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KANAF (Hibiscus cannabinus L.), English “kenaf,” an annual herbaceous plant of the Malvaceae family, yielding a soft fiber from the stem. The word kanaf is of Persian origin (Dempsey, 1975, p. 206). Production of kanaf in Persia has been limited to the Caspian littoral from Rašt to Sāri, at about…

ḴĀNAQĀH. In Persian ḵānaqāh, literally a ‘dwelling place,’ or a ‘place of residence,’ refers to an Islamic institution and physical establishment, principally reserved for Sufi dervishes to meet, reside, study, and assemble and pray together as a group in the presence of a Sufi master (Arabic, šayḵ, Persian, pir), who…

KANDAHAR (قندهار, Qandahār), city in southern Afghanistan (lat 31°36′28″ N, long 65°42′19″ E), the second most important in the country and the capital of Kandahar province. i. Historical geography to 1979. ii. Pre-Islamic monuments and remains. iii. Early Islamic period. iv. From the Mongol invasion through the Safavid era. v….

KANDAHAR i. Historical Geography to 1979 The Kandahar oasis. South of Afghanistan’s central mountains, a broad alluvial cone, with a gradual slope of 900 to 1,000 m elevation, is formed by the confluence of one of the country’s main rivers, the Arḡandāb, and its tributary, the Tarnak. (The latter is fed…

KANDAHAR ii. Pre-Islamic Monuments and Remains The ancient city of Kandahar lay along the Qaytul ridge, west of the modern city. It was emptied of its population by Nāder Shah in 1738, but subsequently it became inhabited again. The layout of the pre-1738 defenses is easily seen from the air and…

KANDAHAR v. In the 19th Century Timur Shah (r. 1772-93) transferred the Dorrāni capital from Kandahar to Kabul in 1774 (Wakili, 1967a, I, pp. 159, passim; cf. above, iv), but during the 19th century the former capital city retained its political gravity in the context of the Afghan polity and…

KANDAHAR vi. 20th Century, 1901-73 Like other pre-industrial urban areas of Afghanistan, Kandahar expanded substantially during the second half of the 20th century by attracting rural labor and by developing new residential quarters (šahr-e naw) and public buildings. This expansion was in response to the expanding Afghan civil and military…

KANDAHAR vii. From 1973 to the Present KANDAHAR UNDER THE REPUBLIC OF AFGHANISTAN As Mohammad Daoud Khan (see DĀWŪD KHAN) took power in July 1973, his ban on party political activities hit Kandahar too. Although they had cooperated with Daoud Khan in bringing him to power, the main victims of…

KANDAHAR iii. Early Islamic Period The 9th-century historian Aḥmad Balāḏori mentions that ʿAbbād b. Ziād, the ʿOmmayad governor of Sistān under the Caliph Moʿāwia, made an attack on “Qandahār” (Kandahar) and conquered it (Balāḏori, Fotuḥ, p. 434, ed. Monajjed, part 3, p. 532; Tāriḵ-e Sistān, p. 95). Thenceforth, the name Qandahār is not frequently…

KANDAHAR iv. From The Mongol Invasion Through the Safavid Era In 1221 Kandahar was besieged by a Mongol (Tātār) contingent, which was defeated by Sultan Jalāl-al-Din Ḵᵛārazmšāh Menguberni (Nasavi, ed. Ḥamidi, p. 133; ed. Minovi, pp. 92-93). The presence of the contingent is reported only by Nasavi. It could, therefore, have…

ḴANDAQ, a Persian loanword in Arabic meaning a trench or a moat (lit. “dug”

KANGA, MANECK FARDOONJI, Parsi scholar of Zoroastrianism and Iranian languages (b. Navsari, 21 January 1908; d. Bombay, 17 October 1988; Figure 1). He received his early education at the D. K. Tata Anglo-Vernacular School and matriculated from the Sir Cawasji Jehangir Madressa High School, in Navsari, Gujarat, India. He was…

KANGARLU (variants are Kungurlu, Kengerlü), a tribe in Azerbaijan and the Qom-Verāmin region of central Iran. Kangar was the name of a branch of the Pečenegs (Pers. Bjnāk, Bjānāk; cf. Rásonyi, p. 131). Yet there does not seem to have been any link between them and the Kangarlu tribe of…

KANGAVAR (Kengavar, Kangāvar), a town in the easternmost part of Kermanshah Province, on the modern road from Hamadan to Kermanshah, identical with a trace of the Silk Road, located at the distance of about 75 km from Hamadan and 96 km from Kermanshah. Isidorus of Charax in the first century CE…

KANGDEZ (Kangdež; erroneously Gangdež in several editions of the Šāh-nāma), lit. “Fortress of Kang,” a mythical paradise-like fortress in Iranian folklore. There are different and often contradictory descriptions of Kang, Kangdež and several similar place names in Pahlavi literature and the epics of the Islamic period (foremost, the Šāh-nāma of…