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KAYĀNIĀN x. The End of the Kayanids In the Pahlavi texts. The Bundahišn (33.13-14) only records that, when Wahman, son of Spandyād, came to the throne (see BAHMAN (2) SON OF ESFANDIĀR), Iran was a wasteland, and the Iranians were quarreling with one another. Wahman having no sons, his daughter…

KAYĀNIĀN xi. The Kayanids and the Kang-dez According to the Pahlavi texts (Dēnkard 7.1.38; Mēnōy xrad 26.57; Pahlavi Rivāyat 49.1; Dādestān ī dēnīg 89), 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…

KAYĀNIĀN xiii. Synchronism of the Kayanids and Near Eastern History 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 (see also JAMŠID). Thus, during…

KAYĀNIĀN iv. “Minor” Kayanids The names. The names of the five minor kauuis in the Avesta and the Bundahišn are as follows:  Yašts 13.132, 19.71 Bundahišn 35.29-31 Aipi.vahu Kay Abīweh Usan/Usaδan Kay Arš Pisinah Kay Pisīn Biiaršan Kay Kāyus (Kay-Us) The Avesta contains no information on Aipi.vahu, Aršan, Pisinah, and…

KAYĀNIĀN  xiv. The Kayanids in Western Historiography   In Western historiography up into the 19th century, the historicity of the pre-Achaemenid Persian dynasties was taken for granted, and the Kayanids, the “second dynasty of Persian kings,” were commonly identified with the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Median kings as described by Herodotus and…

KAYĀNIĀN i. Kavi: Avestan kauui, Pahlavi kay Kavi is the Indo-Iranian term for “(visionary) poet.” The Avestan word is declined according to an archaic i-declension, which also includes Young Avestan haxi- “companion”: sing. nom. kauuā (YAv. kauua), acc. kauuaēm (< *kavayam; cf. OInd. sakhāyam), gen. YAv. kauuōiš, plur. nom. kauuaiiō...

KAYĀNIĀN xii. The Kavian XˇARƎNAH The nature of the Avestan xᵛarənah and its three subtypes, the Aryan (airiiana), the “unseizable” (? axᵛarəta), and the Kavian (kāuuaiia), have been much discussed, but is still not well defined (for bibliography on xᵛarənah in general, see FARR(AH) bibliography, and Philippe Gignoux, 2006). The…

KAYĀNSĪH, Pahlavi form of the name of a mythical sea, Av. Kąsaoiia-. The Avestan word  (adj., neuter with zraiiah- “lake, sea” [Yt. 19.66; Witzel, 1984, p. 263, n. 83], feminine with āp- “water” [Vd. 19.5; Yt. 19.92]) could be a derivative stem from an unattested proper name Kąsu- (Bartholomae, 1904,…

KAYFI SABZAVĀRI, Mir Moḥammad (fl. 17th cent.), Persian poet, also known as Kayfi Sistāni and Kayfi Now-Mosalmān. He was born and raised in a Jewish family in Sabzavār and converted to Islam in his youth during a trip to Sistān. Kayfi was a wandering dervish for twenty years and traveled…

KAYHAN (Kayhān, lit., “the universe”), a leading daily newspaper published in Tehran under the aegis of Moṣṭafā Meṣbāḥzādeh (1908-2006) from 1942 until the 1979 Revolution. At the beginning of its publication in 1942, Kayhan appeared in the format of four six-column typeset pages of 32 × 48 cm, and in…

KAYKĀVUS (also Kaykāʾus) b. ESKANDAR b. Qābus b. Vošmgir, Amir ʿOnṣor-al-Maʿāli, the 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. He was born about 412/1021 as a prince of the Ziarid…

ḴAYRḴᵛĀH HERĀTI, Moḥammad-Reżā b. Solṭān-Ḥosayn Ḡuriāni, Nezāri Ismaʿili dāʿi, author, and poet. He was born into a prominent Nezāri Ismaʿili family in Ḡuriān near Herat, in present-day western Afghanistan, in the final decades of the 15th century and died not long after 960/1553, the latest date cited in his writings….