Table of Contents

  • KAʿBA-YE ZARDOŠT

    Gerd Gropp

    “Kaʿba of Zoroaster,” an ancient building at Naqš-e Rostam near Persepolis.

  • KABĀB

    Etrat Elahi

    popular dish which traditionally consists of meat cut in cubes, or ground and shaped into balls; these are threaded onto a skewer and broiled over a brazier of charcoal embers.

  • KABIR-KUH

    Majdodin Keyvani

    one of the long ranges of the Zagros mountains, lying between Iran’s two western provinces of Loristan and Ilām.

  • KABISA

    Simone Cristoforetti

    Arabic term used in calendrical context; “intercalary,” “embolismal.” It is applied to several readjustments that occurred in the Iranian solar calendar.

  • KĀBOL MAGAZINE

    Wali Ahmadi

    a monthly magazine with the full title Kābol:ʿElmi, adabi, ejtemāʿi, tariḵi. The periodical was founded by the Kabul Literary Society (Anjoman-e Adabi-e Kābol), 1931-40.

  • KĀBOLI

    Rawan Farhadi and J. R. Perry

    the colloquial Persian spoken in the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, and its environs. It has been a common and prestigious vernacular for several centuries, since Kabul was long ruled by dynasts of Iran (the Safavids) or India (the Mughals) for whom Persian was the language of culture and administration.

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  • KĀBOLI, ʿAbdallāh Ḵᵛāja

    Maria Szuppe

    (also known as Kāboli Naqšbandi and Heravi), historiographer and poet of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. 

  • KABUL

    Multiple Authors

    (Kābol), capital of Afghanistan, also the name of its province and a river.

  • KABUL i. GEOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE

    Andreas Wilde

    Kabul is part of a system of high level basins, the elevation of which varies from 1,500 to 3,600 meters, extends—geographically speaking—beyond the administrative borders of the present-day province.

  • KABUL ii. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

    Xavier de Planhol

    Before the period of war and unrest in Afghanistan that started in 1978, almost all the functions concerned with governing the country and directing its international relations were concentrated in Kabul. This primacy among Afghan cities is due to an exceptionally favorable geographical site.

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  • KABUL iii. HISTORY FROM THE 16TH CENTURY TO THE ACCESSION OF MOḤAMMAD ẒĀHER SHAH

    May Schinasi

    Kabul was a small town until the 16th century, when Ẓahir-al-Din Bābor (1483-1530), the first of the Great Mughals, made it his capital.

  • KABUL iv. URBAN POLITICS SINCE ẒĀHER SHAH

    Daniel E. Esser

    The first master plan marked an important attempt to reorganize the spatial structure of the city. A first revision was authorized in 1971.

  • KABUL v. MONUMENTS OF KABUL CITY

    Jonathan Lee

    This article focuses on the major monuments in and around the Old City of Kabul and the most significant Dorrāni dynastic monuments and mausolea.

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  • KABUL LITERARY SOCIETY

    Wali Ahmadi

    (Anjoman-e adabi-e Kābol), the first official academic and cultural association of Afghanistan, 1930-40.

  • KABUL MUSEUM

    Carla Grissmann

    popular name of the National Museum of Afghanistan. A modest collection of artifacts and manuscripts already existed in the time of King Ḥabib-Allāh (r. 1901–19). In 1931 the collection was finally installed in a building in rural Darulaman (Dār-al-amān), eight kilometers south of Kabul City.

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  • KABUL RIVER

    Andreas Wilde

    in eastern Afghanistan. It forms one of Afghanistan’s four major river systems and is the only Afghan river that flows, as tributary of the Indus, into the sea.

  • KĀČI

    Etrat Elahi and Majdodin Keyvani

    a traditional Persian dish generally made of rice flour, cooking oil, sugar diluted in water, and turmeric or saffron with a sprinkling of golāb (rosewater) to give it a pleasant scent.

  • KADAGISTĀN

    Nicholas Sims-Williams

    an eastern province of the Sasanian empire. The clearest evidence for the existence of such a province is provided by a bulla bearing the impression of a seal.

  • ḴĀDEM MIṮĀQ

    Amir Hossein Pourjavady

    (1907-1958), musician, teacher, conductor, and composer.

  • ḴĀDEM-E BESṬĀMI

    Kioumars Ghereghlou

    Moḥammad Ṭāher b. Ḥasan, local historian, calligrapher, and poet of the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I.

  • KADIMI

    Ramiyar P. Karanjia

    a Zoroastrian sect (Ar. qadim “old, ancient”). The movement emerged in 18th-century India.

  • KADḴODĀ

    Willem Floor and EIr.

    principal meaning “headman,” from Middle Persian kadag-xwadāy, lit. “head of a household."

  • KADPHISES, KUJULA

    Osmund Bopearachchi

    (1st cent. CE), first Kuṣān king, founder of the Kuṣāna dynasty in Central Asia and India, as indicated by the legend written in Gāndhāri and Kharoṣṭhī.

  • KAEMPFER, ENGELBERT

    Detlef Haberland

    German physician and traveler to Russia, the Orient, and the Far East (1651-1716).

  • KAĒTA

    William W. Malandra

    an Avestan word whose approximate meaning is ‘soothsayer.’

  • KAFIR KALA

    Boris Litvinsky

    (Kāfer Qalʿa), ancient settlement and one of the largest archeological monuments of the Vakhsh river valley, on the western outskirts of Kolkhozabad, Tajikistan. The city (šahrestān) together with the citadel form a square, each side 360 m long, oriented approximately to the cardinal points.

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  • ḴAFRI, ŠAMS-AL-DIN

    George Saliba

    (d.1550), one of the most competent of all the mathematical astronomers and planetary theorists of medieval Islam.

  • KAFTARI WARE

    C. A. Petrie

    distinctive ceramic vessels dated to the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE, primarily found in Fārs.

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  • KĀFUR

    Cross-Reference

    See  CAMPHOR.

  • ḴĀGINA

    Etrat Elahi

    a traditional Persian dish; most of the recipes are very similar to those for making a plain omelet.

  • KAHAK

    Farhad Daftary

    Markazi Province, a village located about 35 km northeast of Anjedān and northwest of Maḥallāt in central Iran, with ruins of a fairly large caravanserai.

  • KĀHI KĀBOLI

    Majdoddin Keyvani

    (d. 1580), poet at the courts of the Mughal sultans Homāyun and Akbar.

  • KAIFENG

    Donald D. Leslie

    medieval capital of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) and home of a Judeo-Persian community.

  • KAJAKAY DAM

    Siddieq Noorzoy

    dam built on the Helmand River as a part of the multi-faceted projects aimed at the development of the Helmand Valley.

  • KĀK

    Etrat Elahi and Eir.

    a general term applied to several kinds of flat bread or small, often thin, dry cakes variously shaped and made.

  • KĀKAGI

    Arley Loewen

    the customs and characteristics of a kāka—a vagabond or vigilante characterized by the ideals of chivalry, courage, generosity, and loyalty.

  • KĀKĀʾI

    Philip G. Kreyenbroek

    a term used both for a tribal federation and for a religious group in Iraqi Kurdistan. 

  • KĀKĀVAND

    Pierre Oberling

    a Lor tribe of the Delfān group, settled in the Piškuh region of Luristan (Lorestān), as well as west of Qazvin and in the Ṭārom region.

  • ḴĀKI ḴORĀSĀNI, EMĀMQOLI

    S. J. Badakhchani

    Ismaʿili poet and preacher of 17th-century Persia (d. after 1646). He was born in Dizbād, a village in the hills half way between Mashhad and Nišāpur.

  • ḴĀKI ŠIRĀZI, ḤASAN BEG

    Kioumars Ghereghlou

    (d. 1612), Persian historian and bureaucrat, whose chronicle, titled Aḥsan al-tavāriḵ, is a general history of pre-Islamic and Islamic dynasties of Iran, the Indian Subcontinent, and Central Asia.

  • KAKRAK

    Matteo Compareti

    a Buddhist site comprised of a group of caves, in Bāmyān Province, Afghanistan, discovered at the end of the 19th century.

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  • ḴĀKSĀR

    Zahra Taheri

    a strictly popular order of Persian dervishes, favored by artisans and shopkeepers. The name “Ḵāksār” (lit. ‘dust-like’) was probably chosen to figuratively denote a lowly, humble, and modest person.

  • ḴĀKŠI

    Bahram Grami

    a medicinal plant from the mustard family. Two kinds have been identified, the common and the bitter one which is considered weed. The effects are believed to be on heart, voice, throat, and diarrhea.

  • KĀKUYIDS

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    [KAKWAYHIDS], a dynasty of Deylamite origin that ruled in western Persia, Jebāl, and Kurdistan about 1008-51 as independent princes.

  • KALĀBĀḎI

    Cross-reference

    See ABŪ BAKR KALĀBĀḎĪ.

  • ḴALAF B. AḤMAD

    C. E. Bosworth

    b. Moḥammad, Abu Aḥmad (d. 1009), Amir in Sistān of the “second line” of Saffarids, who ruled between 963 and 1003.

  • ḴALAJ

    Multiple Authors

    a tribe which originated in Turkistan and settled approximately 250 km to the southwest of Tehran. 

  • ḴALAJ i. TRIBE

    Pierre Oberling

    tribe originating from Turkistan, generally referred to as Turks but possibly Indo-Iranian.

  • ḴALAJ ii. Ḵalaji Language

    Michael Knüppel

    spoken by the Ḵalaj tribe, in the 1960s and 1970s numbering approximately 20,000 people.

  • KALĀNTAR

    Willem Floor

    “chief, leader,” from the late 15th century onwards, particularly the local official (mayor) in charge of the administration of a town.