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KRYMSKIĬ, AGFANGEL (Agatangel) EFIMOVICH (b. 3 January Julian calendar = 15 January 1871, Vladimir-Volinskiy, Ukraine; d. 25 January 1942, Kustanay, Kazakhstan). Ukrainian Orientalist, specialist in Slavonic philology, member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1918), author of over 1000 works on the history and culture of Iran, Arab countries, Turkey,…

KUFA, a city about 105 kms south of Baghdad.  Kufa was founded as a garrison city (meṣr) in 17/638 by Saʿd b. Abi Waqqāṣ, after his victory at the battle of Qādesiya.  It replaced Ḥira as the local administrative center for several former Sasanian provinces (Morony, p. 154).  Unlike other…

KUFTA (kufta or kufteh), a popular Persian dish usually made of ground lamb or beef, and more recently, ground chicken or turkey in a mixture of herbs, spices, or other ingredients. There are two kinds of kufta: with rice and without. To make the first kind, kufta rice is kneaded…

KUH-E ḴᵛĀJA, a well preserved archeological site of chiefly Sasanian date that takes its name from an isolated basalt extrusion situated in the delta of the Helmand River, in the Iranian province of Sistān (ancient Drangiana), 35 km southwest of Zābol (Plate I). The name means “Mountain of the Lord”…

KUHPĀYA, piedmont district east of Isfahan province, historically known as Vir. i. The district ii. The dialect

KUHPĀYA i. The District Kuhpāya is a large piedmont boluk (3,000 km2) separated from Ardestān on the north and Nāʾin on the east respectively by the Fešārk and Kuhestān chains, extensions of the Karkas range. Its administrative center Ku(h)pā rests on a desolate landscape at 1,643 m above sea level,…

KUHPĀYA ii. The Dialect The dialects spoken in the Kuhpāya district belong to the Central Dialects, but in a narrower sense they are grouped together with the welāyati “provincial” idioms around the city of Isfahan. There is substantial dialectal variation across the Kuhpāya district. Kuhpāʾi proper is spoken in Jabal…

KUKADARU, JAMSHEDJI SORAB  (b. Surat, 26 May 1831; d. Bombay, 4 October 1900), Parsi Zoroastrian priest. Kukadaru was born in Surat (Gujarat, India) but spent most of his life in Bombay (modern Mumbai). He was known for his simple and ascetic lifestyle and for paying extremely rigorous respect to priestly…

KULĀB, city, district, and former province of Tajikistan (also Kōlāb, Kolāb[a]; Tajik Kūlob, Russian Kulyab; apparently köl-āb “lake-water”). The district of Kulāb is naturally marked out by the river Panj (upper Oxus) and the Hażrat-e Šāh range in the east, offshoots of Tajikistan’s central mountains in the north, the Tēraklitāḡ…

KULĀBI DIALECT, a distinct variant of Tajik spoken in Kulāb and adjoining districts. The Tajik dialects spoken in Kulāb are grouped with those of Qarātegin, a district on the middle course of the Vaḵš river, and the Ḥeṣār valley as Southern Tajik (Rastorgueva, 1960), characterized as having been far less influenced…

KUNDA(G) “drunkenness; delirium; sorcery” in Younger Avestan: kunda-; Middle Persian Kunda(g); Pāzand Kunī(d); Manichean Middle Persian Kūnī; and Sanskrit Kūnī-(deva). In Zoroastrian literature Kunda(g) is identified as a distinct demon (dēw, q.v.). In the Avesta, Sraoša (Vd. 19.41) or Ātar (Vištāsp Yašt 26, Darmesteter, II, p. 672) is implored to…

ḴUR, oasis on the southern border of the Great Desert in central Persia; the administrative center of the sub-province of Ḵur and Biābānak. Ḵur is situated at lat 33 47′ N, long 55 05′, low down at the elevation of 2,705 feet (825 m) on the southern rim of the…

KURDISH LANGUAGE i. HISTORY OF THE KURDISH LANGUAGE INTRODUCTION Any attempt to study or describe the history of the Kurdish (Kd.) language(s) faces the problem that, from Old and Middle Iranian times, no predecessors of the Kurdish language are yet known; the extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to…

KURDISH LANGUAGE ii. HISTORY OF KURDISH STUDIES The earliest studies on the Kurdish language and civilization, which date back to the late 18th century, were carried out by missionaries (first by Italian Catholics and later by Anglo-Saxon Protestants). The pioneer of European Kurdish studies was Maurizio Garzoni (1734-1804), a member…

KURDISH TRIBES. Kurdish tribes are found throughout Persia, eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq, but very few comprehensive lists of them have been published. The one most often cited is that of François Bernard Charmoy, which was based on the Šaraf-nāma by the 16th-century Kurdish historian Šaraf-al-Din Bedlisi (q.v.; I, pp….