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Kish

https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/kish-COM_35632

Kish (1,592 words)

Kish (Ar., Qays) is an Iranian island important in the past (in trade) and the present (in tourism and trade). It lies in the Persian Gulf, nineteen kilometres off Bandar-i Charak. During the fifth–eighth/eleventh–fourteenth centuries it was the emporium through which trade from and to India was controlled. Thereafter it was a typical Persian Gulf island, whose inhabitants fished, pearled, and traded. By 1970 it became an important tourist centre, and it has been, since 1992, a free-trade zone.

Kish, in English sources variously called Kaeese, Ghes, Guase, or Kenn, is about sixteen kilometres long and six kilometres wide (Lorimer, 2:1471). In the Sāsānian period Kish was part of the Khvarāʾī Ārdshīr (Ibn Balkhī, 50; Nuzhat, 135). Kish city was large and walled, with towers, and surrounded by gardens (Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 2:407; Schwarz, 2:89; Wilson, 97–100). In addition to fishing, some agriculture, and pearl fishing, its inhabitants were traders (Nuzhat, 135, 226; Schwarz, 2:88–9). Its population was mainly Persian (Ibn Balkhī, trans. Le Strange, 42; Benjamin of Tudela, 62–3; Fischel, 207–8; Aubin, Ruine de Sîrâf, 297). The ruler wore Būyid dress, and the Qaṣr-i Ayvān was built in the Būyid style (Schwarz, 2:89; Aubin, Ruine de Sîrâf, 298).

In the late fifth/eleventh century, trade moved from Siraf, on the mainland, to Kish (Ibn Balkhī, 42; Waṣṣāf, 170–1; Ibn Mujāwir, 287; Natanzī, 17). The Banī Qayṣar dynasty held Kish until 625/1228 and probably controlled an area from Qalhāt to Bahrain (Goitein, 256; see also Qashānī, 183). Kish was the emporium through which trade to and from India was controlled, importing ivory, spices, precious stones, pearls, gold- and silver-wrought fabrics and exporting mainly horses (Schwarz, 7:874, 885–6.; Polo, ed. and trans. Yule, 1:84; Aubin, 90–2). Commercial rivalry between Kish and Hormuz led to hostilities that hurt trade (Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm, 182; for the wars between Kish and Hormuz, see Shabānkāraʾī, 217–9; Waṣṣāf, 195–7, 296–300). In 627/1230, Kish lost its independence to the Salghurid atabeg Muẓaffar al-Dīn Abū Bakr b. Saʿd-i Zangī (r. 628–58/1231–60) and became the fief of the al-Ṭībī merchants, a merchant family, originally from Iraq, which had close ties with the Īlkhānid rulers, and acquired the tax farm of Fārs and Kish as of 692/1293. (Zarkūb Shirāzī, 80; Aubin, Princes d’Ormuz, 81). Under the Īlkhānids (r. 654–754/1256–1353), Kish was still ruled by the al-Ṭībī merchants. In about 700/1300, Jamāl al-Dīn Ibrāhīm al-Ṭībī (d. 706/1306) had first choice of goods before other merchants. He exported 1400 horses per year and had herds in Qaṭīf, Laḥsā, Bahrayn, Qalhāt, and Hormuz and showed that these were all in Kish’s domain (Aubin, Princes d’Ormuz, 90; Vaṣṣāf, 268, 301–3). When Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ayaz conquered Hormuz in 695/1296, he read the khuṭba (sermon at Friday congregational prayers) in the name of al-Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam Fakhr al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Ṭībī, king of Kish (Wilson, 100–6; Whitehouse, Kish, 146). Ayaz was a slave (ghulām) of the ruler of Hormuz, Sayf al-Dīn Nuṣrat (d. 690/1291), who took the throne, acknowledged the rule of al-Ṭībī in Kish, and in 700/1301 moved the population of Hormuz city and their belongings to the island of Jarūn (a.k.a. Hormuz). Ayaz ruled until 711/1311 when he reinstated the rule of the Daramkū dynasty. Hormuz attacked Kish in about 720/1320 and captured the island and its new ruler, al-Malik Ghiyāth al-Dīn (Teixeira, 2:20–2; Qashānī, 107; Aubin, Princes d’Ormuz, 100–1). Thereafter, the island lost its position to Hormuz. Under the Īlkhānids, Kish had a reported revenue of 400,000–700,000 dinars and was the site of an Īlkhānid mint (Lowick, Trade patterns, 332). In 735/1335, the Gulf islands, especially Kish and Bahrain, paid the Mongol ruler Abū Saʿīd Bahādur (r. 717–36/1318–35) 491,300 dinars (Aubin, 121, n.3; Ḥamdallāh, 1:136).

By the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, Kish was “desolate since the loss of its trade, for fear of the Noutaqui (Nowtaki) and Nichelu (Nakhilu) robbers, two breeds of pirates that ever infest that sea” (Teixeira, trans. Sinclair, 162). In the twelfth/eighteenth century or earlier, Bandar-i Charak and its dependencies, including the island of Kish, were allotted to the Āl ʿAlī tribe from Umm al-Qaywayn (part of which migrated to the Iranian side, probably in the tenth/sixteenth century; Floor, 35, 50, 70, 85, 88). In about 1820, Kish was inhabited by approximately one hundred men of the Āl ʿAlī (Brucks, 188). Its inhabitants, although civil, were generally hostile to Europeans in small vessels (Horsburgh, 269). By 1900, Kish had ten villages with some 2250 inhabitants, mainly of the Āl ʿAlī. In summer, the population grew by an influx of Persians and Arabs. The inhabitants engaged in agriculture, fishing and pearling, some trade, including in slaves, and piracy. There were also twenty Hindu shopkeepers and pearl merchants (Lorimer, 2:1471–3; Administration report 1890–1, 10; Floor, 50). In addition to archaeological remains on the north side (Ḥarira), there are the water reservoirs (13 by 40 by 7 metres) and an 800-metre-long qanat (subterraneous aqueduct) cut into the rock (Stiffe, 644–9; Lorimer 2:1474). In 1974, Ḥarira was briefly studied and its remains inventoried (Whitehouse, Kish, 146–7).

Until 1906, when the Qavām al-Mulk family of Shiraz took ownership of the island, Kish was under the shaykh of Charak (Lorimer, 2:1474). Until 1971, the UAE contested Iran’s ownership of Kish. In 1970, the shāh made it his private resort island, complete with casino, but in 1972 the island became a public resort. In 1989, a special industrial trade zone on Kish was approved by the government of Iran and in 1992 the Kish Free Trade Organization was established. Present-day Kish is a major tourist attraction.

Willem Floor

Baqqāl-bāzī (415 words)

Baqqāl-bāzī (lit., grocer play, or baqqāl-uyīnī (same meaning)) was until the 1920s a popular Iranian form of satirical, improvisatory slapstick comedy (maskhara, buffoonery, or tamāshā, spectacle), so called because the play’s main character was a rich grocer (baqqāl) who was made fun of by his insolent servant, who was often represented as a black (siyāh). If the black servant had a major role, this type of play was called siyāh-bāzī. Baqqāl-bāzī, known since the 17th century, was heir to an ancient pre-islamic tradition of comedy that used stock characters such as a Jew or a bald man in the leading role (in plays called yahūd-bāzī and kachal-bāzī, respectively) to support the main story and provide variety. Rezvani argues unconvincingly that baqqāl-bāzī was a separate category of comedy, whose forerunner he considers Aristophanes’s bald hero and his cordax dance.

The main character of this type of theatre is a “bald hero” called Pahlavān Kachal, who is made fun of in the same manner as the grocer. In the 19th-early 20th century, there were usually only two actors, rarely three or four. The spoken word was usually accompanied by singing, instrumental music, and dancing. Some of the acts were occasionally performed entirely in mime (taqlīd, lit., imitation, or lāl-bāzī, lit., mute play). The play ended in an argument and a fight between the characters, who chased and beat each other.

Baqqāl-bāzī was popular because the actors (lūṭīs) satirised and exposed hypocrisy and revealed details about affairs that were public knowledge but that no one else dared to criticise publicly. Such was the fame of baqqāl-bāzī that it was performed regularly for Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (r. 1848–96), although it went out of vogue at the beginning of the twentieth century as its financial patrons—wealthy people, from the shah downwards—lost interest and turned to Western-style theatre and other modern amusements. This kind of theatre (now known as rū-hawẓī, lit., over the water tank or water reservoir) is, however, still performed in rural towns by a few small groups.

Willem Floor

https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/baqqal-bazi-COM_25216?s.num=0&s.au=Floor%2C+Willem