Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Kanuma ... Karabuk

Kanuma: city, Tochigi ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. It lies at the eastern foot of the Ashio Highlands. The central part of the city was a post town during the Tokugawa period (1603-1867); it later developed as a market for hemp seed. ...
kanun: the tabulation of administrative regulations in the Ottoman Empire that supplemented the Shari'ah (Islamic law) and the discretionary authority of the sultan.
Kanuri: African people, the dominant element of the population of Borno state in northeastern Nigeria and also found in large numbers in southeastern Niger. The Kanuri language is classified as belonging to the Saharan branch of the Nilo-Saharan family.
Kanuri language: language within the Saharan branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Kanuri consists of two main dialects, Manga Kanuri and Yerwa Kanuri (also called Beriberi, which they consider pejorative), spoken in central Africa by more than 5,700,000 individuals at the turn ...
Kanye: village, southern Botswana. It lies along a main road southwest of Gaborone, the national capital. It is one of the country's largest villages and the traditional headquarters of the Bangwaketse people. Kanye is equipped with a mission hospital, an airfield, ...
Kanze school: school of no theatre (q.v.) known for its emphasis on beauty and elegance. The school was founded in the 14th century by Kan'ami (q.v.), who founded the Yuzaki-za (Yuzaki troupe), the precursor of the Kanze school. The second master, Zeami ...
Kao Ninga: artist who painted some of the earliest Japanese suiboku works-a Chinese-inspired style of monochromatic ink painting favoured by Zen Buddhist priest-painters. His portrait of Kanzan, a mythical figure who represents the Zen way of life, and the techniques used in ...
Kao-hsiung: hsien (county), southwestern Taiwan. With an area of 1,078 square miles (2,793 square km), it is bordered by the hsiens of T'ai-nan and Chia-i (north), T'ai-tung and Hua-lien (east), and P'ing-tung (south) and by the Taiwan Strait (west). Kao-hsiung city ...
Kao-hsiung: shih (municipality) and major international port in southwestern Taiwan, with an area of 59 square miles (154 square km). The site has been settled since the later part of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). In early times the Chinese called the ...
Kao-tsu: founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), under which the Chinese imperial system assumed most of the characteristics that it was to retain until it was overthrown in 1911/12. He reigned from 206 to 195 BC.
Kao-tsu: the founder and first emperor of the T'ang dynasty (618-907).
Kao-tsung: third emperor of the T'ang dynasty and husband of the empress Wu Hou (625-705). He expanded the T'ang empire into Korea.
Kao-tsung: first emperor of the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279). He fled to the South when the nomadic Juchen tribesmen overran North China and captured Kao-tsung's father, the abdicated emperor Hui-tsung (reigned 1100-25/26), and Kao-tsung's brother, the emperor Ch'in-tsung (1125/26-27). Kao-tsung reestablished ...
Kaokoland: geographic region, northwestern Namibia. It is inhabited by the Bantu-speaking Herero, Ovahimba, and Ovatjimba nomadic pastoralists. Kaokoland is bordered by Angola and the Kunene River to the north, the Owambo geographic region to the east, the Hoanib River to the ...
Kaolack: town, west-central Senegal. It lies on the right bank of the Saloum River, 95 miles (150 km) southeast of Dakar. An ocean and river port with an important export trade in peanuts (groundnuts) and salt, it is linked by rail ...
kaolin: soft white clay that is an essential ingredient in the manufacture of china and porcelain and is widely used in the making of paper, rubber, paint, and many other products. Kaolin is named after the hill in China (Kao-ling) from ...
kaolinite: group of common clay minerals that are hydrous aluminum silicates; they comprise the principal ingredients of kaolin (china clay). The group includes kaolinite and its rarer forms, dickite and nacrite, halloysite, and allophane, which are chemically similar to kaolinite but ...
kaolisol: soil that is formed under the heat and heavy rainfall of the tropics, which leaches out the silica and the bases. Thus, the soil is silica-poor; highly weathered, sometimes to a depth of many metres and therefore poor in weatherable ...
Kaonde: a Bantu-speaking people who inhabit the northwestern region of Zambia. Their wooded highlands average 4,000 feet (1,220 m) in elevation; to the southeast begin open plains noted for their abundant wild animals.
Kapaa: city, Kauai county, on the east-central coast of Kauai island, Hawaii, U.S. Sugarcane and pineapple plantations once dotted the region around Kapaa. Rice was also grown, and Chinese merchants once dominated the commercial centre. Since the 1960s, tourism, diversified agriculture, ...
kapala: cup made of a human skull, frequently offered by worshipers to the fierce Tantric deities of Hindu India and Buddhist Tibet. In Tibet the skull cup is displayed on the Buddhist altar and is used in ritual to offer to ...
Kapalika and Kalamukha: members of either of two groups of extreme Hindu ascetics most prominent in India during the medieval period (10th-11th centuries), notorious for their practices of worship, which were said to include human sacrifice. They were offshoots of the Pasupata sect, ...
Kapfenberg: town, Bundesland Steiermark (federal province of Styria), southeast central Austria, at the confluence of the Murz and Thorlbach rivers just northeast of Bruck. Founded around a fortress in the late 12th century, it was first mentioned in 1256. It had ...
Kapila: Vedic sage and founder of the system of Samkhya, one of six schools of Vedic philosophy.
Kapital, Das: one of the major works of the 19th-century economist and philosopher Karl Marx (1818-83), in which he expounded his theory of the capitalist system, its dynamism, and its tendencies toward self-destruction. He described his purpose as to lay bare "the ...
Kapiti Island: uninhabited island at the northern entrance to Cook Strait, 5 miles (8 km) off the mouth of the Waikanae River, southwestern North Island, New Zealand. It is 9 square miles (23 square km) in area and may be part of ...
Kapitsa, Pyotr Leonidovich: Soviet physicist who was a corecipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1978 for his research in magnetism and low-temperature physics. He discovered that helium II (the stable form of liquid helium below 2.174 K, or -270.976° C) has ...
Kaplan, Justin: American writer, biographer, and book editor, best known for his acclaimed literary biographies of Mark Twain, Lincoln Steffens, and Walt Whitman.
Kaplan, Mordecai Menahem: American rabbi, educator, theologian, and religious leader who founded the influential Reconstructionist movement in Judaism.
Kapodistrias, Ioannis Antonios, Count: Greek statesman who was prominent in the Russian foreign service during the reign of Alexander I (reigned 1801-25) and in the Greek struggle for independence.
kapok: seed-hair fibre obtained from the fruit of the kapok tree or the kapok tree itself. The kapok is a gigantic tree of the tropical forest canopy and emergent layer. Common throughout the tropics, the kapok is native to the New ...
Kapoor, Raj: Indian motion-picture actor and director whose Hindi-language films were popular throughout India, the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and China.
Kaposi sarcoma: rare and usually lethal cancer of the tissues beneath the surface of the skin or of the mucous membranes. The disease can spread to other organs, including the liver, lungs, and intestinal tract. Kaposi sarcoma is characterized by red-purple or ...
Kaposvar: town, seat of Somogy megye (county), southwestern Hungary. On hills flanking the upper valley of the Kapos River (which flows northeast to the Sio), it is the chief market town of the county and has played an important role in ...
Kapp, Wolfgang: reactionary Prussian politician who led the Kapp Putsch (1920), which attempted to overthrow the fledgling Weimar Republic and establish a rightist dictatorship.
kappa: in Japanese folklore, a type of vampirelike lecherous creature that is more intelligent than the devilish oni (q.v.) and less malevolent toward men. Kappa are credited with having taught the art of bonesetting to humans. They are depicted in legend ...
kappa organism: gram-negative symbiotic bacterium found in the cytoplasm of certain strains of the protozoan Paramecium aurelia. These bacteria, when released into the surroundings, change to P particles that secrete a poison (paramecin) that kills other sensitive strains of P. aurelia. The ...
Kappel Wars: (1529 and 1531), two conflicts of the Swiss Reformation. The name derives from the monastery of Kappel, on the border between the cantons of Zurich and Zug.
Kapteyn, Jacobus Cornelius: Dutch astronomer who used photography and statistical methods in determining the motions and distribution of stars.
Kapuas River: chief waterway of western Indonesian Borneo. The river rises in the Kapuas Hulu Mountains in the central part of the island and flows 710 miles (1,143 km) west-southwest, reaching the South China Sea in a great marshy delta west-southwest of ...
Kapuni: locality in Taranaki local government region, a natural-gas and oil field south of Mount Egmont, western North Island, New Zealand. Petroleum from the locality is piped to Auckland and Wellington, principally for use as a household fuel. Natural gas produced ...
Kapurthala: city, north-central Punjab state, northwestern India. Kapurthala was founded in the 11th century. In 1780 it became the capital of the princely state of Kapurthala, and it remained the capital until that state was incorporated into India in 1948. The ...
Kapuskasing: town, Cochrane district, east-central Ontario, Canada. It lies along the Kapuskasing River. Known as MacPherson until 1917, when it received its present Indian name, the town originated in 1914 as a station on the National Transcontinental line (now the Canadian ...
Kara Koyunlu: Turkmen tribal federation that ruled Azerbaijan and Iraq from about 1375 to 1468.
Kara Mustafa Pasa, Merzifonlu: Ottoman grand vizier (chief minister) in 1676-83, who in 1683 led an unsuccessful Ottoman siege of Vienna.
Kara Sea: marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off western Siberia (Russia), between the Novaya Zemlya islands (west), Franz Josef Land (northwest), and the Severnaya Zemlya islands (east). It is connected with the Arctic Basin (north), the Barents Sea (west), and ...
Kara-Bogaz-Gol Gulf: inlet of the eastern Caspian Sea in northwestern Turkmenistan. With an area of 4,600-5,000 square miles (12,000-13,000 square km), it averages only 33 feet (10 m) in depth and has a very high evaporation rate. The water is thus extremely ...
Kara-e: 618-907). It was chiefly composed of imaginative landscapes in the Chinese manner and illustrations of Chinese legends and tales.
kara-yo: (Japanese: "Chinese style"), one of the three main Japanese styles of Buddhist temple architecture in the Kamakura period (1192-1333). Kara-yo originally followed Chinese forms that featured strict symmetry on a central axis. The word kara-yo is written with the character ...
Karabagh rug: floor covering handmade in the district of Karabakh (Armenian-controlled Azerbaijan), just north of the present Iranian border. As might be expected, Karabagh designs and colour schemes tend to be more like those of Persian rugs than do those made in ...
Karabuk: town, northwestern Turkey, on the Yenice River. Once a small hamlet, it has grown rapidly since the establishment of Turkey's first major iron and steel complex there in 1940. The works were expanded greatly in the 1950s and '60s. Facilities ...