KABYLES, the name given to a division of the Berbers of N. Africa, who occupy the coast and tablelands of Mauritania, and are indigenous to it.

KADIJAH, a rich widow, the wife of Mahomet, who had been her steward and factotum, and whom he married when she was forty and himself only twenty-five, and with whom he lived till her death, “loving her truly and her alone,” himself now a man of fifty; he had begun his mission as a prophet before she died, and one service she did him he never forgot as the greatest of them all:  she believed in him, when no one else did.

KADRIS, a set of Mohammedan dervishes who lacerate themselves with scourges, like the Flagellants.

KAFFIRS, including Kaffirs proper and Zulus, a division of the Bantu negroes, found all over S. Africa, are a pastoral and latterly agricultural people of fine physique, naturally hospitable, honest, and truthful, but now much contaminated by the white man; Kaffir wars broke out in 1834, 1846, 1850, and 1877; the name, which means infidel, was originally applied by the Mohammedans to all pagans.

KAFIRISTAN (200), a lofty mountainous region in the E. of Afghanistan, S. of the Hindu-Kush, with the Panjshir, Kabul, and Chitral Rivers on the W., S., and E.; the people are undersized, pastoral, and devoted to their Aryan faith, which here has its last stronghold, not organised politically, but united in their love of independence and hatred of Mohammedanism.

KAIRWAN` (5), the sacred city of Northern Africa, in Tunis, 80 m.  S. of Tunis, a decayed town, was the chief seat of the Mohammedans in N. Africa, and a sacred city; manufactures copper vessels, carpets, and articles of leather.

KAISAR-I-HIND (i. e.  Caesar of India), a title applied to Queen Victoria as Empress of India since 1876.

KAISER, the name, derived from the Latin Caesar, given to the emperor of the old German Empire or Reich, and resumed by the modern Emperor, William I., and his successors.

KAISER WILHELM’S LAND (116), the N. of the eastern half of New Guinea, belonging partly to Britain, partly to Holland, and partly to Germany.

KAITHAL (15), in the Punjab, 90 m.  NW. of Delhi, an ancient town, with saltpetre refineries; has old associations with the Hindu monkey-god, HANUMAN (q. v.).

KALA, the Hindu Chronus, or god of time, who, as in the Greek mythology, at once produces and devours all things.

KALAHARI DESERT, in S. Africa, stretches far northward from the Orange River between German SW.  Africa and the Transvaal, an elevated plateau, not really desert, but covered with scrub and affording coarse pasturage for cattle.

KALAMAZOO` (18), a railway centre and flourishing town in the SW. of Michigan, 144 m.  NE. of Chicago; manufactures machinery, paper, and flour.

KALEIDOSCOPE, an optical instrument, invented by Sir David Brewster in 1817, consisting of a cylinder with two mirrors set lengthwise inside, two plates of glass with bits of coloured glass loose between at one end and an eye-hole at the other, presents varying patterns on rotation.