13th century with the fall of Siraf as a transit station of the trade between India and the West. In the 14th century it was supplanted by Hormuz and lapsed into its former insignificance. The island is nearly 10 m. long and 5 m. broad, and contains a number of small villages, the largest, Mashi, with about 100 houses, being situated on its north-eastern corner in 26° 34′ N. and 54° 2′ E. The highest part of the island has an elevation of 120 ft. The inhabitants are Arabs, and nearly all pearl fishers, possessing many boats, which they take to the pearl banks on the Arabian coast. The water supply is scanty and there is little vegetation, but sufficient for sustaining some flocks of sheep and goats and some cattle. Near the centre of the north coast are the ruins of the old city, now known as Harira, with remains of a mosque, with octagonal columns, masonry, water-cisterns (two 150 ft. long, 40 ft. broad, 24 ft. deep) and a fine underground canal, or aqueduct, half a mile long and cut in the solid rock 20 ft. below the surface. Fragments of glazed tiles and brown and blue pottery, of thin white and blue Chinese porcelain, of green céladon (some with white scroll-work or figures in relief), glass beads, bangles, &c., are abundant. Kīsh is the Kataia of Arrian; Chisi and Quis of Marco Polo; Quixi, Queis, Caez, Cais, &c., of Portuguese writers; and Khenn, or Kenn, of English.
KISHANGARH, a native state of India, in the Rajputana agency. Area, 858 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 90,970, showing a decrease of 27% in the decade, due to the famine of 1899–1900; estimated revenue, £34,000; there is no tribute. The state was founded in the reign of the emperor Akbar, by a younger son of the raja of Jodhpur. In 1818 Kishangarh first came into direct relations with the British government, by entering into a treaty, together with the other Rajput states, for the suppression of the Pindari marauders by whom the country was at that time overrun. The chief, whose title is maharaja, is a Rajput of the Rathor clan. Maharaja Madan Singh ascended the throne in 1900 at the age of sixteen, and attended the Delhi Durbar of 1903 as a cadet in the Imperial Cadet Corps. The administration, under the diwan, is highly spoken of. Irrigation from tanks and wells has been extended; factories for ginning and pressing cotton have been started; and the social reform movement, for discouraging excessive expenditure on marriages, has been very successful. The state is traversed by the Rajputana railway. The town of Kishangarh is 18 m. N.W. of Ajmere by rail. Pop. (1901), 12,663. It is the residence of many Jain merchants.
KISHINEV (Kishlanow of the Moldavians), a town of south-west Russia, capital of the government of Bessarabia, situated on the right bank of the Byk, a tributary of the Dniester, and on the railway between Odessa and Jassy in Rumania, 120 m. W.N.W. from the former. At the beginning of the 19th century it was but a poor village, and in 1812 when it was acquired by Russia from Moldavia it had only 7000 inhabitants; twenty years later its population numbered 35,000, while in 1862 it had with its suburbs 92,000 inhabitants, and in 1900 125,787, composed of the most varied nationalities—Moldavians, Walachians, Russians, Jews (43%), Bulgarians, Tatars, Germans and Gypsies. A massacre (pogrom) of the Jews was perpetrated here in 1903. The town consists of two parts—the old or lower town, on the banks of the Byk, and the new or upper town, situated on high crags, 450 to 500 ft. above the river. The wide suburbs are remarkable for their gardens, which produce great quantities of fruits (especially plums, which are dried and exported), tobacco, mulberry leaves for silkworms, and wine. The buildings of the town are sombre, shabby and low, but built of stone; and the streets, though wide and shaded by acacias, are mostly unpaved. Kishinev is the seat of the archbishop of Bessarabia, and has a cathedral, an ecclesiastical seminary with 800 students, a college, and a gardening school, a museum, a public library, a botanic garden, and a sanatorium with sulphur springs. The town is adorned with statues of Tsar Alexander II. (1886) and the poet Pushkin (1885). There are tallow-melting houses, steam flour-mills, candle and soap works, distilleries and tobacco factories. The trade is very active and increasing, Kishinev being a centre for the Bessarabian trade in grain, wine, tobacco, tallow, wool and skins, exported to Austria and to Odessa. The town played an important part in the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877–78, as the chief centre of the Russian invasion.
KISHM (also Arab. Jazīrat ut-tawīlah, Pers. Jazarīh i darāz, i.e. Long Island), an island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, separated from the Persian mainland by the Khor-i-Jafari, a strait which at its narrowest point is less than 2 m. broad. On British Admiralty charts it figures as “Clarence Strait,” the name given to it by British surveyors in 1828 in honour of the duke of Clarence (William IV.). The island is 70 m. long, its main axis running E.N.E. by W.S.W. Its greatest breadth is 22 m. and the mean breadth about 7 m. A range of hills from 300 to 600 ft. high, with strongly marked escarpments, runs nearly parallel to the southern coast; they are largely composed, like those of Hormuz and the neighbouring mainland, of rock salt, which is regularly quarried in several places, principally at Nimakdan (i.e. salt-cellar) and Salakh on the south coast, and forms one of the chief products of the island, finding its way to Muscat, India and Zanzibar. In the centre of the island some hills, consisting of sandstone and marl, rise to an elevation of 1300 ft. In its general aspect the island is parched and barren-looking, like the south of Persia, but it contains fertile portions, which produce grain, dates, grapes, melons, &c. Traces of naphtha were observed near Salakh, but extensive boring operations in 1892 did not lead to any result. The town of Kishm (pop. 5000) is on the eastern extremity of the island. The famous navigator, William Baffin, was killed here in January 1622 by a shot from the Portuguese castle close by, which a British force was then besieging. Lafit (Laft, Leit), the next place in importance (reduced by a British fleet in 1809), is situated about midway on the northern coast in the most fertile part of the island. There are also many flourishing villages. At Basidu or Bassadore (correct name Baba Saʽidu), on the western extremity of the island, the British government maintained until 1879 a sanatorium for the crews of their gunboats in the gulf, with barracks for a company of sepoys belonging to the marine battalion at Bombay, workshops, hospital, &c. The village is still British property, but its occupants are reduced to a couple of men in charge of a coal depot, a provision store and about 90 villagers. In December 1896 a terrible earthquake destroyed about four-fifths of the houses on the island and over 1000 persons lost their lives. The total population is generally estimated at about 15,000 to 20,000, but the German Admiralty’s Segelhandbuch für den Persischen Golf for 1907 has 40,000.
Kishm is the ancient Oaracta, or Uorochta, a name said to have survived until recently in a village called Brokt, or Brokht. It was also called the island of the Beni Kavan, from an Arab tribe of that name which came from Oman. (A. H.-S.)
KISKUNFÉLEGYHÁZA, a town of Hungary, in the county of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun, 80 m. S.S.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900), 33,242. Among the principal buildings are a fine town hall, a Roman Catholic gymnasium and a modern large parish church. The surrounding country is covered with vineyards, fruit gardens, and tobacco and corn fields. The town itself, which is an important railway junction, is chiefly noted for its great cattle-market. Numerous Roman urns and other ancient relics have been dug up in the vicinity. In the 17th century the town was completely destroyed by the Turks, and it was not recolonized and rebuilt till 1743.
KISLOVODSK, a town and health-resort of Russian Caucasia, in the province of Terek, situated at an altitude of 2690 ft., in a deep caldron-shaped valley on the N. side of the Caucasus, 40 m. by rail S.W. of Pyatigorsk. Pop. (1897), 4078. The limestone hills which surround the town rise by successive steps or terraces, and contain numerous caves. The mineral waters are strongly impregnated with carbonic acid gas and have a temperature of 51° F. The principal spring is known as Narsan, and its water is called by the Circassians the “drink of heroes.”
KISMET, fate, destiny, a term used by Mahommedans to express all the incidents and details of man’s lot in life. The
