Khoisan Vkoi-.sanX languages Group of more than 20 languages presently spoken by perhaps several hundred thousand Khoekhoe and San peoples of southern Africa. A number of Khoisan languages are now either extinct or spoken by very few people. Their most distinctive linguistic characteristic is the original and extensive use of click consonants. The genetic unity of the Khoisan languages remains disputed.
Khomeini \ko-'ma-ne\, Ruhollah orig. Ruhollah Musavi (b. May
17, 1900?, Khomeyn, Iran—d. June 3, 1989, Tehran) Shfite cleric and leader of Iran (1979-89). He received a traditional religious education and settled in Qom c. 1922, where he became a Shfite scholar of some repute and an outspoken opponent first of Iran’s ruler, Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1926— 41), and then of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941-79). Popu¬ larly recognized as a grand ayatollah in the early 1960s, he was imprisoned and then exiled (1964) for his criticism of the government. He settled first in Iraq—where he taught at the shrine city of Al-Najaf for some years—and then, in 1978, near Paris, where he continued to speak out against the shah. During that time he also refined his theory of velayat-e faqih (“government of the jurist”), in which the Shfite clergy— traditionally politically quiescent in Iran—would govern the state. Iranian unrest increased until the shah fled in 1979; Khomeini returned shortly thereafter and was eventually named Iran’s political and religious leader (rcihbar). He ruled over a system in which the clergy dominated the gov¬ ernment, and his foreign policies were both anti-Western and anticom¬ munist. During the first year of his leadership, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran—greatly exacerbating tensions with the U.S.— and the devastating Iran-Iraq War (1980-90) began.
Khons \'kons\ or Khensu \'ken-su\ or Chons \'kons\ Ancient Egyp¬ tian moon god. He was the son of the god Amon and the goddess Mut. He was usually depicted as a young man wearing a lunar disk and a rear¬ ing cobra on his head. He was also associated with baboons and was sometimes equated with Thoth, another moon god. In the late New King¬ dom (c. 1100 bc) a major temple was built for Khons in the Karnak com¬ plex at Thebes.
Khorana Xko-'ra-noV Har Gobind (b. Jan. 9, 1922, Raipur, India) Indian-born U.S. biochemist. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool and later taught in Canada and the U.S., from 1970 at MIT. He shared a 1968 Nobel Prize with Marshall Warren Nirenberg and Rob¬ ert William Holley for research that helped show how the genetic compo¬ nents of the cell nucleus control the synthesis of proteins. His contribution was to synthesize small nucleic acid molecules whose exact structure was known. Combined with the proper materials, his synthetic nucleic acids caused protein synthesis, just as in the cell; comparing these proteins with the nucleic acid showed which portions of the nucleic acid were the codes for each part of the protein. In 1970 he prepared the first artificial copy of a yeast gene.
Khorasan \,k6r-a-'san\ or Khurasan \,kur-a-'san\ Province (pop., 1996: 6,048,000), northeastern Iran. Its capital is Mashhad. The region
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
1032 I Khorram-dinan ► Kiarostami
was first named by the Sasanian dynasty, in whose language it means “Land of the Sun.” It was overrun by Muslim armies c. 650. Under Arab rule, it encompassed a vast territory including what is now southern Turk¬ menistan and northern Afghanistan. It was conquered c. 1220 by Genghis Khan and c. 1380 by Timur. Its current frontiers, as a province of Iran, were defined in 1881. Its population is composed of many ethnic groups as a result of numerous migrations and invasions over the centuries. The languages spoken are Turkish, Persian, and Kurdish. The province gives its name to the handcrafted Khorasan carpet.
Khorram-dman \k6r-,ram-de-'nan\ or Khorramiyyeh
\k6r-,ra-me-'yeh\ Islamic sect that flourished in the 9th-11th centuries. Though they were Muslims, some members of this sect believed in trans¬ migration of souls and in the Zoroastrian dualism of good and evil deities. Like the ShT'ites, they were partisans of c Au in the succession of the caliph¬ ate, and they held that Islam should be led by descendants of Muhammad. They differed from the Shfites in insisting that the leadership should be hereditary in the person of AbO Muslim. Claiming to be a descendant of Abu, their leader Babak led a rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, which ended with his capture and execution in 838. The sect died out in the 11th century.
Khosrow \kos-'rau\ I or Khosrow AnushTrvan (d. 579) Persian king (r. 531-579) of the Sasanian dynasty. He reformed taxation, reorga¬ nized the army, and launched military campaigns against the Hephthalites (a Central Asian people) and in Armenia, the Caucasus, and Yemen. He is said to have had Sanskrit texts imported for translation. Under his reign, chess was introduced from India, and astronomy, astrology, medicine, and philosophy flourished. The Avesta was purportedly codified under his reign, and in later eras his name became legend. Almost any pre-Islamic structure in Iran whose origin is unknown is credited to him.
Khosrow II or Khosrow ParvTz (d. 628) King of the Sasanian dynasty (r. 590-628) whose military exploits extended the empire to its furthest extent. He came to the throne—assisted by Maurice, the emperor of the Byzantine Empire —in troubled times. When a new Byzantine emperor took the throne, however, Khosrow launched a war against the empire, seizing Armenia and central Anatolia. In 613 his forces took Damascus, and Jerusalem fell in 614. His fortunes suffered a reverse when Byzan¬ tine forces recaptured lost ground and killed his ablest generals. Revolu¬ tion within the royal family followed, and Khosrow was executed. Under his reign, silverwork and carpet weaving reached a peak, and there is evi¬ dence of a renaissance in rock sculpture. After his death the empire rap¬ idly declined, falling to the Arabs during the Islamic conquests in 640.
Khrushchev \krush-'chof,\ English \'krush-chef\, Nikita (Sergeyevich) (b. April 17, 1894,
Kalinovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire—d. Sept. 11, 1971, Moscow,
Russia, U.S.S.R.) Soviet leader. The son of a miner, he joined the Com¬ munist Party in 1918. In 1934 he was elected to its Central Committee, and in 1935 he became first secretary of the Moscow party organization. He participated in Joseph Stalin’s purges of party leaders. In 1938 he became head of the Ukrainian party and in 1939 was made a member of the Politburo. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he emerged from a bitter power struggle as the party’s first secretary, and Nikolay Bulganin became premier. In 1955, on his first trip outside the Soviet Union,
Khrushchev showed his flexibility and the brash, extraverted style of diplomacy that would become his trademark. At the party’s Twentieth Congress in 1956, he delivered a secret speech denouncing Stalin for his “intolerance, his brutality, his abuse of power.” Thousands of political prisoners were released. Poland and Hungary used de-Stalinization to reform their regimes; Khrushchev allowed the Poles relative freedom, but he crushed the Hungarian Revolution by force (1956) when Imre Nagy attempted to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Opposition within the party crystallized in 1957, but Khrushchev secured the dismissal of his enemies
and in 1958 assumed the premiership himself. Asserting a doctrine of peaceful coexistence with capitalist nations, he toured the U.S. in 1959, but a planned Paris summit with Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960 was canceled after the U-2 Affair. In 1962 he attempted to place Soviet mis¬ siles in Cuba; in the ensuing Cuban missile crisis, he retreated. Ideological differences and the signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (1963) led to a split with the Chinese. Agricultural failures that necessitated importation of wheat from the West, the China quarrel, and his often arbitrary admin¬ istrative methods led to his forced retirement in 1964.