KALAT, the capital of Baluchistan, situated in 29° 2' N. and 66° 35' E., about 6,78o ft. above sea-level, 88 m. from Quetta. The town gives its name also to a native state with an area, in cluding Makran and Kharan, of 71,593 m. and a population (1921), 328,281. Kalat is the most picturesque fortress in the Baluch highlands. It crowns a low hill, round the base of which clusters the closely built mass of flat-roofed mud houses which form the insignificant town. A miri or citadel, having an imposing appearance, dominates the town, and contains within its walls the palace of the khan. It was in an upper room of this residence that Mehrab Khan, ruler of Baluchistan, was killed during the storm ing of the town and citadel by the British troops at the close of the first Afghan War in 1839. The valleys immediately surround ing the fortress are well cultivated and thickly inhabited, in spite of their elevation and the extremes of temperature to which they are exposed. Recent surveys of Baluchistan have determined the position of Hozdar or Khozdar, the former capital (27° 48' N. 66° 38' E.), to be about 5o m. S. of Kalat. In spite of the rugged and barren nature of the mountain districts of the Kalat highlands, the main routes through them (concentrating on Khozdar rather than on Kalat) are comparatively easy. The old Pathan vat, the trade highway between Kalat and Karachi by the Hab valley, passes through Khozdar. From Khozdar another route strikes a little
west of south to Wad, and then passes easily into Las Bela. This is the Kohan vat. A third route runs to Nal, and leads to the head of the Kolwa valley (meeting with no great physical obstruction), and then strikes into the open high road to Persia. Some of the valleys about Kalat are wide and fertile, full of thriving villages and strikingly picturesque, in spite of the great preponderance of mountain wilderness (often, however, the pasturage of sheep) existing in the Sarawan lowlands almost equally with the Jalawan highlands which explains the importance of the province, an ciently called Turan (or Tubaran), in the eyes of mediaeval Arab geographers (see BALUCHISTAN). The khans of Kalat are now believed to be of Arabic origin, rather than Brahuic extraction.
They belong to the Ahmadzai branch of the Mirwari clan, which originally emigrated from Oman to the Kolwa valley of Mekran. The khan of Kalat is the leading chieftain in the Baluch Con federacy. The revenue of the khan is estimated at nearly i6o,o0o, including subsidies from the British government; and an accrued surplus of 1240,000 has been invested in Indian securities.
See G. P. Tate, Kalat (Calcutta, 1896) ; Baluchistan District Gazetteer. (T. H. H.)