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.

• KALĀNTARI, PARVIZ

  Nojan Madinei

  (b. Zanjān, 22 March 1931; d. Tehran, 20 May 2016), painter, graphic designer, writer, and a pioneering illustrator of Iranian children’s books.

• KALĀRESTĀQ

  Habib Borjian

  (or Kalār-rostāq), and Kalārdašt, historical district in western Māzandarān. i. The District and Sub-District.  ii. The Dialect.

• KALĀRESTĀQ i. The District and Sub-District

  Habib Borjian

  This predominantly mountainous district extends along the Caspian coast from the Namakābrud (Namakāvarud) river on the west to the Čālus river on the east.

• KALĀRESTĀQ ii. The Dialect

  Habib Borjian

  The Caspian vernaculars spoken in Kalārestāq, together with those of Tonekābon district, may not be properly classified as either Māzandarāni or Gilaki but serve as a transition between these two language groups.

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• KALĀT-E NĀDERI

  Xavier de Planhol

  Several references to kalāt in the tragic episode of the young Forud in Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma are thought to refer to this. Its earliest mention in historical accounts comes from the Mongol period, when the fourth Il-khan of Iran, Arḡun Khan built a defensive work at the south approach that still bears his name (“Gate of Arḡun”).

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• KALBĀSI

  Hamid Algar

  Ḥāj Moḥammad Ebrāhim (b. Isfahan, 1766; d. Isfahan, 1845), prominent Oṣuli jurist, influential in the affairs of Isfahan during the reigns of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah and Moḥammad Shah.

• ḴĀLEDI, Mehdi

  E. Naḵjavāni

  Persian violinist and songwriter (1919-1990). As a violinist, Ḵāledi was known for his command of traditional Persian music and its innovative interpretation. As a composer, he was admired for the range of his rhythmically varied and elegiac songs.

• KALEMĀT-E MAKNUNA

  Moojan Momen

  (The Hidden Words), a collection of aphorisms (71 in Arabic and 82 in Persian) by Bahāʾ-Allāh on spiritual and moral themes, dating from 1274/1857-58 and considered one of his most important writings.

• ḴĀLEQI, RUḤ-ALLĀH

  Hormoz Farhat

  (1906-1965),  Persian music educator, composer, and music scholar. Through his teaching, admiration for the polyphonic richness of Western music was transmitted to some of his pupils.

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• ḴĀLEṢIZĀDA, MOḤAMMAD B. MOḤAMMAD-MAHDI

  Mina Yazdani

  (1890-1963), a contemporary Iraqi-Iranian reformist cleric and political activist in anti-British protests and proponent of political power for the Shiʿite jurists in 20th-century Iran, who probably influenced Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers.

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• KALHOR

  Pierre Oberling

  a Kurdish tribe in the southernmost part of Persian Kurdistan. The last of the great Kalhor chiefs was Dāwud Khan, who ruled the tribe in the early 1900s.

• KALHOR, Mirzā Mohammad-Reżā

  Maryam Ekhtiar

  (1829-1892), one of the most prominent 19th-century Persian calligraphers, often compared to such great masters of nastaʿliq as Mir ʿAli Heravi and Mir ʿEmād Sayfi Qazvini.

• ḴALIFA SOLṬĀN

  Rudi Matthee

  (1592/93-1654), grand vizier under Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1588-1629) and then again under Shah ʿAbbās II (r. 1642-66).

• ḴALIL SOLṬĀN b. MIRĀNŠĀH b. TIMUR

  Beatrice Forbes Manz

  Timurid ruler (1405-09). He became active in the military on the Indian campaign in 1398-99 and played a prominent part in the seven-year campaign of 1399-1404.

• ḴALIL, MOḤAMMAD EBRĀHIM

  Wali Ahmadi

  Afghan scribe, calligrapher, poet and historian. Ḵalil studied privately with his parents and excelled in the art of calligraphy, especially the nastaʿliq and šekasta styles.

• ḴALIL-ALLĀH ŠAH

  Nasrollah Pourjavady

  (or Sayyed) BORHĀN-AL-DIN (b. 1373-74, d. 1455-56), the only son of the Sufi master, Šāh Neʿmat-Allāh Wali of Kermān.

• KALILA WA DEMNA

  Multiple Authors

  a  collection of didactic animal fables, with the jackals Kalila and Demna as two of the principal characters.  The story cycle originated in India between 500 BCE and 100 BC, and circulated widely in the Near East.

• KALILA WA DEMNA i. Redactions and circulation

  Dagmar Riedel

  The oldest extant versions of the story cycle are preserved in Syriac and Arabic, and originate from the 6th and 8th century, respectively, as translations of a lost Middle Persian version.

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• KALILA WA DEMNA ii. The translation by Abu’l-Maʿāli Naṣr-Allāh Monši

  Mahmoud Omidsalar

  Naṣr-Allāh’s Persian version of the Kalila wa Dimna is not a translation in the strict sense of the term, but a literary creation in its own right. 

• KALILA WA DEMNA iii. ILLUSTRATIONS

  Bernard O’Kane

  a collection of didactic animal fables, with the jackals Kalila and Demna as two of the principal characters.

• ḴALILI, ʿABBĀS

  Ḥasan Mirʿābedini

  (1895-1971),  political activist, journalist, translator, poet and novelist. 

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• ḴALILI, ḴALIL-ALLĀH

  Wali Ahmadi

  Ḵalili was born to Moḥammad Ḥosayn Khan Ḵalili, a state treasurer affiliated with the court of Amir Ḥabib-Allāh Khan. He was greatly interested in scholarship, an interest which he inculcated in his son. Upon the murder of the Amir on 19 February 1919, Mostawfi-al-Mamālek was arrested and swiftly executed.

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• KALIM KĀŠĀNI

  Daniela Meneghini

  (b. ca. 1581-85, d. 1651), Persian poet and one of the leading exponents of the “Indian style” (sabk-e hendi).

• KALIMI

  Amnon Netzer

  the word used to refer to the Jews of Iran in modern Persian usage. The word “kalimi” derives from the Arabic root KLM meaning to address, to speak, but the appellation in this context is derived directly from the specific epithet given to the prophet Moses as Kalim-Allāh.

• ḴALIQ LĀHURI

  Stefano Pello

   Indo-Persian poet of the 18th-century, probably a Sikh.

• Ḵalḵāl

  Cross-reference

  See KHALKHAL.

• ḴALḴĀLI, Sayyed ʿAbd-al-Raḥim

  Hushang Ettehad and EIr

  Ḵalḵāli remained, to the end of his life, a loyal member of the democratic current and a close confidant of Sayyed Ḥasan Taqizādeh, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (Ferqa-ye ejtemāʿiyun-e ʿāmmiyun) in the First Majles (1906-08), and later of Iran’s Democrat Party (Ferqa-ye demokrāt-e Irān) in the Second Majles.

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• ḴĀLKUBI

  Willem Floor

  (or ḵāl kubidan, kabud zadan “tattooing”), that is, making a permanent mark on the skin by inserting a pigment, is one of the oldest methods of body ornamentation.  The earliest evidence of tattoos in the Iranian culture area is the almost completely tattooed body of a Scythian chief in Pazyryk Mound

• KALLA-PĀČA

  Etrat Elahi

  a traditional dish made of sheep’s head and trotters and cooked over low heat, usually overnight. The combination of one sheep’s head and four trotters is called a set of kalla-pāča.

• KALLAJUŠ

  Etrat Elahi & EIr.

  an old Iranian dish, also pronounced kālajuš, kālājuš, kaljuš in different parts of Iran. The compound term kāljuš is composed of kālmeaning unripe, connoting cooked rare, and juš (boiling).

• ḴĀLU

  Pierre Oberling

  a small Turkic tribe of Kermān province.  According to the Iranian Army files (1957), this tribe once lived in the vicinity of Bardsir and Māšiz, southwest of Kermān.

• KALURAZ

  TADAHIKO OHTSU

  Almost all the objects excavated by Hakemi are now kept in Iran National Museum (Tehran). They are exhibited and open to the public. Since they had been archeologically reported only with photographs, in 2005 Japan-Iran joint researchers carried out new archeological studies for about 50 objects from the Kaluraz site.

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• KAMĀL ḴOJANDI

  Paul Losensky

  (ca. 1320-1401), Persian poet and Sufi also known as Shaikh Kamāl.

• KAMĀL PĀŠĀ-ZĀDA, ŠAMS-AL-DIN AḤMAD

  T. Yazici

  (1468-1534), prolific Ottoman scholar, author of several works in and on Persian. A native of Edirne, he studied under the local mufti, Mollā Loṭfi, and subsequently taught at the madrasas of Edirne, Uskup (Skoplje) and Istanbul.

• KAMAL, REZA

  Cross-Reference

  (better known as Sharzad), dramatist and translator. See SHARZAD.

• KAMĀL-AL-DIN EṢFAHĀNI

  David Durand-Guédy

  poet from Isfahan, noted for his mastery of the panegyric. His full name is given by Ebn al-Fowaṭi as Kamāl-al-Din Abu’l-Fażl Esmāʿil b. Abi Moḥammad ʿAbd-Allāh b. ʿAbd-al-Razzāq al-Eṣfahāni.

• KAMĀL-AL-DIN ḤOSAYN

  Colin Paul Mitchell

  ḤĀFEŻ-E HARAVI, a prominent Safavid calligrapher during the reign of Shah Tˈahmāsp I (r. 1524-76).

• KAMĀL-AL-MOLK, MOḤAMMAD ḠAFFĀRI

  A. Ashraf with Layla Diba

  (ca. 1859–1940), Iranian painter of the European academic style during the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods. He descended from a family that had produced a number of artists since the Afsharid period.

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• KAMĀLI BOḴĀRĀʾI

  Nasrollah Pourjavady

  ʿAmid Kamāl-al-Din, a court poet, musician, and calligrapher at the court of Sultan Sanjar, the Saljuqid king (r. 1097-1118), during his rule in Khorasan.

• KAMĀNČA

  Stephen Blum

  The kamānča has a spherical sound cavity of mulberry or walnut wood, covered with sheepskin. Most instruments have four steel strings and are played with a horsehair bow. As the name of the Iraqi joza suggests, its sound cavity is made of coconut, covered with sheepskin or fish skin.

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• KĀMI AḤMED ÇELEBI

  Osman G. Özgüdenlī

  Ottoman scholar, judge, writer, and translator. He was born in Edirne (his birth date is unknown) and known as Mesnevi-hānzāde (Maṯnawi-ḵvānzāda).

• KĀMI MEHMED-I KARAMĀNI

  Osman G. Özgüdenlī

  Ottoman scholar, judge, poet, and translator. He was born in Karaman (Qaramān) in central Anatolia.

• ḴAMĪS DYNASTY

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀL-E ḴAMĪS.

• KĀMRĀN B. SHAH MAḤMUD

  Christine Nöelle-Karimi

  Sadōzāy ruler of Herat (r. 1826-42). His career coincided with the waning of Sadōzāy power and the rise of the Moḥammadzāy dynasty in the 1820s.

• KĀMRĀN MIRZĀ

  Sunil Sharma

  In his Haft eqlim, Aḥmad Amin-Rāzi devotes a long section to Kāmrān Mirzā in which he extols the prince’s bravery, generosity, and piety. The historian Badāʾuni also praises him as a courageous and learned man, renowned as a poet, but who was led to ruin by excessive drinking, while Abu’l-Fażl portrays him as a treacherous ingrate.

• KĀMRĀN MIRZĀ NĀYEB-AL-SALṬANA

  Heidi Walcher

  (1856-1929), the third surviving son of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah, he was the minister of war and commander of the armed forces, and intermittently governor of Tehran and a number of provinces.

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• ḴAMRIYA

  Majdoddin Keyvani

  (pl. ḵamriyāt), poems with thematic contents chiefly about wine.

• ḴAMSA OF AMIR ḴOSROW

  Sunil Sharma

  a quintet of poems in the mathnawi form written by Amir Ḵosrow between 1298 and 1302, as a response to Neẓāmi’s immensely popular Panj ganj (Five Treasures).

• ḴAMSA OF JAMĀLI

  Paola Orsatti

  a suite of five mathnawis, composed in response to the Ḵamsa by Neẓāmi (1141-1209). This Ḵamsa exists in a unique manuscript in the India Office Library, London.

• ḴAMSA OF NEẒĀMI

  Domenico Parrello

  the quintet of narrative poems for which Neẓāmi Ganjavi (1141-1209) is universally acclaimed.