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ḴERQA, the Sufi frock, lit. rough cloak; from Ar. ḵaraqa “to tear, to rend,” a term normally referring to the tattered cloak, robe, or overshirt traditionally worn by the Sufis as a symbol of wayfaring on the mystical path. Born out of the penchant of early Muslim ascetics for coarse…

KEŠ (Kešš, Kašš), an important ancient and medieval city, located in the upper Kaškā-daryā valley, now Shahrisabz (lit., “green town” [šahr-e sabz]), Uzbekistan. To its north, an easy road leads into the Sogdian Samarqand district; the oasis of Naḵšab (Nasaf, Qārši) is located downstream to the west; to the south…

ḴEṢĀLI ČELEBI (Hisâlî Çelebi; d. Budapest, 1062/1651-52), Ḥosayn, Ottoman poet and writer born in Budapest at an unknown date.  His divān is the only source of information about his life. He learned Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian during his childhood. According to the records in his divān, he served as…

KEŠAʾI DIALECT, the dialect spoken in the village of Keša, near Naṭanz, in Isfahan province. Keša village. Keša (endonym Kiša) is located in the Ṭarqrud district, Naṭanz sub-province, Isfahan province. Its geographical coordinates are lat 51° 47ʹ N, long 33° 23ʹ E, elev 2,430 m above sea level. Together with Ṭarq and Ṭār, Keša is…

KESĀʾI MARVAZI (also vocalized Kasāʾi) (b. Marv, 27 Šawwāl 341/6 March 953), Persian poet of the second half of the 4th/10th century. His full name was probably Abu’l-Ḥasan Majd-al-Din ʿAli b. Moḥammad, as it is mentioned in Bāḵ-arzi’s Domyat al-qaṣr, but some later sources (e.g., Āḏar, II, p. 660; Hedāyat,…

KETĀB AL-EṢLĀḤ, an early Ismaʿili work in Arabic, the title of which can be translated as The Book of Correction, written by Abu Ḥātem Rāzi, who was a leading dāʿi in the first half of the 4th/10th century in what is now northwestern Iran. The book was intended to refute,…

KETĀB AL-FOTUḤ (or Taʾriḵ al-fotuḥ), an important early Arabic historical text by Ebn Aʿṯam Kufi (d. 314/926?), which was translated, at least in part, into Persian towards the end of the 6th/12th century. Though the Persian translation enjoyed considerable popularity and has long been well known to Western scholars, the…

KETĀB AL-NAQŻ (or Ketāb-e naqż), a Twelver Shiʿite polemical work in Persian produced in Ray in the third quarter of the twelfth century (1161-) by Naṣir-al-Din Abu’l-Rašid ʿAbd-al-Jalil b. Abi’l-Ḥosayn Qazvini Rāzi. Qazvini Rāzi was a leading religious scholar of the Twelver Shiʿite community of his birthplace Ray (Naqż, 1980,…

KETĀB AL-RIĀŻ fi’l-ḥokm bayna al-ṣādayn: Ṣāḥeb al-eṣlāḥ wa ṣāḥeb al-noṣra (Book of gardens on the judgment between the authors of the Eṣlāḥ and the Noṣra), one of the many works of Ḥamid-al-Din Kermāni (d. after 411/1020), an Ismaʿili dāʿi (missionary) in Iraq on behalf of the Fatimid Imam al-Ḥākem be-Amr-Allāh…

KETĀB AL-ʿĀLEM WA’L-ḠOLĀM (The Book of the sage and the youth), the title of a doctrinal work attributed to the Fatimid Ismaʿili missionary Jaʿfar b. Manṣur-al-Yaman (d. ca. 960).  The work is notable for its unusual literary form, a dramatic dialogue in which an Ismaʿili missionary, the ʿālem (learned one, sage) successfully…

KETĀB-E IQĀN (abbrev. KI), a major work of Mirzā Ḥosayn-ʿAli Nuri Bahāʾ-Allāh (d. 1892) in defense of the religious claims of Sayyed ʿAli-Moḥammad the Bāb. The Ketāb-e iqān (Book of Certitude), an approximately 200-page Persian text, is fundamentally, as its author Bahāʾ-Allāh once stated, a Bābi Lawḥ-e estedlāliya (Proof-offering Tablet),…

KETĀBḴĀNA-YE MELLI-E TĀJIKESTĀN (Taj. Kitobḵonai millii Tojikiston), the National Library of Tajikistan, located in Dushanbe. Tajikistan National Library was established on 1 January 1933 on the groundwork of the Dushanbe city library. Named after the outstanding Persian poet Abu’l-Qāsem Ferdowsi, the library in 1993 was granted the status of national…

ḴEṬĀY-NĀMA “Book on China,” written by Seyyed ʿAlī Akbar Ḵeṭāʾī in Istanbul. According to the colophon, the book was finished on the last day or in the last days of Rabīʿ I 922/3 May 1516 (Ḵeṭāʾī, 1993, p. 174), but in the preface a panegyric on Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-66)…

KEYVĀNLU, a Kudish tribe of Khorasan. It was one of those Kurdish tribes that Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1588-1629) forced to migrate from western Persia around 1600 for the purpose of fighting off the incursions of the Uzbeks (Afšār-Sistāni, p. 998). The tribe settled around Qučān, Rādkān, and Čenārān, northwest…

ḴEŻR (Ar. Ḵeżr, Ḵażer “green,” “green herbs,” “verdure”; Ḵeżr nabi, Ḵᵛāja Ḵeżr), a prophet known to Islamic written tradition and folklore, from the Balkans to India. His worship, widespread all over Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, is connected with local calendar beliefs and fertility cults. The origins of the Ḵeżr…