KIZILBASH, (Turk., red head).
A nickname applied by the orthodox Turks to some of the more or less heretical peoples of Western and Central Asia. The name is said to have been first used in the sixteenth century to distinguish in Persia the Persianized Turks' (the ruling class), who were Shiites and wore redcaps, from the orthodox Sunnites, who wore green caps and were known as Yefhilbash. Soon after, it was applied to the Shiite Turks from Persia settled in Asia Minor and elsewhere. To-day the word is used of peoples of doubtful ethnic stock from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. The Kizilbash of Afghanistan, largely merchants of the more educated class, peacefully inclined and professing the Shiite variety of Islam, are generally spoken of as Persianized Turks.' Their physical type seems to be largely Aryan, and not Mongolian. The physical type, religion, so cial institutions, and so forth, of these people vary not a little in the different parts of the country, but all are chiefly pre-Osmanli, and per haps even pre-Islamic. With certain other
groups, such as the Taktadji, Yezidi, Ansariych, etc., they may represent, both physically and culturally, the older Aryan population of these re gions. Among their Christian neighbors the Kizil bash of Asia Minor have a good reputation, but they are more or less hated and despised by the Turks. Among then; hero-worship still survives, and their marriage customs also carry one hack to the days of the pre-islamie Aryans, some of them suggesting old Hellenic affiliations. Consult: Petersen and von Luschan. Ilci8cu in Lykicn (Wien, 1889) ; Chantre, Recherches an thropologiques dans l'Asic occidentalc (Lyons, 1895).