khan1
/kɑːn
/ /kan /noun
1A title given to rulers and officials in central Asia, Afghanistan, and certain other Muslim countries.In the nineteenth century, the Caucasus and Central Asia were places of untrammeled brigandage and intermittent rebellion, marked by the rule of unpredictable kings and khans....
- In Qutaifah we were told by several local people that there was no khan in their town, only the Khan al-Arus some kilometers away.
- Finally the Russians split Azerbaijan's territory with Persia in 1828 by the Treaty of Turkmenchay, establishing the present frontiers and extinguishing the last native dynasties of local Azerbaijani khans.
1.1Any of the successors of Genghis Khan, supreme rulers of the Turkish, Tartar, and Mongol peoples and emperors of China in the Middle Ages.He walked his audience through a litany of invaders: Mongol khans, Turkish beys, Swedish feudal lords, Polish and Lithuanian gentry, British and French capitalists, Japanese barons....
- From rival tribes, the Tibetans were united in the sixth century; they were led by strong tribal leaders until the thirteenth century, when Mongol khans created a theocracy under their Buddhist spiritual advisors.
- The rulers of Moscow rose to pre-eminence among the scattered principalities as agents of the Mongol khans, who employed them to maintain order in their Russian realm and collect the tribute.
Derivatives
khanate
/ noun ...- Built in 1792 as a summer retreat, it's a charming legacy of the days when Azerbaijan was a chaotic jumble of rival khanates and principalities.
- The struggle between Russia and Great Britain in the late nineteenth century saw major Central Asian khanates, such as Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent, fall under Russian influence.
- All three khanates fell to the Russians between 1865 and 1873.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French chan, medieval Latin canus, caanus, from Turkic ḵān 'lord, prince'.
Rhymes
khan2
/kɑːn/ /kan /noun
(In the Middle East) an inn for travellers, built around a central courtyard.However, I have since found two eighteenth-century accounts of traveling between Aleppo and Damascus by English travelers, who both report staying at a khan in Qutaifah.
Origin
From Persian ḵān.