

KADPHISES, KUJULA, first Kuṣān king. King Kujula Kadphises was the founder of the Kuṣāna dynasty in Central Asia and India, as indicated by the legend written in Gāndhāri and Kharoṣṭhī on his late coin series: Kujula kasa kushana Yavugasa dhramatidasa “of Kujula Kadphises, Kuṣān chief yagbu, steadfast in the law”…

KAEMPFER, ENGELBERT, German physician and traveler to Russia, the Orient, and the Far East (b. Lemgo, Westphalia, 16 September 1651; d. Lemgo, 2 November 1716). He was one of the keenest observers of foreign cultures of his time. Although his observations while in Persia did much to enhance Western knowledge…

KAĒTA, an Avestan word whose approximate meaning is ‘soothsayer.’ The only occurrence of the word is in Yt. 8.5 to the star Tištrya, where we find: “We worship . . . Tištrya, for whom the (following) yearn: cattle and draft animals, and men who formerly committed acts of violence, and…

KAFIR KALA (Kāfer Qalʿa), an ancient settlement in Tajikistan. The settlement of Kafir Kala is one of the largest archeological monuments of the Vakhsh river valley. It is situated on the western outskirts of the present-day regional center of Kolkhozabad (lat 37°36′ N, long 71°46′ E). The local population attributed…

ḴAFRI, ŠAMS-AL-DIN, Moḥammad b. Aḥmad-e Kāši, one of the most competent of all the mathematical astronomers and planetary theorists of medieval Islam (d. 956/1550), and perhaps the most competent of all of them. Ḵafri was born in the city of Ḵafr, located south east of Firuzābād in the province of…

KAFTARI WARE, distinctive ceramic vessels dated to the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE, primarily found in Fārs. Kaftari ceramics were named and first characterized by Louis Vanden Berghe (1954, pp. 402-403) on the basis of surface surveys and limited soundings carried out in the Marv Dasht (Marv-dašt) region…

ḴĀGINA (from Per. ḵāg, egg, and -ina, related to), a traditional Persian dish, dating back at least to the 15th century. John Platts defines the term as a contracted form of ḵāya+gina, meaning fried eggs; a kind of dish made of eggs, an omelet, pancake (s.v. ḵāgina). In fact, ḵāya…

KAHAK, Markazi Province (lat 34°10′53″ N, long 50°19′60″ E) , a village located about 35 km northeast of Anjedān and northwest of Maḥallāt in central Iran. Kahak was an important locality in the late medieval period for the Qāsemšāhi Nezāri Ismāʿili community in Iran, but now it is a small…

KĀHI KĀBOLI, SAYYED NAJM-AL-DIN ABU-’L-QĀSEM MOḤAMMAD MIĀNKĀLI (d. Agra, Rabiʿ II 988/May 1580), one of the notable poets at the Mughal court of Nāṣer-al-Din Homāyun Pādešāh (r. 937-62/1530-55) and Jalāl-al-Din Akbar Pādešāh (r. 963-1014/1556-1605).  He was born to a Sayyed family in Miānkāl, a region between Bukhara and Samarqand, sometime…

KAIFENG, city (lat 34°47′28″ N, long 114°20′54″ E) and district of modern Henan Province in eastern China, south of the Yellow River; medieval capital of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) and home of a Judeo-Persian community. Ever since the Jesuit missionaries (Matteo Ricci in 1605; Nicolas Longobardi, 1619; Jean-Paul Gozani,…

KAJAKAY DAM, a dam built on the Helmand River as a part of the multi-faceted projects aimed at the development of the Helmand Valley, which included flood control, land reclamation, producing electric power, introduction of suitable industries, and resettlement of the nomadic and other landless population in the Valley. The…