KASSA (Germ. Kaschau; Lat. Cassovia), the capital of the county of Abauj-Torna, in Hungary, 170 m. N.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900), 35,856. Kassa is one of the oldest and handsomest towns of Hungary, and is pleasantly situated on the right bank of the Hernád. It is surrounded on three sides by hills covered with forests and vineyards, and opens to the S.E. towards a pretty valley watered by the Hernád and the Tarcza. Kassa consists of the inner town, which was the former old town surrounded with walls, and of three suburbs separated from it by a broad glacis. The most remarkable building, considered the grandest masterpiece of architecture in Hungary, is the Gothic cathedral of St Elizabeth. Begun about 1270 by Stephen V., it was continued (1342-1382) by Queen Elizabeth, wife of Charles I., and her son Louis I., and finished about 1468, in the reign of Matthias I. (Corvinus). The interior was transformed in the 18th century to the Renaissance style, and the whole church thoroughly restored in 1877-1896. The church of St Michael and the Franciscan or garrison church date from the 13th century. The royal law academy, founded in 1659, and sanctioned by golden bull of King Leopold I. in 1660, has an extensive library; there are also a museum, a Roman Catholic upper gymnasium and seminary for priests, and other schools and benevolent institutions. Kassa is the see of a Roman Catholic bishopric. It is the chief political and commercial town of Upper Hungary, and the principal entrepôt for the commerce between Hungary and Galicia. Its most important manufactures are tobacco, machinery, iron, furniture, textiles and milling. About 3 m. N.W. of the town are the baths of Bankó, with alkaline and ferruginous springs, and about 12 m. N.E. lies Ránk-Herlein, with an intermittent chalybeate spring. About 20 m. W. of Kassa lies the famous Premonstratensian abbey of Jászó, founded in the 12th century. The abbey contains a rich library and valuable archives. In the neighbourhood is a fine stalactite grotto, which often served as a place of refuge to the inhabitants in war time.
Kassa was created a town and granted special privileges by Béla IV. in 1235, and was raised to the rank of a royal free town by Stephen V. in 1270. In 1290 it was surrounded with walls. The subsequent history presents a long record of revolts, sieges and disastrous conflagrations. In 1430 the plague carried off a great number of the inhabitants. In 1458 the right of minting money according to the pattern and value of the Buda coinage was granted to the municipality by King Matthias I. The bishopric was established in 1804. In the revolutionary war of 1848-49 the Hungarians were twice defeated before the walls of Kassa by the Austrians under General Schlick, and the town was held successively by the Austrians, Hungarians and Russians.
KASSALA, a town and mudiria of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The town, a military station of some importance, lies on the river Gash (Mareb) in 15° 28′ N., 36° 24′ E., 260 m. E.S.E. of Khartum and 240 m. W. of Massawa, the nearest seaport. Pop. about 20,000. It is built on a plain, 1700 ft. above the sea, at the foot of the Abyssinian highlands 15 m. W. of the frontier of the Italian colony of Eritrea. Two dome-shaped mountains about 2600 ft. high, jebels Mokram and Kassala, rise abruptly from the plain some 3 m. to the east and south-east. These mountains and the numerous gardens Kassala contains give to the place a picturesque appearance. The chief buildings are of brick, but most of the natives dwell in grass tukls. A short distance from the town is Khatmia, containing a tomb mosque with a high tower, the headquarters of the Morgani family. The sheikhs El Morgani are the chiefs of a religious brotherhood widely spread and of considerable influence in the eastern Sudan. The Morgani family are of Afghan descent. Long settled in Jidda, the head of the family removed to the Sudan about 1800 and founded the Morgani sect. Kassala was founded by the Egyptians in 1840 as a fortified post from which to control their newly conquered territory near the Abyssinian frontier. In a few years it grew into a place of some importance. In November 1883 it was besieged by the dervishes. The garrison held out till the 30th of July 1885 when owing to lack of food they capitulated. Kassala was captured from the dervishes by an Italian force under Colonel Baratieri on the 17th of July 1894 and by the Italians was handed over on Christmas day 1897 to Egypt. The bulk of the inhabitants are Hallenga “Arabs.”
Kassala mudiria contains some of the most fertile land in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It corresponds roughly with the district formerly known as Taka. It is a region of light rainfall, and cultivation depends chiefly on the Gash flood. The river is however absolutely dry from October to June. White durra of excellent quality is raised.
KASSASSIN, a village of Lower Egypt 22 m. by rail W. of Ismailia on the Suez Canal. At this place, on the 28th of August and again on the 9th of September 1882 the British force operating against Arabi Pasha was attacked by the Egyptians—both attacks being repulsed (see [Egypt]: Military Operations).
KASSITES, an Elamite tribe who played an important part in the history of Babylonia. They still inhabited the north-western mountains of Elam, immediately south of Holwan, when Sennacherib attacked them in 702 B.C. They are the Kossaeans of Ptolemy, who divides Susiana between them and the Elymaeans; according to Strabo (xi. 13, 3, 6) they were the neighbours of the Medes. Th. Nöldeke (Gött. G. G., 1874, pp. 173 seq.) has shown that they are the Kissians of the older Greek authors who are identified with the Susians by Aeschylus (Choeph. 424, Pers. 17, 120) and Herodotus (v. 49, 52). We already hear of them as attacking Babylonia in the 9th year of Samsu-iluna the son of Khammurabi, and about 1780 B.C. they overran Babylonia and founded a dynasty there which lasted for 576 years and nine months. In the course of centuries, however, they were absorbed into the Babylonian population; the kings adopted Semitic names and married into the royal family of Assyria. Like the other languages of the non-Semitic tribes of Elam that of the Kassites was agglutinative; a vocabulary of it has been handed down in a cuneiform tablet, as well as a list of Kassite names with their Semitic equivalents. It has no connexion with Indo-European, as has erroneously been supposed. Some of the Kassite deities were introduced into the Babylonian pantheon, and the Kassite tribe of Khabirā seems to have settled in the Babylonian plain.