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KATIRĀ (gum tragacanth), a plant exudate from Astragalus species, particularly A. gummifer and A. microcephalus, of the family Leguminosae, widely used as a natural emulsifier and thickener by the food, drug, and other industries (Mantell, p. 53).  It is also called ṣamḡ-e qannād (lit. confectioner’s gum; Dehḵodā, Loḡat-nāma, s.v. katirā). …

ḴATM AL-ḠARĀʾEB (generally known under the title it has later been given, Toḥfat al-ʿErāqayn; see below), the only maṯnawi written by the poet Ḵāqāni Šervāni, over three thousand verses long, in the meter hazaj-e mosaddas-e aḵrab-e maqbuż-e maḥḏuf; its final version dates from 552/1157. This date is inferred from Ḵāqāni’s…

ḴAṬMI (or ḵeṭmi), “marshmallow,” Althaea officinalis L. of the family Malvaceae (the mallow family), an important pharmaceutical plant. Plants of the genus Althaea are annual or perennial herbs, resembling the genus Malva, Persian panirak (Riedl, pp. 37-41), which includes the common mallow (see below). The underlying Greek name Althaea comes from…

ḴAṬṬĀBIYA (Khattabiyya), an extremist Shiʿite sect named after Abu’l-Ḵaṭṭāb al-Asadi (killed ca. 755 CE), who for some time was an authorized representative (dāʿi) of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādeq (d. ca. 765) in Kufa. Our knowledge of the Ḵaṭṭābiya comes primarily from two well-known theologians, who show little agreement: Hešām b. al-Ḥakam…

ḴĀTUN, a title of high-born women in the pre-modern Turkish and Persian worlds. Although the title is first attested in Orkhon Turkish, where qatun/ḵatun in the Kül-tegin and Bilge-qaghan inscriptions denotes “wife of the khan or ruler, queen” (Tekin, pp. 342-43; Kāšḡari, tr. Atalay I, p. 410; tr. Dankoff and…

ḴĀTUNĀBĀDI, MIR ʿABD-AL-ḤOSAYN (b. Isfahan, 8 Šaʿbān 1038/23 March 1630; d. Isfahan, Rajab 1105/March 1694), 17th-century Persian historian. Life.  ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Ḵātunābādi was born into a family of sayyed notables.  His forebears claimed descent from the fourth Shiʿi imam Zayn-al-ʿĀbedin ʿAli b. Ḥosayn, and his father, Moḥammad-Bāqer (d. 1060/1650), an expert…