Part 22

Kharga is usually identified with the city of Oasis mentioned by Herodotus as being seven days' journey from Thebes and called in Greek the Island of the Blessed. The oasis was traversed by the army of Cambyses when on its way to the oasis of Ammon (Siwa), the army perishing in the desert before reaching its destination. During the Roman period, as it had also been in Pharaonic times, Kharga was used as a place of banishment, the most notable exile being Nestorius, sent thither after his condemnation by the council of Ephesus. Later it became a halting-place for the caravans of slaves brought from Darfur to Egypt.

About 100 m. W. of Kharga is the oasis of Dakhla, the inner or receding oasis, so named in contrast to Kharga as being farther from the Nile. Dakhla has a population (1907) of 18,368. Its chief town, El Kasr, has 3602 inhabitants. The principal ruin, of Roman origin and now called Deir el Hagar (the stone convent), is of considerable size. The Theban triad were the chief deities worshipped here. Some 120 m. N.W. of Dakhla is the oasis of Farafra, population about 1000, said to be the first of the oases conquered by the Moslems from the Christians. It is noted for the fine quality of its olives. The Baharia, or Little Oasis (pop. about 6000), lies 80 m. N.N.E. of Farafra. Many of its inhabitants, who are of Berber race, are Senussites. Baharia is about 250 m. E.S.E. of the oasis of Siwa (see EGYPT: _The Oases_; and SIWA).

See H. Brugsch, _Reise nach dem grossen Oase el-Khargeh in der Libyschen Wüste_ (Leipzig, 1878); H. J. L. Beadnell, _An Egyptian Oasis_ (London, 1909); Murray's _Handbook for Egypt_, 11th ed. (London, 1907); _Geological and Topographical Report on Kharga Oasis_ (1899), on _Farafra Oasis_ (1899), on _Dakhla Oasis_ (1900), on _Baharia Oasis_ (1903), all issued by the Public Works Department, Cairo. (F. R. C.)

KHARKOV, a government of Little Russia, surrounded by those of Kursk, Poltava, Ekaterinoslav, territory of the Don Cossacks, and Voronezh, and belonging partly to the basin of the Don and partly to that of the Dnieper. The area is 21,035 sq. m. In general the government is a table-land, with an elevation of 300 to 450 ft., traversed by deep-cut river valleys. The soil is for the most part of high fertility, about 57% of the surface being arable land and 24% natural pasture; and though the winter is rather severe, the summer heat is sufficient for the ripening of grapes and melons in the open air. The bulk of the population is engaged in agricultural pursuits and the breeding of sheep, cattle and horses, though various manufacturing industries have developed rapidly, more especially since the middle of the 19th century. Horses are bred for the army, and the yield of wool is of special importance. The ordinary cereals, maize, buckwheat, millet, hemp, flax, tobacco, poppies, potatoes and beetroot are all grown, and bee-keeping and silkworm-rearing are of considerable importance. Sixty-three per cent. of the land is owned by the peasants, 25% by the nobility, 6% by owners of other classes, and 6% by the crown and public institutions. Beetroot sugar factories, cotton-mills, distilleries, flour-mills, tobacco factories, brickworks, breweries, woollen factories, iron-works, pottery-kilns and tanneries are the leading industrial establishments. Gardening is actively prosecuted. Salt is extracted at Slavyansk. The mass of the people are Little Russians, but there are also Great Russians, Kalmucks, Germans, Jews and Gypsies. In 1867 the total population was 1,681,486, and in 1897 2,507,277, of whom 1,242,892 were women and 367,602 lived in towns. The estimated population in 1906 was 2,983,900. The government is divided into eleven districts. The chief town is Kharkov (q.v.). The other district towns, with their populations in 1897, are Akhtyrka (25,965 in 1900), Bogodukhov (11,928), Izyum (12,959), Kupyansk (7256), Lebedin (16,684), Starobyelsk (13,128), Sumy (28,519 in 1900), Valki (8842), Volchansk (11,322), and Zmiyev (4652).

KHARKOV, a town of southern Russia, capital of the above government, in 56° 37´ N. and 25° 5´ E., in the valley of the Donets, 152 m. by rail S.S.E. of Kursk. Oak forests bound it on two sides. Pop. (1867), 59,968; (1900), 197,405. Kharkov is an archiepiscopal see of the Orthodox Greek Church, and the headquarters of the X. army corps. The four annual fairs are among the busiest in Russia, more especially the Kreshchenskaya or Epiphany fair, which is opened on the 6th (19th) of January, and the Pokrovsky fair in the autumn. The turnover at the former is estimated at £3,000,000 to £4,000,000. Thousands of horses are bought and sold. At the Trinity (Troitsa) fair in June an extensive business (£800,000) is done in wool. A great variety of manufactured goods are produced in the town--linen, felt, beetroot sugar, tobacco, brandy, soap, candles, cast-iron. Kharkov is an educational centre for the higher and middle classes. Besides a flourishing university, instituted in 1805, and attended by from 1600 to 1700 students, it possesses a technological institute (400 students), a railway engineering school, an observatory, a veterinary college, a botanical garden, a theological seminary, and a commercial school. The university building was formerly a royal palace. The library contains 170,000 volumes; and the zoological collections are especially rich in the birds and fishes of southern Russia. Public gardens occupy the site of the ancient military works; and the government has a model farm in the neighbourhood. Of the Orthodox churches one has the rank of cathedral (1781). Among the public institutions are a people's palace (1903) and an industrial museum.

The foundation of Kharkov is assigned to 1650, but there is archaeological evidence of a much earlier occupation of the district, if not of the site. The Cossacks of Kharkov remained faithful to the tsar during the rebellions of the latter part of the 17th century; in return they received numerous privileges, and continued to be a strong advance-guard of the Russian power, till the final subjugation of all the southern region. With other military settlements Kharkov was placed on a new footing in 1765; and at the same time it became the administrative centre of the Ukraine.

KHARPUT, the most important town in the Kharput (or Mamuret el-Aziz) vilayet of Asia Minor, situated at an altitude of 4350 ft., a few miles south of the Murad Su or Eastern Euphrates, and almost as near the source of the Tigris, on the Samsun-Sivas-Diarbekr road. Pop. about 20,000. The town is built on a hill terrace about 1000 ft. above a well-watered plain of exceptional fertility which lies to the south and supports a large population. Kharput probably stands on or near the site of _Carcathiocerta_ in Sophene, reached by Corbulo in A.D. 65. The early Moslem geographers knew it as Hisn Ziyad, but the Armenian name was Khartabirt or Kharbirt, whence Kharput. Cedrenus (11th century) writes [Greek: Charpote]. There is a story that in 1122 Joscelin (Jocelyn) of Courtenay, and Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, both prisoners of the Amir Balak in its castle, were murdered by being cast from its cliffs after an attempted rescue. The story is told by William of Tyre, who calls the place Quart Piert or Pierre, but it is a mere romance. Kharput is an important station of the American missionaries, who have built a college, a theological seminary, and boys' and girls' schools. In November 1895 Kurds looted and burned the Armenian villages on the plain; and in the same month Kharput was attacked and the American schools were burned down. A large number of the Gregorian and Protestant Armenian clergy and people were massacred, and churches, monasteries and houses were looted. The vilayet Kharput was founded in 1888, being the result of a provincial rearrangement, designed to ensure better control over the disturbed districts of Kurdistan. It has much mineral wealth, a healthy climate and a fertile soil. The seat of government is Mezere, on the plain 3 m. S. of Kharput. (D. G. H.)

KHARSAWAN, a feudatory state of India, within the Chota Nagpur division of Bengal; area 153 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 36,540; estimated revenue £2600. Since the opening of the main line of the Bengal-Nagpur railway through the state trade has been stimulated, and it is believed that both iron and copper can be worked profitably.

KHARTUM, the capital of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, on the left bank of the Blue Nile immediately above its junction with the White Nile in 15° 36´ N., 32° 32´ E., and 1252 ft. above the sea. It is 432 m. by rail S.W. of Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, and 1345 m. S. of Cairo by rail and steamer. Pop. (1907) with suburbs, but excluding Omdurman, 69,349.

The city, laid out on a plan drawn up by Lord Kitchener in 1898, has a picturesque aspect with its numerous handsome stone and brick buildings surrounded by gardens and its groves of palms and other trees. The river esplanade, 2 m. long, contains the chief buildings. Parallel with it is Khedive Avenue, of equal length. The rest of the city is in squares, the streets forming the design of the union jack. In the centre of the esplanade is the governor-general's palace, occupying the site of the palace destroyed by the Mahdists in 1885. It is a three-storeyed building with arcaded verandas and a fine staircase leading to a loggia on the first floor. Here a tablet indicates the spot in the old palace where General Gordon fell. In the gardens, which cover six acres, is a colossal stone "lamb" brought from the ruins of Soba, an ancient Christian city on the Blue Nile. The "lamb" is in reality a ram of Ammon, and has an inscription in Ethiopian hieroglyphs. In front of the southern façade, which looks on to Khedive Avenue, is a bronze statue of General Gordon seated on a camel, a copy of the statue by Onslow Ford at Chatham, England. Government offices and private villas are on either side of the palace, and beyond, on the east, are the Sudan Club, the military hospital, and the Gordon Memorial College. The college, the chief educational centre in the Sudan, is a large, many-windowed building with accommodation for several hundred scholars and research laboratories and an economic museum. At the western end of the esplanade are the zoological gardens, the chief hotel, the Coptic church and the Mudiria House (residence of the governor of Khartum). Running south from Khedive Avenue at the spot where the Gordon statue stands, is Victoria Avenue, leading to Abbas Square, in the centre of which is the great mosque with two minarets. On the north-east side of the square are the public markets. The Anglican church, dedicated to All Saints, the principal banks and business houses, are in Khedive Avenue. There are Maronite and Greek churches, an Austrian Roman Catholic mission, a large and well-equipped civil hospital and a museum for Sudan archaeology. Outside the city are a number of model villages (each of the principal tribes of the Sudan having its own settlement) in which the dwellings are built after the tribal fashion. Adjacent are the parade ground and racecourse and the golf-links. A line of fortifications extends south of the city from the Blue to the White Nile. The buildings are used as barracks. Barracks for British troops occupy the end of the line facing the Blue Nile.

On the right (northern) bank of the Blue Nile is the suburb of Khartum North, formerly called Halfaya,[1] where is the principal railway station. It is joined to the city by a bridge (completed 1910) containing a roadway and the railway, Khartum itself being served by steam trams and rickshaws. The steamers for the White and the Blue Nile start from the quay along the esplanade. West of the zoological gardens is the point of junction of the Blue and White Niles and here is a ferry across to Omdurman (q.v.) on the west bank of the White Nile a mile or two below Khartum. In the river immediately below Khartum is Tuti Island, on which is an old fort and an Arab village.

From its geographical position Khartum is admirably adapted as a commercial and political centre. It is the great entrepôt for the trade of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. By the Nile waterways there is easy transport from the southern and western equatorial provinces and from Sennar and other eastern districts. Through Omdurman come the exports of Kordofan and Darfur, while by the Red Sea railway there is ready access to the markets of the world. The only important manufacture is the making of bricks.

The population is heterogeneous. The official class is composed chiefly of British and Egyptians; the traders are mostly Greeks, Syrians and Copts, while nearly all the tribes of the Sudan are represented in the negro and Arab inhabitants.

At the time of the occupation of the Sudan by the Egyptians a small fishing village existed on the site of the present city. In 1822 the Egyptians established a permanent camp here and out of this grew the city, which in 1830 was chosen as the capital of the Sudanese possessions of Egypt. It got its name from the resemblance of the promontory at the confluence of the two Niles to an elephant's trunk, the meaning of _khartum_ in the dialect of Arabic spoken in the locality. The city rapidly acquired importance as the Sudan was opened up by travellers and traders, becoming, besides the seat of much legitimate commerce, a great slave mart. It was chosen as the headquarters of Protestant and Roman Catholic missions, and had a population of 50,000 or more. Despite its size it contained few buildings of any architectural merit; the most important were the palace of the governor-general and the church of the Austrian mission. The history of the city is intimately bound up with that of the Sudan generally, but it may be recalled here that in 1884, at the time of the Mahdist rising, General Gordon was sent to Khartum to arrange for the evacuation by the Egyptians of the Sudan. At Khartum he was besieged by the Mahdists, whose headquarters were at Omdurman. Khartum was captured and Gordon killed on the 26th of January 1885, two days before the arrival off the town of a small British relief force, which withdrew on seeing the city in the hands of the enemy. Nearly every building in Khartum was destroyed by the Mahdists and the city abandoned in favour of Omdurman, which place remained the headquarters of the mahdi's successor, the khalifa Abdullah, till September 1898, when it was taken by the Anglo-Egyptian forces under General (afterwards Lord) Kitchener, and the seat of government again transferred to Khartum. It speedily arose from its ruins, being rebuilt on a much finer scale than the original city. In 1899 the railway from Wadi Haifa was completed to Khartum, and in 1906 through communication by rail was established with the Red Sea.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The village of Halfaya, a place of some importance before the foundation of Khartum, is 4 m. to the N., on the eastern bank of the Nile. From the 15th century up to 1821 it was the capital of a small state, tributary to Sennar, regarded as a continuation of the Christian kingdom of Aloa (see DONGOLA).

KHASI AND JAINTIA HILLS, a district of British India, in the Hills division of Eastern Bengal and Assam. It occupies the central plateau between the valleys of the Brahmaputra and the Surma. Area, 6027 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 202,250, showing an increase of 2% in the decade.

The district consists of a succession of steep ridges running east and west, with elevated table-lands between. On the southern side, towards Sylhet, the mountains rise precipitously from the valley of the Barak or Surma. The first plateau is about 4000 ft. above sea-level. Farther north is another plateau, on which is situated the station of Shillong, 4900 ft. above the sea; behind lies the Shillong range, of which the highest peak rises to 6450 ft. On the north side, towards Kamrup, are two similar plateaus of lower elevation. The general appearance of all these table-lands is that of undulating downs, covered with grass, but destitute of large timber. At 3000 ft. elevation the indigenous pine predominates over all other vegetation, and forms almost pure pine forests. The highest ridges are clothed with magnificent clumps of timber trees, which superstition has preserved from the axe of the wood-cutter. The characteristic trees in these sacred groves chiefly consist of oaks, chestnuts, magnolias, &c. Beneath the shade grow rare orchids, rhododendrons and wild cinnamon. The streams are merely mountain torrents; many of them pass through narrow gorges of wild beauty. From time immemorial, Lower Bengal has drawn its supply of lime from the Khasi Hills, and the quarries along their southern slope are inexhaustible. Coal of fair quality crops out at several places, and there are a few small coal-mines.

The Khasi Hills were conquered by the British in 1833. They are inhabited by a tribe of the same name, who still live in primitive communities under elective chiefs in political subordination to the British government. There are 25 of these chiefs called _Siems_, who exercise independent jurisdiction and pay no tribute. According to the census of 1901 the Khasis numbered 107,500. They are a peculiar race, speaking a language that belongs to the Mon-Anam family, following the rule of matriarchal succession, and erecting monolithic monuments over their dead. The Jaintia Hills used to form a petty Hindu principality which was annexed in 1835. The inhabitants, called Syntengs, a cognate tribe to the Khasis, were subjected to a moderate income tax, an innovation against which they rebelled in 1860 and 1862. The revolt was stamped out by the Khasi and Jaintia Expedition of 1862-63. The headquarters of the district were transferred in 1864 from Cherrapunji to Shillong, which was afterwards made the capital of the province of Assam. A good cart-road runs north from Cherrapunji through Shillong to Gauhati on the Brahmaputra; total length, 97 m. The district was the focus of the great earthquake of the 12th of June 1897, which not only destroyed every permanent building, but broke up the roads and caused many landslips. The loss of life was put at only 916, but hundreds died subsequently of a malignant fever. In 1901 the district had 17,321 Christians, chiefly converts of the Welsh Calvinistic Mission.

See _District Gazetteer_ (1906); Major P. R. T. Gurdon, _The Khasis_ (1907).

KHASKOY (also _Chaskoi_, _Haskoi_, _Khaskioi_, _Chaskovo_, _Haskovo_, and in Bulgarian _Khaskovo_), the capital of the department of Khaskoy in the eastern Rumelia, Bulgaria; 45 m. E.S.E. of Philippopolis. Pop. (1900), 14,928. The town has a station 7 m. N. on the Philippopolis-Adrianople section of the Belgrade-Constantinople railway. Carpets and woollen goods are manufactured, and in the surrounding country tobacco and silk are produced.

KHATTAK, an important Pathan tribe in the North-West Frontier Province of India, inhabiting the south-eastern portion of the Peshawar district and the south-eastern and eastern portions of Kohat. They number 24,000, and have always been quiet and loyal subjects of the British government. They furnish many recruits to the Indian army, and make most excellent soldiers.

KHAZARS (known also as Chozars, as [Greek: Akatziroi] or [Greek: Chazaroi] in Byzantine writers, as Khazirs in Armenian and Khwalisses in Russian chronicles, and Ugri Bielii in Nestor), an ancient people who occupied a prominent place amongst the secondary powers of the Byzantine state-system. In the epic of Firdousi Khazar is the representative name for all the northern foes of Persia, and legendary invasions long before the Christian era are vaguely attributed to them. But the Khazars are an historic figure upon the borderland of Europe and Asia for at least 900 years (A.D. 190-1100). The epoch of their greatness is from A.D. 600 to 950. Their home was in the spurs of the Caucasus and along the shores of the Caspian--called by medieval Moslem geographers Bahr-al-Khazar ("sea of the Khazars"); their cities, all populous and civilized commercial centres, were Itil, the capital, upon the delta of the Volga, the "river of the Khazars," Semender (Tarkhu), the older capital, Khamlidje or Khalendsch, Belendscher, the outpost towards Armenia, and Sarkel on the Don. They were the Venetians of the Caspian and the Euxine, the organizers of the transit between the two basins, the universal carriers between East and West; and Itil was the meeting-place of the commerce of Persia, Byzantium, Armenia, Russia and the Bulgarians of the middle Volga. The tide of their dominion ebbed and flowed repeatedly, but the normal Khazari may be taken as the territory between the Caucasus, the Volga and the Don, with the outlying province of the Crimea, or Little Khazaria. The southern boundary never greatly altered; it did at times reach the Kur and the Aras, but on that side the Khazars were confronted by Byzantium and Persia, and were for the most part restrained within the passes of the Caucasus by the fortifications of Dariel. Amongst the nomadic Ugrians and agricultural Slavs of the north their frontier fluctuated widely, and in its zenith Khazaria extended from the Dnieper to Bolgari upon the middle Volga, and along the eastern shore of the Caspian to Astarabad.

_Ethnology._--The origin of the Khazars has been much disputed, and they have been variously regarded as akin to the Georgians, Finno-Ugrians and Turks. This last view is perhaps the most probable. Their king Joseph, in answer to the inquiry of Hasdai Ibn Shaprut of Cordova (c. 958), stated that his people sprang from Thogarmah, grandson of Japhet, and the supposed ancestor of the other peoples of the Caucasus. The Arab geographers who knew the Khazars best connect them either with the Georgians (Ibn Athir) or with the Armenians (Dimishqi, ed. Mehren, p. 263); whilst Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who passed through Khazaria on a mission from the caliph Moqtadir (A.D. 921), positively asserts that the Khazar tongue differed not only from the Turkish, but from that of the bordering nations, which were Ugrian.

Nevertheless there are many points connected with the Khazars which indicate a close connexion with Ugrian or Turkish peoples. The official titles recorded by Ibn Fadlan are those in use amongst the Tatar nations of that age, whether Huns, Bulgarians, Turks or Mongols. The names of their cities can be explained only by reference to Turkish or Ugrian dialects (Klaproth, _Mém. sur les Khazars_; Howorth, _Khazars_). Some too amongst the medieval authorities (Ibn Hauqal and Istakhri) note a resemblance between the speech in use amongst the Khazars and the Bulgarians; and the modern Magyar--a Ugrian language--can be traced back to a tribe which in the 9th century formed part of the Khazar kingdom. These characteristics, however, are accounted for by the fact that the Khazars were at one time subject to the Huns (A.D. 448 et seq.), at another to the Turks (c. 580), which would sufficiently explain the signs of Tatar influence in their polity, and also by the testimony of all observers, Greeks, Arabs and Russians, that there was a double strain within the Khazar nation. There were _Khazars_ and _Kara_ (black) _Khazars_. The Khazars were fair-skinned, black-haired and of a remarkable beauty and stature; their women indeed were sought as wives equally at Byzantium and Bagdad; while the Kara Khazars were ugly, short, and were reported by the Arabs almost as dark as Indians. The latter were indubitably the Ugrian nomads of the steppe, akin to the Tatar invaders of Europe, who filled the armies and convoyed the caravans of the ruling caste. But the Khazars proper were a civic commercial people, the founders of cities, remarkable for somewhat elaborate political institutions, for persistence and for good faith--all qualities foreign to the Hunnic character.