[1] In "Orographie des Kwen-lun," in _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft
für Erdkunde zu Berlin_ (1891).
[2] It is used, for instance, on the map of "Inner-Asien" (No. 62) of
_Stieler's Hand-atlas_ (ed. 1905) and in the _Atlas_ of the Russian
General Staff. Etymologically the correct form is Astin-tagh or
Astun-tagh, meaning the Lower or Nearer Mountains. Ustun-tagh, which
appears on Stieler's map as an _alternative_ name for Altyn-tagh,
means Higher or Farther Mountains, and though not used locally of any
specific range, would be appropriately employed to designate the
higher and more southerly of the twin border-ranges of the Tibetan
plateau.
[3] The Northern Mountains are the Pe-shan in the desert of Gobi (see
GOBI).
[4] On the opposite or north side of the desert of Lop (desert of
Gobi).
[5] Sven Hedin, _Scientific Results_, iii. 308.
[6] _Ibid._ 310-311.
[7] This is the correct form, Arka-tagh meaning the Farther or
Remoter Mountains. The form Akka-tagh is incorrect.
[8] The form Tumenlik-tagh is erroneous.
KUFA, a Moslem city, situated on the shore of the Hindieh canal, about 4
m. E. by N. of Nejef (32° 4´ N., 44° 20´ E.), was founded by the Arabs
after the battle of Kadesiya in A.D. 638 as one of the two capitals of
the new territory of Irak, the whole country being divided into the
_sawads_, or districts, of Basra and Kufa. The caliph 'Ali made it his
residence and the capital of his caliphate. After the removal of the
capital to Bagdad, in the middle of the following century, Kufa lost its
importance and began to fall into decay. At the beginning of the 19th
century, travellers reported extensive and important ruins as marking
the ancient site. Since that time the ruins have served as quarries for
bricks for the building of Nejef, and at the present time little remains
but holes in the ground, representing excavations for bricks, with
broken fragments of brick and glass strewn over a considerable area. A
mosque still stands on the spot where 'Ali is reputed to have
worshipped. (For history see CALIPHATE.)
KUHN, FRANZ FELIX ADALBERT (1812-1881), German philologist and
folklorist, was born at Königsberg in Neumark on the 19th of November
1812. From 1841 he was connected with the Köllnisches Gymnasium at
Berlin, of which he was appointed director in 1870. He died at Berlin on
the 5th of May 1881. Kuhn was the founder of a new school of comparative
mythology, based upon comparative philology. Inspired by Grimm's
_Deutsche Mythologie_, he first devoted himself to German stories and
legends, and published _Märkische Sagen und Märchen_ (1842),
_Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_ (1848), and _Sagen,
Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen_ (1859). But it is on his researches
into the language and history of the Indo-Germanic peoples as a whole
that his reputation is founded. His chief works in this connexion are:
_Zur ältesten Geschichte der Indogermanischen Völker_ (1845), in which
he endeavoured to give an account of the earliest civilization of the
Indo-Germanic peoples before their separation into different families,
by comparing and analysing the original meaning of the words and stems
common to the different languages; _Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des
Göttertranks_ (1859; new ed. by E. Kuhn, under title of _Mythologische
Studien_, 1886); and _Über Entwicklungsstufen der Mythenbildung_ (1873),
in which he maintained that the origin of myths was to be looked for in
the domain of language, and that their most essential factors were
polyonymy and homonymy. The _Zeitschrift für vergleichende
Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen_, with
which he was intimately connected, is the standard periodical on the
subject.
See obituary notice by C. Bruchmann in Bursian's _Biographisches
Jahrbuch_ (1881) and J. Schmidt in the above _Zeitschrift_, xxvi. n.s.
6.
KÜHNE, WILLY (1837-1900), German physiologist, was born at Hamburg on
the 28th of March 1837. After attending the gymnasium at Lüneburg, he
went to Göttingen, where his master in chemistry was F. Wöhler and in
physiology R. Wagner. Having graduated in 1856, he studied under various
famous physiologists, including E. Du Bois-Reymond at Berlin, Claude
Bernard in Paris, and K. F. W. Ludwig and E. W. Brücke in Vienna. At the
end of 1863 he was put in charge of the chemical department of the
pathological laboratory at Berlin, under R. von Virchow; in 1868 he was
appointed professor of physiology at Amsterdam; and in 1871 he was
chosen to succeed H. von Helmholtz in the same capacity at Heidelberg,
where he died on the 10th of June 1900. His original work falls into two
main groups--the physiology of muscle and nerve, which occupied the
earlier years of his life, and the chemistry of digestion, which he
began to investigate while at Berlin with Virchow. He was also known for
his researches on vision and the chemical changes occurring in the
retina under the influence of light. The visual purple, described by
Franz Boll in 1876, he attempted to make the basis of a photochemical
theory of vision, but though he was able to establish its importance in
connexion with vision in light of low intensity, its absence from the
retinal area of most distinct vision detracted from the completeness of
the theory and precluded its general acceptance.
KUKA, or KUKAWA, a town of Bornu, a Mahommedan state of the central
Sudan, incorporated in the British protectorate of Nigeria (see Bornu).
Kuka is situated in 12° 55´ N. and 13° 34´ E., 4½ m. from the western
shores of Lake Chad, in the midst of an extensive plain. It is the
headquarters of the British administration in Bornu, and was formerly
the residence of the native sovereign, who in Bornu bears the title of
shehu.
The modern town of Kuka was founded c. 1810 by Sheikh Mahommed al Amin
al Kanemi, the deliverer of Bornu from the Fula invaders. It is supposed
to have received its name from the _kuka_ or monkey bread tree
(_Adansonia digitata_), of which there are extensive plantations in the
neighbourhood. Kuka or Kaoukaou was a common name in the Sudan in the
middle ages. The number of towns of this name gave occasion for much
geographical confusion, but Idrisi writing in the 12th century, and Ibn
Khaldun in the 14th century, both mention two important towns called
Kaou Kaou, of which one would seem to have occupied a position very near
to that of the modern Kuka. Ibn Khaldun speaks of it as the capital of
Bornu and as situated on the meridian of Tripoli. In 1840 the present
town was laid waste by Mahommed Sherif, the sultan of Wadai; and when it
was restored by Sheikh Omar he built two towns separated by more than
half a mile of open country, each town being surrounded by walls of
white clay. It was probably owing to there being two towns that the
plural _Kukawa_ became the ordinary designation of the town in Kano and
throughout the Sudan, though the inhabitants used the singular _Kuka_.
The town became wealthy and populous (containing some 60,000
inhabitants), being a centre for caravans to Tripoli and a
stopping-place of pilgrims from the Hausa countries going across Africa
to Mecca. The chief building was the great palace of the sheikh. Between
1823 and 1872 Kuka was visited by several English and German travellers.
In 1893 Bornu was seized by the ex-slave Rabah (q.v.), an adventurer
from the Bahr-el-Ghazal, who chose a new capital, Dikwa, Kuka falling
into complete decay. The town was found in ruins in 1902 by the British
expedition which replaced on the throne of Bornu a descendant of the
ancient rulers. In the same year the rebuilding of Kuka was begun and
the town speedily regained part of its former importance. It is now one
of the principal British stations of eastern Bornu. Owing, however, to
the increasing importance of Maidugari, a town 80 m. S.S.W. of Kuka, the
court of the shehu was removed thither in 1908.
For an account of Kuka before its destruction by Rabah, see the
_Travels_ of Heinrich Barth (new ed., London, 1890); and _Sahara und
Sudan_, by Gustav Nachtigal (Berlin, 1879), i. 581-748.
KU KLUX KLAN, the name of an American secret association of Southern
whites united for self-protection and to oppose the Reconstruction
measures of the United States Congress, 1865-1876. The name is generally
applied not only to the order of Ku Klux Klan, but to other similar
societies that existed at the same time, such as the Knights of the
White Camelia, a larger order than the Klan; the White Brotherhood; the
White League; Pale Faces; Constitutional Union Guards; Black Cavalry;
White Rose; The '76 Association; and hundreds of smaller societies that
sprang up in the South after the Civil War. The object was to protect
the whites during the disorders that followed the Civil War, and to
oppose the policy of the North towards the South, and the result of the
whole movement was a more or less successful revolution against the
Reconstruction and an overthrow of the governments based on negro
suffrage. It may be compared in some degree to such European societies
as the Carbonara, Young Italy, the Tugendbund, the Confréries of France,
the Freemasons in Catholic countries, and the Vehmgericht.
The most important orders were the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the
White Camelia. The former began in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a
social club of young men. It had an absurd ritual and a strange uniform.
The members accidentally discovered that the fear of it had a great
influence over the lawless but superstitious blacks, and soon the club
expanded into a great federation of regulators, absorbing numerous local
bodies that had been formed in the absence of civil law and partaking of
the nature of the old English neighbourhood police and the ante-bellum
slave patrol. The White Camelia was formed in 1867 in Louisiana and
rapidly spread over the states of the late Confederacy. The period of
organization and development of the Ku Klux movement was from 1865 to
1868; the period of greatest activity was from 1868 to 1870, after which
came the decline.
The various causes assigned for the origin and development of this
movement were: the absence of stable government in the South for several
years after the Civil War; the corrupt and tyrannical rule of the alien,
renegade and negro, and the belief that it was supported by the Federal
troops which controlled elections and legislative bodies; the
disfranchisement of whites; the spread of ideas of social and political
equality among the negroes; fear of negro insurrections; the arming of
negro militia and the disarming of the whites; outrages upon white women
by black men; the influence of Northern adventurers in the Freedmen's
Bureau (q.v.) and the Union League (q.v.) in alienating the races; the
humiliation of Confederate soldiers after they had been paroled--in
general, the insecurity felt by Southern whites during the decade after
the collapse of the Confederacy.
In organization the Klan was modelled after the Federal Union. Its
Prescript or constitution, adopted in 1867, and revised in 1868,
provided for the following organization: The entire South was the
Invisible Empire under a Grand Wizard, General N. B. Forrest; each state
was a Realm under a Grand Dragon; several counties formed a Dominion
under a Grand Titan; each county was a Province under a Grand Giant; the
smallest division being a Den under a Grand Cyclops. The staff officers
bore similar titles, relics of the time when the order existed only for
amusement: Genii, Hydras, Furies, Goblins, Night Hawks, Magi, Monks and
Turks. The private members were called Ghouls. The Klan was twice
reorganized, in 1867 and in 1868, each time being more centralized; in
1869 the central organization was disbanded and the order then gradually
declined. The White Camelia with a similar history had a similar
organization, without the queer titles. Its members were called Brothers
and Knights, and its officials Commanders.
The constitutions and rituals of these secret orders have declarations
of principles, of which the following are characteristic: to protect and
succour the weak and unfortunate, especially the widows and orphans of
Confederate soldiers; to protect members of the white race in life,
honour and property from the encroachments of the blacks; to oppose the
Radical Republican party and the Union League; to defend constitutional
liberty, to prevent usurpation, emancipate the whites, maintain peace
and order, the laws of God, the principles of 1776, and the political
and social supremacy of the white race--in short, to oppose African
influence in government and society, and to prevent any intermingling of
the races.
During the Reconstruction the people of the South were divided thus:
nearly all native whites (the most prominent of whom were disfranchised)
on one side irrespective of former political faith, and on the other
side the ex-slaves organized and led by a few native and Northern whites
called respectively scalawags and carpet-baggers, who were supported by
the United States government and who controlled the Southern state
governments. The Ku Klux movement in its wider aspects was the effort of
the first class to destroy the control of the second class. To control
the negro the Klan played upon his superstitious fears by having night
patrols, parades and drills of silent horsemen covered with white
sheets, carrying skulls with coals of fire for eyes, sacks of bones to
rattle, and wearing hideous masks. In calling upon dangerous blacks at
night they pretended to be the spirits of dead Confederates, "just from
Hell," and to quench their thirst would pretend to drink gallons of
water which was poured into rubber sacks concealed under their robes.
Mysterious signs and warnings were sent to disorderly negro politicians.
The whites who were responsible for the conduct of the blacks were
warned or driven away by social and business ostracism or by violence.
Nearly all southern whites (except "scalawags"), whether members of the
secret societies or not, in some way took part in the Ku Klux movement.
As the work of the societies succeeded, they gradually passed out of
existence. In some communities they fell into the control of violent men
and became simply bands of outlaws, dangerous even to the former
members; and the anarchical aspects of the movement excited the North to
vigorous condemnation.[1] The United States Congress in 1871-1872
enacted a series of "Force Laws" intended to break up the secret
societies and to control the Southern elections. Several hundred arrests
were made, and a few convictions were secured. The elections were
controlled for a few years, and violence was checked, but the Ku Klux
movement went on until it accomplished its object by giving protection
to the whites, reducing the blacks to order, replacing the whites in
control of society and state, expelling the worst of the carpet-baggers
and scalawags, and nullifying those laws of Congress which had resulted
in placing the Southern whites under the control of a party composed
principally of ex-slaves.
AUTHORITIES.--J. C. Lester and D. L. Wilson, _Ku Klux Klan_ (New York,
1905); W. L. Fleming, _Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama_ (New
York, 1905), and _Documentary History of Reconstruction_ (Cleveland,
1906); J. W. Garner, _Reconstruction in Mississippi_ (New York, 1901);
W. G. Brown, _Lower South in American History_ (New York, 1901); J. M.
Beard, _Ku Klux Sketches_ (Philadelphia, 1876); J. W. Burgess,
_Reconstruction and the Constitution_ (New York, 1901). (W. L. F.)