Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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Subject: Middle East and Islamic Studies
Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson with a team of more than 20 section editors.
EI-Three is the third edition of Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Islam which sets out the present state of our knowledge of the Islamic World. It is a unique and invaluable reference tool, an essential key to understanding the world of Islam, and the authoritative source not only for the religion, but also for the believers and the countries in which they live.
The Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam is an entirely new work, with new articles reflecting the great diversity of current scholarship. It is published in five substantial segments each year, both online and in print. The new scope includes comprehensive coverage of Islam in the twentieth century and of Muslim minorities all over the world.
Subscriptions: see Brill.com
EI-Three is the third edition of Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Islam which sets out the present state of our knowledge of the Islamic World. It is a unique and invaluable reference tool, an essential key to understanding the world of Islam, and the authoritative source not only for the religion, but also for the believers and the countries in which they live.
The Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam is an entirely new work, with new articles reflecting the great diversity of current scholarship. It is published in five substantial segments each year, both online and in print. The new scope includes comprehensive coverage of Islam in the twentieth century and of Muslim minorities all over the world.
Subscriptions: see Brill.com
Kaarta
(918 words)
Kaarta was a pre-colonial state in present-day western Mali covering approximately fifty thousand square kilometres at its maximum extent, under the rule of non-Muslim, Bamana-speaking Kulibali lineages during the early nineteenth century. Kaarta, originally a small region of Kaare (whose name is the source of “Kaarta”) from which the Kulibali expanded state control, extended west to the upper Senegal River valley, east to include Bakhunu on the frontier with Maasina, north to a frontier with Ha…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
Date:
2019-11-11
Kaʿba
(2,899 words)
The
Kaʿba is a cuboid structure in the centre of Mecca and is the most prominent sacred structure in the Islamic world. Also known as God’s house
(bayt Allāh), it is the direction of prayer
(qibla) for Muslims across the world and the focal point of several rituals performed by pilgrims undertaking the
ḥajj and the
ʿumra (the lesser pilgimage). It is approximately fifteen metres tall at its highest point, and its four sides are between approximately ten and thirteen metres long. Inside the Kaʿba, the roof is supported by three pillars. The façade wal…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kabābīsh
(498 words)
The
Kabābīsh are the largest of the nomadic Arab tribes of northern Kordofan, numbering approximately 130,000 in 2010. Their economy is based on the highly mobile rearing of camels and sheep and on some cultivation of millet. Like the other tribes of the northern Sudan, they provide a good example for ethnogenetic processes in the shadow of consecutive Sudanese states. In about 1850 they were reported to inhabit the country west of the Nile, from Dongola to El Dueim, their more mobile groups spending the rainy season northwest of the Wādī al-Milk with their herds and flocks. Their chief
shayk…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kachchh
(2,060 words)
The history of
Kachchh (Kachchh, often spelt Kutch) in western India has been affected by its status as a maritime centre and by its geographical location between Sind and Gujarat (Gujarāt). The region’s ports long handled much of the overseas trade of the northern Indian subcontinent, and for centuries Kachchhī sailors have ranged across the Indian Ocean. 1. Population The Arab conquest of Sind in 90–2/709–11 placed Kachchh on the frontier between Muslim-dominated Sind to the north and the Hindu-ruled states of Saurāshtra (now part of Gujarat) to the s…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kadın
(597 words)
Kadın (Qādīn, “Woman”) was an Ottoman women’s magazine published in the city of Salonica (Selānīk, present-day Thessaloniki) during the Second Constitutional period (1325–36/1908–18) in the Ottoman Empire. Like many of the 32 Ottoman women’s journals published from 1285 Rumi /1869 to 1923,
Kadın’s publication life was brief, consisting of thirty issues, from Teşrīn-i Evvel 1324 Rumi/September 1908 to Māyıs 1325 Rumi/May 1909.
Kadın’s publishers were ardent supporters of the Constitutional Revolution of 1908 and had close ties with the İttihat ve Terakki Ce…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kadınlar Dünyası
(638 words)
Kadınlar Dünyası (“The World of Women”), an Ottoman illustrated journal published from 1913 to 1921, is a significant source for the history of the women’s movement in the Ottoman Empire (Çakır,
Osmanlı kadın hareketi). The periodical was owned and run exclusively by women. It had an editorial board and printing staff composed of women; the letters and essays it published were written by women contributors; and the press where it was printed bore the same name as the periodical.
Kadınlar Dünyası’s goal was “to defend the rights and interests of womanhood,” as expressed on t…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kāfūr, Malik
(886 words)
Malik Kāfūr (d. 715/1316) was a eunuch converted to Islam, reportedly of Marāťhā origin, who went on to become a high-ranking minister and powerful military commander during the reign of Sulṭān ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad Shāh Khaljī (r. 695–715/1296–1316). Acquired as a young slave during the conquest of Gujarat in 698/1299—his sobriquets
hazār dinārī and
al-alfī (lit., of a thousand dinars) ostensibly referred to the price paid for him—Kāfūr’s advance over the following years is undocumented, although his later career was very successful. In about 705–…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kāhī
(599 words)
Abū l-Qāsim Najm al-Dīn Muḥammad
Kāhī (d. 988/1580) was a scholar and professional Persian poet who was connected chiefly to the courts of the Mughal emperors Humāyūn (r. 937–47/1530–40 and 962–3/1555–6) and Akbar (r. 963–1014/1556–1605). He was born in Mian Kal, in Central Asia, but was generally known by the
nisba Kābulī. Kāhī encountered the great Tīmūrid Ṣūfī poet and hagiographer Jāmī (d. 898/1492) at the age of fifteen and studied
tafsīr (Qurʾānic commentary) and mysticism with him. He was known for his accomplishments in music and the composition of riddles …
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kajoran, Raden
(506 words)
Raden Kajoran (d. 1679), also known as Panembahan Rama, was a Muslim spiritual leader in Central Java reputed to have had supernatural powers (which are not described in detail in the sources). Kajoran, where he was based, is some sixteen kilometres northeast of the court of Plered, which had been founded by the Mataram dynasty ruler Amangkurat I (r. 1646–77), who stands in Javanese history as the quintessential royal tyrant. He ordered the slaughter of 5,000 to 6,000 Muslim religious leaders and…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kākatīya dynasty
(966 words)
The
Kākatīya dynasty was a line of Indian rulers who controlled parts of the eastern Deccan as independent monarchs from 558/1163 to 723/1323, when their territory was seized by the Delhi Sultanate (r. 602–932/1206–1526). The Kākatīya realm was one of three regional kingdoms that flourished in the Deccan in this period, each associated with a different vernacular literary culture: Telugu in the Kākatīya case, Kannaḍa in Hoysaḷa territory, and Marāťhī in the Yādava region. Similar in being based in…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
al-Kalābādhī
(1,046 words)
Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Isḥāq
al-Kalāabādhī was the author of the
Kitāb al-taʿarruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf (“Book of acquaintance with the Ṣūfī school”), a famous treatise on Ṣūfism. His year of death is contested but was perhaps 380/990. He probably came from Kalābādh, a town near Bukhara, where his tomb is located. He is said to have been of the Ḥanafī rite, like many Transoxanians of his time. While it may be questioned whether he was the great jurist, the Indian author ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Lakhnawī (d. 1886) (Arberry, xi) made him out to be, he does seem to have been trained as a reporter of
ḥadīth…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kalatidha, Serat
(472 words)
Serat Kalatidha (“The time of darkness/troubles”) is amongst the most celebrated of Javanese poems. This twelve-stanza (108-line) poem was composed in sung verse by the renowned author R. Ng Ronggawarsita (d. 1873), court poet of the Kraton Surakarta, the royal palace of the Central Javanese kingdom of Surakarta. It is generally accepted that Ronggawarsita wrote the poem in 1873, shortly before his death. Often taken as a prophecy, the work is both a critical commentary on the state of society an…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kalāt, khānate of
(2,732 words)
The
khānate of Kalāt existed on the borderlands of India and Iran until its merger with Pakistan in 1955. It emerged in the eleventh/seventeenth century, when a declining Ṣafavid empire to the west and weakening Mughal rule to the east created a power vacuum that later facilitated the emergence of several polities in the area. 1. Early history The khānate was formally established by Aḥmad Khān (r. 1077–1107/1666–95) as a loose federation of the Brahui (Brahūī) tribes of the Kalāt highlands in 1077/1666. The origins of the Brahui and the processes that …
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kalbāsī, Muḥammad Ibrāhīm
(881 words)
Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Kalbāsī (or Karbāsī, 1179–1262/1766–1845) was amongst the most prominent Shīʿī scholars in the world and was central to the neo-Uṣūlī network in Iran. Neo-Uṣūlism has been the most powerful socio-intellectual movement in the Shīʿī world since the twelfth/eighteenth century and is rooted in the rationalist school of Shīʿī law. Kalbāsī helped consolidate the international Shīʿī community in the hands of Uṣūlīs, who persecuted Akhbārīs, Ṣūfīs, and others as a result of ideological di…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kalgay
(629 words)
The
kalgay (
qālghāy, qālgha, and other forms, from Turk.
qāghılghāy, lit., the one who is to be installed) was the deputy and heir-designate of a ruler in the Crimean and Bukharan khānates (V. V. Barthol’d, Kalga, in his
Sochinenia, 1963–77, 5:537). This post had no precedent in the political culture of the Turco-Mongolian steppe, which sometimes permitted the selection of successors by seniority but most often by tanistry (in which, in Turco-Mongolian tradition, the ablest claimant killed all others). The
kalgay represents an attempt to adopt the Islamic heir-apparent inst…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kalijaga, Sunan
(491 words)
Sunan Kalijaga, a figure of great popular significance, is the most important of the nine
walī (wali sanga) who are believed to have been the founders of Islam on Java. The earliest primary source that recounts the life and activities of Kalijaga is the
Babad Tanah Jawi (“Chronicle of the Land of Java”), a genealogical narrative that recounts the succession of the rulers of Java, initially compiled in the eleventh/seventeenth century from oral sources at the Kartasura court, the capital of the sultanate of Mataram. According to this
Babad, Kalijaga was born at the end of the reign …
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kalīmallāh Shāhjahānābādī
(1,394 words)
Shāh
Kalīmallāh Shāhjahānābādī (1060–1142/1650–1729) was amongst the most influential Ṣūfīs of late Mughal India. He is popularly considered to have initiated the renaissance of the Chishtī Niẓāmī brotherhood (the Chishtiyya was founded in Chisht, a small town near Herat, in about 318/930 by Abū Isḥāq Shāmī, the “Syrian,” d. 328/940, and introduced into India by Muʿīn al-Dīn Sijzī, d. 627/1230. From the ninth/fifteenth and the twelfth/eighteenth centuries on, respectively, two main branches develo…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kalīm Kāshānī
(1,372 words)
Abū Ṭālib
Kalīm Kāshānī (b. c.990–4/1582–6, d. 15 Dhū l-Ḥijja 1061/29 November 1651) was a Persian poet and an exponent of the Indian style
(sabk-i hindī), which was ornate and rhetorical, with elaborate abstract figurative language. Kalīm was born in Hamadān but soon moved to Kāshān, hence his
nisbas Kāshānī and Hamadānī. He studied at Kāshān and Shiraz before going to the Deccan (c.1010/1603) to seek his fortune at the Indian Mughal court. Although Kalīm did not enter the court, he became friends with Shāhnavāz Khān of Shiraz (d. 1020/1611)…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
al-Kalwadhānī, Abū l-Khaṭṭāb
(709 words)
Abū l-Khaṭṭāb Maḥfūẓ b. Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan
al-Kalwadhānī (2 Shawwāl 432–23 Jumādā II 510/5 June 1041–2 November 1116) was a Ḥanbalī jurist and one of the most important early authorities of the Ḥanbalī legal school. He apparently spent his life in Baghdad and was a student of the renowned Ḥanbalī judge Abū Yaʿlā Ibn al-Farrāʾ (d. 458/1066), with whom he studied the majority opinions of Ḥanbalī jurisprudence
(al-madhhab), legal theory, and disputed legal points (
khilāf). He was also an authority on inheritance law, which he studied with the jurist Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥusay…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2019-11-11
Kalyana
(1,152 words)
Kalyana (Kalyāna, Kalyān, Kalyāni) was an historic town in the southern Indian state of Karnataka (latitude N 17.52°, longitude E 76.57°), known today as Basavakalyana in honour of the Virashaiva social reformer Basava (d. 1167 C.E.) who lived there in the mid-twelfth century C.E. The city served as the capital of the Chalukya dynasty, whose kings ruled the entire Deccan region between the eleventh and mid-twelfth centuries C.E. During the Chalukya era, the geographic and main ritual centre of t…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
Date:
2019-11-11