Part 35

KASAI, or CASSAI, a river of Africa, the chief southern affluent of the Congo. It enters the main stream in 3 deg. 10' S., 16 deg. 16' E. after a course of over 800 m. from its source in the highlands which form the south-western edge of the Congo basin--separating the Congo and Zambezi systems. The Kasai and its many tributaries cover a very large part of the Congo basin. The Kasai rises in about 12 deg. S., 19 deg. E. and flows first in a north-easterly direction. About 10 deg. 35' S., 22 deg. 15' E. it makes a rectangular bend northward and then takes a north-westerly direction. Five rivers--the Luembo, Chiumbo, Luijimo or Luashimo, Chikapa and Lovua or Lowo--rise west of the Kasai and run in parallel courses for a considerable distance, falling successively into the parent stream (between 7 deg. and 6 deg. S.) as it bends westward in its northern course. The Luembo and Chiumbo join and enter the Kasai as one river. A number of rapids occur in these streams. A few miles below the confluence of the Lowo, the last of the five rivers named to join the Kasai, the main stream is interrupted by the Wissmann Falls which, though not very high, bar further navigation from the north. Below this point the river receives several right-hand (eastern) tributaries. These also have their source in the Zambezi-Congo watershed, rising just north of 12 deg. S., flowing north in parallel lines, and in their lower course bending west to join the Kasai. The chief of these affluents are the Lulua and the Sankuru, the Lulua running between the Kasai and the Sankuru. The Sankuru makes a bold curve westward on reaching 4 deg. S., following that parallel of latitude a considerable distance. Its waters are of a bright yellow colour. After the junction of the two rivers (in 4 deg. 17' S., 20 deg. 15' E.), the united stream of the Kasai flows N.W. to the Congo. From the south it is joined by the Loange and the Kwango. The Kwango is a large river rising a little north of 12 deg. S., and west of the source of the Kasai. Without any marked bends it flows north--is joined from the east by the Juma, Wamba and other streams--and has a course of 600 m. before joining the Kasai in 3 deg. S., 18' E. The lower reaches of the Kwango are navigable; the upper course is interrupted by rapids. On the north (in 3 deg. 8' S., 17 deg. E.) the lower Kasai is joined by the Lukenye or Ikatta. This river, the most northerly affluent of the Kasai, rises between 24 deg. and 25 deg. E., and about 3 deg. S. in swampy land through which the Lomami (another Congo affluent) flows northward. The Lukenye has an east to west direction flowing across a level country once occupied by a lake, of which Lake Leopold II. (q.v.), connected with the lower course of the Lukenye, is the scanty remnant. Below the lake the Lukenye is known as the Mfini. Near its mouth the Kasai, in its lower course generally a broad stream strewn with islands, is narrowed to about half a mile on passing through a gap in the inner line of the West African highlands, by the cutting of which the old lake of the Kasai basin must have been drained. The Kasai enters the Congo with a minimum depth of 25 feet and a breadth of about 700 yards, at a height of 942 ft. above the sea. The confluence is known as the Kwa mouth, Kwa being an alternative name for the lower Kasai. The volume of water entering the Congo averages 321,000 cub. ft. per second: far the largest amount discharged by any of the Congo affluents. In floodtime the current flows at the rate of 5 or 6 m. an hour. The Kasai and its tributaries are navigable for over 1500 m. by steamer.

The Kwango affluent of the Kasai was the first of the large affluents of the Congo known to Europeans. It was reached by the Portuguese from their settlements on the west coast in the 16th century. Of its lower course they were ignorant. Portuguese travellers in the 18th century are believed to have reached the upper Kasai, but the first accurate knowledge of the river basin was obtained by David Livingstone, who reached the upper Kasai from the east and explored in part the upper Kwango (1854-1855). V. L. Cameron and Paul Pogge crossed the upper Kasai in the early "seventies." The Kwa mouth was seen by H. M. Stanley in his journey down the Congo in 1877, and he rightly regarded it as the outlet of the Kwango, though not surmising it was also the outlet of the Kasai. In 1882 Stanley ascended the river to the Kwango-Kasai confluence and thence proceeding up the Mfini discovered Lake Leopold II. In 1884 George Grenfell journeyed up the river beyond the Kwango confluence. The systematic exploration of the main stream and its chief tributaries was, however, mainly the work of Hermann von Wissmann, Ludwig Wolf, Paul Pogge and other Germans during 1880-1887. (See Wissmann's books, especially _Im Innern Afrikas_, Leipzig, 1888.) On his third journey, 1886, Wissmann was accompanied by Grenfell. Major von Mechow, an Austrian, explored the middle Kwango in 1880, and its lower course was subsequently surveyed by Grenfell and Holman Bentley, a Baptist missionary. In 1899-1900 a Belgian expedition under Captain C. Lemaire traced the Congo-Zambezi watershed, obtaining valuable information concerning the upper courses of the southern Kasai tributaries. The upper Kasai basin and its peoples were further investigated by a Hungarian traveller, E. Torday, in 1908-1909. (See Torday's paper in _Geog. Jour._, 1910; also CONGO and the authorities there cited.)

KASBEK (Georgian, _Mkin-vari_; Ossetian, _Urs-khokh_), one of the chief summits of the Caucasus, situated in 42 deg. 42' N. and 44 deg. 30' E., 7 m. as the crow flies from a station of the same name on the high road to Tiflis. Its altitude is 16,545 ft. It rises on the range which runs north of the main range (main water-parting), and which is pierced by the gorges of the Ardon and the Terek. It represents an extinct volcano, built up of trachyte and sheathed with lava, and has the shape of a double cone, whose base lies at an altitude of 5800 ft. Owing to the steepness of its slopes, its eight glaciers cover an aggregate surface of not more than 8 sq. m., though one of them, Maliev, is 36 m. long. The best-known glacier is the Dyevdorak, or Devdorak, which creeps down the north-eastern slope into a gorge of the same name, reaching a level of 7530 ft. At its eastern foot runs the Georgian military road through the pass of Darial (7805 ft.). The summit was first climbed in 1868 by D. W. Freshfield, A. W. Moore, and C. Tucker, with a Swiss guide. Several successful ascents have been made since, the most valuable in scientific results being that of Pastukhov (1889) and that of G. Merzbacher and L. Purtscheller in 1890. Kasbek has a great literature, and has left a deep mark in Russian poetry.

See D. W. Freshfield in _Proc. Geog. Soc._ (November 1888) and _The Exploration of the Caucasus_ (2nd ed., 2 vols., 1902); Hatisian's "Kazbek Glaciers" in _Izvestia Russ. Geog. Soc._ (xxiv., 1888); Pastukhov in _Izvestia of the Caucasus Branch of Russ. Geog. Soc._ (x. 1, 1891, with large-scale map).

KASHAN, a small province of Persia, situated between Isfahan and Kum. It is divided into the two districts _germsir_, the "warm," and _sardsir_, the "cold," the former with the city of Kashan in the plains, the latter in the hills. It has a population of 75,000 to 80,000, and pays a yearly revenue of about L18,000. KASHAN (Cashan) is the provincial capital, in 34 deg. 0' N. and 51 deg. 27' E., at an elevation of 3190 ft., 150 m. from Teheran; pop. 35,000, including a few hundred Jews occupied as silk-winders, and a few Zoroastrians engaged in trade. Great quantities of silk stuffs, from raw material imported from Gilan, and copper utensils are manufactured at Kashan and sent to all parts of Persia. Kashan also exports rose-water made in villages in the hilly districts about 20 m. from the city, and is the only place in Persia where cobalt can be obtained, from the mine at Kamsar, 19 m. to the south. At the foot of the hills 4 m. W. of the city are the beautiful gardens of Fin, the scene of the official murder, on the 9th of January 1852, of Mirza Taki Khan, Amir Nizam, the grand vizier, one of the ablest ministers that Persia has had in modern times.

KASHGAR, an important city of Chinese Turkestan, in 39 deg. 24' 26" N. lat., 76 deg. 6' 47" E. long., 4043 ft. above sea-level. It consists of two towns, Kuhna Shahr or "old city," and Yangi Shahr or "new city," about five miles apart, and separated from one another by the Kyzyl Su, a tributary of the Tarim river. It is called Su-leh by the Chinese, which perhaps represents an original Solek or Sorak. This name seems to be older than Kashgar, which is said to mean "variegated houses." Situated at the junction of routes from the valley of the Oxus, from Khokand and Samarkand, Almati, Aksu, and Khotan, the last two leading from China and India, Kashgar has been noted from very early times as a political and commercial centre. Like all other cities of Central Asia, it has changed hands repeatedly, and was from 1864-1887 the seat of government of the Amir Yakub Beg, surnamed the Atalik Ghazi, who established and for a brief period ruled with remarkable success a Mahommedan state comprising the chief cities of the Tarim basin from Turfan round along the skirt of the mountains to Khotan. But the kingdom collapsed with his death and the Chinese retook the country in 1877 and have held it since.

Kuhna Shahr is a small fortified city on high ground overlooking the river Tuman. Its walls are lofty and supported by buttress bastions with loopholed turrets at intervals; the fortifications, however, are but of hard clay and are much out of repair. The city contains about 2500 houses. Beyond the bridge, a little way off, are the ruins of ancient Kashgar, which once covered a large extent of country on both sides of the Tuman, and the walls of which even now are 12 feet wide at the top and twice that in height. This city--Aski Shahr (Old Town) as it is now called--was destroyed in 1514 by Mirza Ababakar (Abubekr) on the approach of Sultan Said Khan's army. About two miles to the north beyond the river is the shrine of Hazrat Afak, the saint king of the country, who died and was buried here in 1693. It is a handsome mausoleum faced with blue and white glazed tiles, standing under the shade of some magnificent silver poplars. About it Yakub Beg erected a commodious college, mosque and monastery, the whole being surrounded by rich orchards, fruit gardens and vineyards. The Yangi Shahr of Kashgar is, as its name implies, modern, having been built in 1838. It is of oblong shape running north and south, and is entered by a single gateway. The walls are lofty and massive and topped by turrets, while on each side is a projecting bastion. The whole is surrounded by a deep and wide ditch, which can be filled from the river, at the risk, however, of bringing down the whole structure, for the walls are of mud, and stand upon a porous sandy soil. In the time of the Chinese, before Yakub Beg's sway, Yangi Shahr held a garrison of six thousand men, and was the residence of the _amban_ or governor. Yakub erected his _orda_ or palace on the site of the amban's residence, and two hundred ladies of his harem occupied a commodious enclosure hard by. The population of Kashgar has been recently estimated at 60,000 in the Kuhna Shahr and only 2000 in the Yangi Shahr.

With the overthrow of the Chinese rule in 1865 the manufacturing industries of Kashgar declined. Silk culture and carpet manufacture have flourished for ages at Khotan, and the products always find a ready sale at Kashgar. Other manufactures consist of a strong coarse cotton cloth called _kham_ (which forms the dress of the common people, and for winter wear is padded with cotton and quilted), boots and shoes, saddlery, felts, furs and sheepskins made up into cloaks, and various articles of domestic use. A curious street sight in Kashgar is presented by the hawkers of meat pies, pastry and sweetmeats, which they trundle about on hand-barrows just as their counterparts do in Europe; while the knife-grinder's cart, and the vegetable seller with his tray or basket on his head, recall exactly similar itinerant traders further west.

The earliest authentic mention of Kashgar is during the second period of ascendancy of the Han dynasty, when the Chinese conquered the Hiungnu, Yutien (Khotan), Sulei (Kashgar), and a group of states in the Tarim basin almost up to the foot of the Tian Shan mountains. This happened in 76 B.C. Kashgar does not appear to have been known in the West at this time but Ptolemy speaks of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a _Kasia Regio_, possibly exhibiting the name whence Kashgar and Kashgaria (often applied to the district) are formed. Next ensues a long epoch of obscurity. The country was converted to Buddhism and probably ruled by Indo-Scythian or Kushan kings. Hsuan Tswang passed through Kashgar (which he calls Ka-sha) on his return journey from India to China. The Buddhist religion, then beginning to decay in India, was working its way to a new growth in China, and contemporaneously the Nestorian Christians were establishing bishoprics at Herat, Merv and Samarkand, whence they subsequently proceeded to Kashgar, and finally to China itself. In the 8th century came the Arab invasion from the west, and we find Kashgar and Turkestan lending assistance to the reigning queen of Bokhara, to enable her to repel the enemy. But although the Mahommedan religion from the very commencement sustained checks, it nevertheless made its weight felt upon the independent states of Turkestan to the north and east, and thus acquired a steadily growing influence. It was not, however, till the 10th century that Islam was established at Kashgar, under the Uighur kingdom (see TURKS). The Uighurs appear to have been the descendants of the people called Tolas and to have been one of the many Turkish tribes who migrated westwards from China. Boghra Khan, the most celebrated prince of this line, was converted to Mahommedanism late in the 10th century and the Uighur kingdom lasted until 1120 but was distracted by complicated dynastic struggles. The Uighurs employed an alphabet based upon the Syriac and borrowed from the Nestorian missionaries. They spoke a dialect of Turkish preserved in the Kudatku Bilik, a moral treatise composed in 1065. Their kingdom was destroyed by an invasion of the Kara-Kitais, another Turkish tribe pressing westwards from the Chinese frontier, who in their turn were swept away in 1219 by Jenghiz Khan. His invasion gave a decided check to the progress of the Mahommedan creed, but on his death, and during the rule of the Jagatai Khans, who became converts to that faith, it began to reassert its ascendancy. Marco Polo visited the city, which he calls Cascar, about 1275 and left some notes on it.

In 1389-1390 Timur ravaged Kashgar, Andijan and the intervening country. Kashgar passed through a troublous time, and in 1514, on the invasion of the Khan Sultan Said, was destroyed by Mirza Ababakar, who with the aid of ten thousand men built the new fort with massive defences higher up on the banks of the Tuman. The dynasty of the Jagatai Khans collapsed in 1572 by the dismemberment of the country between rival representatives; and soon after two powerful Khoja factions, the White and Black Mountaineers (_Ak_ and _Kara Taghluk_), arose, whose dissensions and warfares, with the intervention of the Kalmucks of Dzungaria, fill up the history till 1759, when a Chinese army from Ili (Kulja) invaded the country, and, after perpetrating wholesale massacres, finally consolidated their authority by settling therein Chinese emigrants, together with a Manchu garrison. The Chinese had thoughts of pushing their conquests towards western Turkestan and Samarkand, the chiefs of which sent to ask assistance of the Afghan king Ahmed Shah. This monarch despatched an embassy to Peking to demand the restitution of the Mahommedan states of Central Asia, but the embassy was not well received, and Ahmed Shah was too much engaged with the Sikhs to attempt to enforce his demands by arms. The Chinese continued to hold Kashgar, with sundry interruptions from Mahommedan revolts--one of the most serious occurring in 1827, when the territory was invaded and the city taken by Jahanghir Khoja; Chang-lung, however, the Chinese general of Ili, recovered possession of Kashgar and the other revolted cities in 1828. A revolt in 1829 under Mahommed Ali Khan and Yusuf, brother of Jahanghir, was more successful, and resulted in the concession of several important trade privileges to the Mahommedans of the district of Alty Shahr (the "six cities"), as it was then named. Until 1846 the country enjoyed peace under the just and liberal rule of Zahir-ud-din, the Chinese governor, but in that year a fresh Khoja revolt under Kath Tora led to his making himself master of the city, with circumstances of unbridled licence and oppression. His reign was, however, brief, for at the end of seventy-five days, on the approach of the Chinese, he fled back to Khokand amid the jeers of the inhabitants. The last of the Khoja revolts (1857) was of about equal duration with the previous one, and took place under Wali-Khan, a degraded debauchee, and the murderer of the lamented traveller Adolf Schlagintweit.

The great Tungani (Dungani) revolt, or insurrection of the Chinese Mahommedans, which broke out in 1862 in Kan-suh, spread rapidly to Dzungaria and through the line of towns in the Tarim basin. The Tungani troops in Yarkand rose, and (10th of August 1863) massacred some seven thousand Chinese, while the inhabitants of Kashgar, rising in their turn against their masters, invoked the aid of Sadik Beg, a Kirghiz chief, who was reinforced by Buzurg Khan, the heir of Jahanghir, and Yakub Beg, his general, these being despatched at Sadik's request by the ruler of Khokand to raise what troops they could to aid his Mahommedan friends in Kashgar. Sadik Beg soon repented of having asked for a Khoja, and eventually marched against Kashgar, which by this time had succumbed to Buzurg Khan and Yakub Beg, but was defeated and driven back to Khokand. Buzurg Khan delivered himself up to indolence and debauchery, but Yakub Beg, with singular energy and perseverance, made himself master of Yangi Shahr, Yangi-Hissar, Yarkand and other towns, and eventually became sole master of the country, Buzurg Khan proving himself totally unfitted for the post of ruler. Kashgar and the other cities of the Tarim basin remained under Yakub Beg's rule until 1877, when the Chinese regained possession of their ancient dominion. (C. E. D. B.; C. El.)

KASHI, or KASI, formerly the Persian word for all glazed and enamelled pottery irrespectively; now the accepted term for certain kinds of enamelled tile-work, including brick-work and tile-mosaic work, manufactured in Persia and parts of Mahommedan India, chiefly during the 16th and 17th centuries.[1]

Undoubtedly originating in the Semitic word for glass, _kas_, it is quite possible that the name _kashi_ is immediately derived from Kashan, a town in Persia noted for its _faience_. This ancient pottery site, in turn, probably receives its name from the old-time industry; as a "city of the plain" it would obviously have no claim to the farther-eastern suffix _shan_, meaning a mountain. Sir George Birdwood wisely considers that "the art of glazing earthenware has, in Persia, descended in an almost unbroken tradition from the period of the greatness of Chaldaea and Assyria ... the name _kas_, by which it is known in Arabic and Hebrew, carries us back to the manufacture of glass and enamels for which great Sidon was already famous 1500 years before Christ ... the designs used in the decoration of Sind and Punjab glazed pottery also go to prove how much these Indian wares have been influenced by Persian examples and the Persian tradition of the much earlier art of Nineveh and Babylon" (_The Industrial Arts of India_, 1880). The two native names for glass, _kanch_ and _shisha_, common to Persia and India, are, seemingly, modifications of kashi. The Indian tradition of Chinese potters settling in bygone days at Lahore and Hala respectively, still lingers in the Punjab and Sind provinces, and evidently travelled eastward from Persia with the Moguls. Howbeit in Lahore the name Chini is sometimes wrongly applied to _kashi_ work; and the so-called Chini-ka-Rauza mausoleum at Agra is an instance of this misuse. It now seems an established fact that a colony of Chinese ceramic experts migrated to Isfahan during the 16th century (probably in the reign, and at the invitation, of Shah Abbas I.), and there helped to revive the jaded pottery industry of that district.

_Kashi_ work consisted of two kinds: (a) Enamel-faced tiles and bricks of strongly fired red earthenware, or terra-cotta; (b) Enamel-faced tiles and tesserae of lightly fired "lime-mortar," or sandstone. Tile-mosaic work is described by some authorities as the true _kashi_. From examination of figured tile-mosaic patterns, it would appear that, in some instances, the shaped tesserae had been cut out of enamelled slabs or tiles after firing; in other examples to have been cut into shape before receiving their facing of coloured enamel. Mosaic panels in the fort at Lahore are described by J. L. Kipling as "showing a _gul dasta_, or foliated pattern of a branching tree, each leaf of which is a separate piece of pottery." Conventional representations of foliage, flowers and fruit, intricate geometrical figures, interlacing arabesques, and decorative calligraphy--inscriptions in Arabic and Persian--constitute the ordinary _kashi_ designs. The colours chiefly used were cobalt blue, copper blue (turquoise colour), lead-antimoniate yellow (mustard colour), manganese purple, iron brown and tin white. A colour-scheme, popular with Mogul and contemporary Persian _kashigars_, was the design, in cobalt blue and copper blue, reserved on a ground of deep mustard yellow. Before applying the enamel colours, the rough face of the tile, or the tesserae, received a thin coating of slip of variable composition. It is probably owing to some defect in this part of the process, or to imperfect firing, that the enamelled tile surfaces on many old buildings, particularly on the south side, have weathered and flaked away.

In India the finest examples of _kashi_ work are in the Punjab and Sind provinces. At Lahore, amongst many beautiful structures, the most notable are the mosque of Wazir Khan (A.D. 1634) and the gateways of three famous pleasure gardens, the Shalamar Bagh (A.D. 1637), the Gulabi Bagh (A.D. 1640), and the Charburji (c. A.D. 1665). At Tatta the Jami Masjid, built by Shah Jahan (c. A.D. 1645), is a splendid illustration; whilst in that "vast cemetery of six square miles" on the adjacent Malki plateau, are numerous Mahommedan tombs (A.D. 1570-1640) with extraordinary _kashi_ ornamentation. Delhi, Multan, Jullundur, Shahdara, Lahore cantonment, Agra and Hyderabad (Sind), all possess excellent monuments of the best period viz. those erected during the reigns of Akbar and Jahangir (A.D. 1556-1628).

In Persia, at Isfahan, Kashan, Meshed and Kerman are a few buildings and ruins showing the old _kashi_ work; the palace of Chehel Situn in Isfahan, built during the reign of Shah Abbas I. (c. A.D. 1600), is a magnificent specimen of this art.