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ḴOSROW I Sasanian king (r. 531-79), son of Kawād I. This entry is divided into three sections: i. Life and times. ii. Reforms. iii. Coinage.  

ḴOSROW I i. LIFE AND TIMES. Forthcoming online.

ḴOSROW I ii. Reforms A series of reforms in the taxation of the Sasanian monarchy and in its military organization, probably initiated already under Kawāḏ I, were carried out to their full extent by his son, Ḵosrow I Anuširwān (r. 531-79). Sources. The two most detailed surviving accounts in Arabic…

ḴOSROW I iii. COINAGE The reign of Ḵosrow I is generally regarded as constituting the heyday of the Sasanian Empire. His coinage, rather to the contrary, marks the nadir of Sasanian coin art. The appalling quality of Ḵosrow’s coins are caused, to some extent, by serious production problems, since the…

ḴOSROW II, the last great king of the Sasanian dynasty (590-628; Figure 1, Table 1). Ḵosrow II (Khosrow II) was the last great king of the Sasanian dynasty. He is a giant figure who towers over the Middle East in the last few decades before the coming of Islam. The principal…

ḴOSROW KHAN GORJI QĀJĀR (Andre Ghaytmazeants, b. Tbilisi, 1785-6; d. Tehran, 1857), an influential eunuch (ḵᵛāja; see EUNUCHS) of the Qajar times, in the period from Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah (r. 1797-1834) to Nāṣer-al-Din Shah (r. 1848-96). Ḵosrow Khan Gorji Qājār was born in Tbilisi and was captured and brought to Persia…

ḴOSROW MALEK b. Ḵosrowšāh, ABU’L-MOŻAFFAR (r. ca. 555-82/1160-86), the last sultan of the Ghaznavid dynasty, in northwestern India, essentially in the Panjab, with his capital at Lahore.  Various honorifics (Tāj-al-Din wa’l-Dawla, Serāj-al-Dawla, Ẓahir-al-Din wa’l-Dawla) are attributed to him in the historical sources, in the verses of poets eulogizing him, and…

ḴOSROW MIRZĀ QĀJĀR (b. 1813; d. Hamadan, 21 Ramazan, 1291/21 October 1875), the seventh son of Crown Prince ʿAbbās Mirzā, who led an official Iranian delegation to the Tsarist court in St. Petersburg. Following the murder of Alexander Griboedov, the envoy and minister plenipotentiary of Russia in Tehran (wazir-e moḵtār)…

ḴOSROW O ŠIRIN AND ITS IMITATIONS. Ḵosrow o Širin, the second poem of Neẓāmi’s Ḵamsa, recounts the amorous relationship between the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II Parviz (590-628 CE), and the beautiful princess Širin. It comprises some 6,150 verses in hazaj meter, subdivided into 100 bands (chapters) in the Ṯarvatiān edition…

ḴOSROWŠĀH B. BAHRĀMŠĀH, with honorifics variously recorded as Moʿezz-al-Dawla, Neẓām-al-Dawla, Moʾayyed-al-Dawla wa’l-Din, and Tāj-al-Dawla, penultimate ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty (r. ca. 552-55/1157-60),  apparently still in Ghazna until the dynasty found its last home at Lahore in northwestern India at a date around or soon after the time of his…

ḴOṬBA (oration, speech, sermon), a formal public address performed in a broad range of contexts by Muslims across the globe, rooted in the extemporaneously composed discourses of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia.  Historically, the ḵoṭba denoted numerous kinds of speeches and sermons, expounding a variety of political, liturgical, religious, military,…

ḴOTTAL (Ḵottalan), a province of medieval Islamic times on the right bank of the upper Oxus river in modern Tajikistan. The province lay between the Vaḵšāb and Jaryāb rivers, which are the Vaḵš tributary of the Oxus (see ĀMU DARYĀ) and the upper course of the Oxus, now known as…

ḴOʾI, MIRZĀ ʿALIQOLI (b. Ḵoy, ca. 1230/1815; d. Tehran, ca. 1272/1856), the most prolific illustrator of Persian lithographed books in the Qajar period.  ʿAliqoli most likely received his education in Tabriz, where lithography was introduced around 1829. He may have been around 30 years of age in 1264/1847, when he…

KRÁMSKÝ, JIRÍ (b. Plzen [Pilsen], western Bohemia, 23 October 1913; d. Prague, 30 September 1991), Czech general linguist who specialized in Persian language studies. He was born into a lawyer’s family and attended secondary school in his native town. He then studied English and Persian (the latter under Professor J….

Křikavová, Adéla (b. Prague, 9 August, 1938; d. Prague, 3 August, 2002; FIGURE 1) Czech scholar of Iranian and particularly Kurdish studies. Having studied Near Eastern history and languages (Georgian, Persian and Arabic), and after graduating from Charles University in Prague, she began working from 1962 as a research fellow…