Encyclopædia Iranica
Table of Contents
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CABBAGE
Hūšang Aʿlam
(Pers. kalam).Many medicinal properties and uses have been attributed in the Islamic period to the leaves and seeds of the karanb, most of which can be traced to the writings of the Greek masters Dioscorides, Galen,snd others.
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ČĀČ
C. Edmund Bosworth
(Ar. Šāš), the name of a district and of a town in medieval Transoxania; the name of the town was gradually supplanted by that of Tashkent from late Saljuq and Mongol times onwards.
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ČAČ-NĀMA
D. N. MacLean
Persian translation of an early anonymous Arabic history of Sind compiled at Arōr in the 3rd/9th century.
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CADMAN, JOHN
Kamran Eqbal
Director and later chairman of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) during the reign of Reżā Shah (b. Silverdale, Staffordshire, England, 7 September 1877, d. Bletchley, Buckingham, 31 May 1941).
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ČĀDOR (1)
Cross-Reference
A portable dwelling characteristic of certain nomad groups. It consists of a canopy of cloth or skin supported by upright posts and anchored to the ground by means of pegs and ropes. See TENTS.
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ČĀDOR (2)
Bijan Gheiby, James R. Russell, Hamid Algar
A loose female garment covering the body, sometimes also the face.
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CADUSII
Rüdiger Schmitt
an Iranian tribe settled between the Caspian and the Black sea.
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ČAGĀD Ī DĀITĪ
Aḥmad Tafażżolī
(or Dāityā), lit. “summit of the law," a peak of the mythical mountain Harburz, located in Ērānwēǰ in the middle of the world.
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ČAḠADĀY
Cross-reference
second son of Čengīz Khan. See CHAGHATAYID DYNASTY.
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ČAḠĀNA
Ḥosayn ʿAlī Mallāḥ
The name given to four types of musical instruments.
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ČAḠANĪ, ṬĀHER
Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī
b. Abi’l-ʿAbbās Fażl b. Abī Bakr Moḥammad b. Abī Saʿd Moẓaffar b. Moḥtāj, prince and poet of the ancient Iranian Āl-e Moḥtāj, ruler of Čaḡānīān (Čaḡān Ḵodāt).
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ČAḠĀNĪĀN
C. Edmund Bosworth
Middle Pers. form Čagīnīgān, Arabic rendering Ṣaḡānīān, with the common rendering of Iranian č as ṣ.
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ČAḠĀNĪĀN, Chaghanids
Cross-Reference
See ĀL-E MOḤTĀJ.
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ČAḠĀNRŪD
C. Edmund Bosworth
Čaḡānīrūd in Farroḵī, the seventh and last right-bank tributary of the Oxus or Amu Darya.
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ČAḠATĀY
Cross-Reference
See CHAGHATAY LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE and CHAGHATAYID DYNASTY.
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ČAḠČARĀN
Daniel Balland
Principal town and administrative capital of the province of Ḡōr, in the mountains of central Afghanistan.
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ČAḠRĪ BEG DĀWŪD
C. Edmund Bosworth
b. Mīḵāʾīl b. Saljūq, Abū Solaymān, a member of the Saljuqs, the leading family of the Oghuz Turks, who with his brother Ṭoḡrel (Ṭoḡrïl) Beg founded the Great Saljuq dynasty in Persia in the 5th/11th century.
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ČAḠRĪ KHAN ʿALĪ
Cross-reference
See ILAK-KHANIDS.
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ČĀH
Marcel Bazin
Well. Together with the well-known qanāt (subterranean water canals), wells (čāh) play a great part in the mobilization of the groundwater resources of Persia.
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ČĀH-BAHĀR
Eckart Ehlers
Name of a town and bay on the Makrān coast of Persian Baluchistan facing the coast of Oman.
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ČAHĀR AYMĀQ
Cross-Reference
See AYMĀQ.
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ČAHĀR BĀḠ
Cross-Reference
See ČAHĀRBĀḠ.
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ČAHĀR DOWLĪ
Pierre Oberling
(Davālī), or ČĀR DOWLĪ, a tribe of western Iran.
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ČAHĀR LANG
cross-reference
(ČĀR LANG). See BAḴTĪĀRĪ TRIBE i.
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ČAHĀR MAḤĀ(L) WA BAḴTĪĀRĪ
Eckart Ehlers and Hūšang Kešāvarz
second smallest province (ostān) of Persia in area, located in the Zagros mountains of southwestern Persia.
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ČAHĀR MAQĀLA
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
persian prose work written in the 6th/12th century by Abu’l-Ḥasan Neẓām-al-Dīn (or Najm-al-Dīn) Aḥmad b. ʿOmar b. ʿAlī Neẓāmī ʿArūżī Samarqandī, originally entitled Majmaʿ al-nawāder.
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ČAHĀR ONṢOR
Sharif Husain Qasemi
(Four elements), an autobiographical work in prose by the poet and Sufi Abu’l-Maʿānī Mīrzā ʿAbd-al-Qāder Bīdel.
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ČAHĀR-BAYTI
Cross-Reference
See DO-BAYTI.
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ČAHĀRBĀḠ
David Stronach
lit. “four gardens,” a rectangular garden divided by paths or waterways into four symmetrical sections.
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ČAHĀRBĀḠ-E EṢFAHĀN
Roger M. Savory
the name of a broad avenue which was a key feature of the city of Isfahan as replanned by Shah ʿAbbās I after he had designated the city the new capital of the Safavid state in 1006/1597-98.
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ČAHĀRBĀḠ-E GARRŪS
Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī
(ČĀRBĀḠ-E GARRŪS), a park no longer in existence in the south of the town of Bījār, center of Garrūs šahrestān in Persian Kurdistan.
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ČAHĀRBĀḠ-E MAŠHAD
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
name of a royal garden and palace at Mašhad; under the Qajars and up to the present time it has been the name of an old quarter in the city.
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ČAHĀRDAH MAʿṢŪM
Hamid Algar
the fourteen inerrant or immaculate personages venerated by Twelver Shiʿites, i.e., the Prophet Moḥammad, his daughter Fāṭema, and the twelve imams.
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ČAHĀRGĀH
Bruno Nettl
the name of one of the twelve dastgāhs (modes) of traditional Persian music in the 14th/20th century.
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ČAHĀRJŪY
Cross-reference
See ĀMOL.
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ČAHĀRMEŻRĀB
Jean During
a genre of traditional rhythmic instrumental music.
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ČAHĀRŠANBA-SŪRĪ
Manouchehr Kasheff and ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī
(usually pronounced Čāršamba-sūrī), the last Wednesday of the Persian solar year, the eve of which is marked by special customs and rituals, most notably jumping over fire.
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ČAHĀRṬĀQ
Dietrich Huff, Bernard O’Kane
literally “four arches,” a modern term for an equilateral architectural unit consisting of four arches or short barrel vaults between four corner piers, with a dome on squinches over the central square. this unit became the most prominent element in traditional Iranian architecture after the ayvān (q.v.).
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ČAHĀRTĀR
Jean During
(lit. four-strings), a musical instrument belonging to the family of long-necked lutes.
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ČAHRĪQ
Amir Hassanpour, Juan R. I. Cole
a dehestān, village, and fortress in Salmās (Šāhpūr in the Pahlavi period) šahrestān in Azerbaijan between Ḵᵛoy and Urmia.
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ČAIŠPIŠ
Cross-Reference
See ČIŠPIŠ.
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CAITYAPRADAKṢIṆĀGĀTHĀ
Ronald E. Emmerick
lit. “the song (Skt. gāthā) about circumambulating (Skt. pradakṣiṇā) a holy place (Skt. caitya),” the title of a Buddhist text, a Khotanese version of which is extant.
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ČAK
Willem Floor
legal document, testament, money draft, check.
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ČAḴĀNSŪR
Daniel Balland
principal town of the large Ḵāšrūd delta oasis in northeastern Sīstān.
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ČĀKAR
Etienne de la Vaissiere
personal soldier-retainer of the nobility in pre-Islamic Central Asia.
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ČAKAR
Mansour Shaki
a Middle Persian legal term denoting a widow who at the death of her “authorized” (pādixšāyīhā) husband without issue was obliged to enter into a levirate marriage (čakarīh) in order to provide him with male offspring (frazand).
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ČAKĀVAK
Hūšang Aʿlam, Hūšang Aʿlam
(Mid. Pers. čakōk). i. The lark. ii. A melody in Persian music.
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ČAKZĪ
Cross-Reference
See ACƎKZĪ.
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ČĀL
Ehsan Yarshater
(Šāl), a village in the Qazvīn province, where the Čāli subdialect of Southern Tati is spoken.
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ČĀL TARḴĀN
Jens Kröger
(Čāl Tarḵān-ʿEšqābād), a site about 20 km southeast of Ray with remains from the late Sasanian and early Islamic periods.
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ČALABĪ, ʿĀREF
Cross-Reference
See ČELEBĪ, ʿĀREF.
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ČALABĪĀNLŪ
Pierre Oberling
a Turkicized tribe dwelling, for the most part, in the dehestān of Garmādūz in Arasbārān region of northern Azerbaijan.
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ČĀLDERĀN
Michael J. McCaffrey
battle of, an engagement fought near Ḵᵛoy in northwestern Azerbaijan on 23 August 1514, resulting in a decisive victory for the Ottoman forces under Sultan Salīm I over the Safavids led by Shah Esmāʿīl I. No single event prompted Salīm’s decision to wage war. It was the direct and inevitable result of the establishment of the Safavid state.
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CALENDARS
Antonio Panaino, Reza Abdollahy, Daniel Balland
Although evidence of calendrical traditions in Iran can be traced back to the 2nd millennium B.C., before the lifetime of Zoroaster, the earliest calendar that is fully preserved dates from the Achaemenid period. The Old Persian calendar was lunisolar, like that of the Babylonians, with twelve months of thirty days each.
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ČĀLI
Cross-Reference
See ČĀL.
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CALIPHS AND THE CALIPHATE
Hamid Algar
as viewed by the Shiʿites of Persia.
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CALLIAS, PEACE OF
Ernst Badian
peace made by Xerxes and/or Artaxerxes I with Athens and her confederacy in the 5th century B.C.
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CALLIGRAPHY
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
(ḵaṭṭāṭī, ḵᵛošnevīsī), the writing system in use in Persia since early Islamic times, which grew out of the Arabic alphabet. Comparison of some of the scripts that developed on Persian ground, particularly Persian-style Kufic, with the Pahlavi and Avestan scripts reveals a number of similarities between them.
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CALLIGRAPHY (continued)
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
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CALLISTHENES
Marie Louise Chaumont
the name of a Greek historian of the period of Alexander the Great.
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CALMEYER, Peter
W. Kleiss and A. Shapur Shahbazi
German archaeologist and Iranologist (b. 5 September 1930 in Halle, d. 22 November 1995 in Berlin).
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ČĀLŪS
Bernard Hourcade
a small town in western Māzandarān (šahrestān of Nowšahr, baḵš of Čālūs) located about 8 km from the Caspian coast at an elevation of 7 m.
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CAMA ORIENTAL INSTITUTE
M. F. Kanga, Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa
(K. R. Cama Oriental Institute), a research institute in Bombay established in memory of the Parsi orientalist, teacher, and social reformer Kharshedji Rustomji Cama, inaugurated 18 December 1916.
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CAMA, KHARSHEDJI RUSTAMH
James R. Russell
(1831-1909), Parsi Zoroastrian scholar and community leader. Cama worked for the organization of Parsi madressas (madrasas), and his consultation was sought also in the establishment of Hindu and Muslim schools. He was associated with the University of Bombay and helped establish the courses in Avestan and Pahlavi. He wrote extensively in Gujarati on Zoroastrianism.
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CAMBADENE
A. Shapur Shahbazi
the name of a region (dahyāuš) in ancient Media and present Persian Kurdistan.
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CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF IRAN
Hubert S. G. Darke
a survey of the history and historical geography of the land which is present-day Iran, as well as other territories inhabited by peoples of Iranian descent, from prehistoric times up to the present in seven volumes (vol. III being a double volume), of which the first volume was published in 1968 and the last in 1989.
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CAMBYSENE
Marie Louise Chaumont
name of a region mentioned for the first time in Strabo’s Geography as one of the northernmost provinces of Armenia, bordering on the Caucasus mountains, and also as a rugged and waterless region through which a road connecting Albania and Iberia passed.
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CAMBYSES
Muhammad A. Dandamayev
(OPers. Kambūǰiya-, Elamite Kanbuziya, Akkadian Kambuziya, Aram. Knbwzy), the name of two kings of the Achaemenid dynasty.
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ČAMČAMĀL
Abdollah Mardukh
(Kurdish čam “river” and Čamāl/Jamāl, personal name; in the sources also written Jamjamāl), a fertile dehestān of Ṣaḥna baḵš in Kermānšāhān (Bāḵtarān) province located to the south and west of Ṣaḥna on the Kermānšāh-Hamadān road and watered by Gāmāsb and Dīnavar rivers.
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CAMEL
Richard W. Bulliet, Moḥammad-Nāṣer Ḡolāmreżaʾī, Eqbāl Yaḡmāʾī, Mahmoud Omidsalar
Artifacts from ancient Iran indicate that only the Bactrian camel was part of the native fauna of greater Iran, though it was probably not numerous. Possibly the earliest evidence is a painted image on a ceramic shard from Tepe Sialk, probably datable between 3000 and 2500 B.C. It seems that the domesticated Bactrian camel was first encountered by the Indo-Iranians after their separation from the other Indo-European tribes.
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CAMEL THORN
Hūšang Aʿlam
(Alhagi Adans. spp.), common name for wild thorny suffrutescent plants of the Papilionaceae family, called šotor-ḵār and ḵār-e šotor (lit. “camel’s thorn”) in Persian.
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CAMERON, GEORGE GLENN
Gernot L. Windfuhr
philologist and historian, b. 30 July 1905 in Washington, Pennsylvania, d. 14 September 1979 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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CAMPBELL, JOHN
Kamran Ekbal
(1799-1870), British envoy to Persia, 1830-35.
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CAMPHOR
Hūšang Aʿlam
a strong-smelling volatile white solid essential oil obtained from two genera of the camphor tree and used from ancient times in Persia as an aromatic with antiseptic and insect-repelling properties.
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ČAMRŪŠ
Alan V. Williams
a mythical bird that in the Pahlavi books, of all birds of land and sky, is second only to the Sēn bird in worth.
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CANADA i. Iranian Studies in
Colin Paul Mitchell
several factors in the last half-century have led to a rapid expansion of Iranian studies in Canada in the fields of history, literature, language, philosophy, religion, art history, and archaeology.
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CANADA v. Iranian Community in Canada
M. Mannani, N. Rahimieh, K. Sheibani
the immigration records of the organization Statistics Canada for the period between 1896 and 1915 date the arrival of the first Iranian immigrants to between 1901 and 1902; Canada remains among the most popular destinations for Iranians seeking to emigrate, and Iranian immigrants to Canada are the fifth most numerous of any nationality.
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ČANDARBHĀN BARAHMAN
Cross-Reference
See ČANDRA BHĀN BARAHMAN.
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CANDLE
Mahmoud Omidsalar, J. T. P. de Bruijn
(Pers.-Ar. šamʿ); the Arabic word literally means “beeswax."
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CANDLESTICKS
Linda Komaroff
from the late 6th/12th through the early 10th/16th century one of the most common types of implement produced as a luxury metalware in Iran. Their form, decoration, and epigraphic program reflect contemporary trends in Iranian metalwork.
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ČANDRA BHĀN
Sharif Husain Qāsemī
(or Čandarbhān Barahman), Indian poet and writer in Persian (b. Lahore, date unknown, d. Lahore 1073/1662-63).
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ČANDŪ LAʿL ŠĀDĀN
Sharif Husain Qasemi
Maharaja, statesman and poet in Persian and Urdu (b. 1175/1761-62, d. 7 Rabīʿ II 1261/15 April 1845 at Hyderabad).
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CANDYS
Rüdiger Schmitt
name probably of Iranian origin used by Greek authors for a Persian garment.
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ČANG
Ḥosayn-ʿAlī Mallāḥ
“harp," a musical instrument of the free-stringed family.
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ČANGRANGHĀČA-NĀMA
Žāla Āmūzgār
a narrative work in Persian verse by Zartošt or Zarātošt, son of Bahrām-e Paždū, a poet of the 7th/13th century.
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CANNIZZARO, FRANCESCO ADOLFO
Antonio Panaino
(b. Messina, 13 July 1867; d. Rome, 24 April 1914), Italian autodidact of Oriental languages and translator of the Vidēvdād.
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ČĀP
Willem Floor
“print, printing,” a Persian word probably derived from Hindi chāpnā, “to print.”
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ČĀPĀR
Willem Floor
(or čapar < Turk. čapmak “to gallop”), post rider.
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CAPITAL CITIES
A. Shapur Shahbazi, C. Edmund Bosworth
these centers played important diplomatic and administrative roles in Iranian history, closely linked to the fortunes of the ruling families.
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CAPITALS
Wolfram Kleiss
in architectural terminology transitional elements between weight-bearing supports (see COLUMNS) and the roofs or vaults supported. The development of the capital began in Assyria, when a tree trunk was inserted in the earth with another trunk or branch laid in the fork to carry the roof construction.
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CAPPADOCIA
Michael Weiskopf
Anatolian Achaemenid satrapy, Hellenistic-era Iranian kingdom, and imperial Roman province. A rolling plateau cut by mountains, Cappadocia in the east contains bare central highlands, in the west a nearly treeless landscape, and in the north mountainous tracts marked by fertile valleys, especially on the lower Halys river.
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CAPUCHINS IN PERSIA
Francis Richard
from 1626 onward the French Capuchins established a number of missionary posts in the Near East.
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ČĀR BAKR
G. A. Pugachenkova
(lit. “four Bakrs”), family necropolis of the powerful Jūybāri shaikhs near the village of Sumitan.
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CARACAL
Hūšang Aʿlam
(Felis caracal Schreber = Lynx caracal, Caracal caracal), also called “desert lynx” or “Persian lynx”; in Persian, sīāhgūš, lit. “black-eared.”
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CARACALLA
Erich Kettenhofen
the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, known as Caracalla because of his hooded robe (b. 188, d. 217), who conducted a campaign against the Parthians.
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CARAKA
Ronald E. Emmerick
the name of an Indian physician associated with one of the major works on Indian medicine (the Carakasaṃhitā), as well as the name of King Kaniṣka’s physician.
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ČARAND PARAND
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
(Čarand o parand), literally “fiddle-faddle,” the title of satirical pieces of social and political criticism in the form of short narratives, brief announcements, telegrams, news reports, etc., by ʿAlī-Akbar Dehḵodā.
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CARAVAN
Bert G. Fragner
a form of collective transport of men and goods.
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CARAVANSARY
Moḥammad-Yūsuf Kīānī and Wolfram Kleiss
a building that served as the inn of the Orient, providing accommodation for commercial, pilgrim, postal, and especially official travelers. The term kārvān-sarā was commonly used in Iran and is preserved in several place names. The normal caravansary consisted of a square or rectangular plan centered around a courtyard with only one entrance and arrangements for defense if necessary.
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CARD GAMES
Mahdi Roschanzamir
(ganjafa-bāzī, waraq-bāzī), card games were invented in China in the 7th-8th centuries and via India were brought to Persia, whence they reached the Arab world and Europe.
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CARDAMOM
Hūšang Aʿlam
hel in modern Persian (from Skt. elā), the aromatic seeds of several plants of the family Zingiberaceae.
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CARDINAL POINTS
Cross-Reference
See BĀḴTAR.
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CARDUCHI
Muhammad Dandamayev
warlike tribes that in antiquity occupied the hilly country along the upper Tigris near the Assyrian and Median borders, in present-day western Kurdistan.
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ČARḠ
Cross-Reference
See BĀZ.
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CARIA
Michael Weiskopf
in the area of southwestern Turkey, under Achaemenid rule first as a part of the satrapy of Sparda (Lydia; 540s-390s B.C.), then as a separate satrapy (390s-30s B.C.) under the Hecatomnid family, whose prominence and self-promotion created a number of mostly Greek epigraphic documents detailing the development of 4th-century Caria.
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ČĀRĪKĀR
Daniel Balland
main town of Kōhdāman and the administrative capital of the Afghan province of Parwān, located about 63 km north of Kabul. Throughout history there has been an important urban center at the northern end of the long Kōhdāman depression.
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ČĀRJŪY
Cross-reference
See ĀMOL.
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ČARḴ
Daniel Balland
a common toponym all over the Iranian world.
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ČARḴ-E ČĀH
Nāṣer Ḡolām-Reżāʾī
(lit. “well wheel”), a device for drawing water from a well or river or for removing soil during the excavation of a well. It is a type of windlass, consisting of a hollow horizontal cylinder around which a rope is coiled or uncoiled to raise or lower a bucket attached to the end. Formerly they were common features of Iranian gardens and courtyards in regions where the absence of qanāts and running water made wells indispensable.
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ČARKAS
Beatrice Manz, Masashi Haneda
(Cherkes), term used in Persian, Arabic, and Turkic for the Circassian people of the northwest Caucasus who call themselves Adygeĭ and speak a language of the Abazgo-Circassian branch of Caucasian (see caucasian languages).
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ČARḴĪ, Mawlānā Yaʿqūb
Hamid Algar
an early shaikh of the Naqšbandī order and author of several works in Persian (d. 851/1447).
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ČARM
Willem M. Floor
(Av. čarəman-, OPers. čarman-, Khot. tcārman-, etc.), skin, hide, and leather, which have had a variety of uses in Persia.
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CARMANIA
Rüdiger Schmitt
ancient region east of Fārs province, approximately equivalent to modern Kermān. The Old Persian form is attested only once in inscriptions.
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CARMATIANS
Farhad Daftary
(Ar. Qarāmeṭa; sing. Qarmaṭī), the name given to the adherents of a branch of the Ismaʿili movement during the 3rd/9th century.
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CARMELITES IN PERSIA
Francis Richard
in 1604 Pope Clement VIII, with the support of Sigismund III Vasa of Poland, dispatched a mission of Discalced Carmelite fathers to Persia; the embassy represented the culmination of a policy of seeking alliances against the Ottoman empire that had been initiated by Pius V when he had attempted to formalize relations with Shah Ṭahmāsb.
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ČĀROḠ
Cross-Reference
or čāroq, etc. See CLOTHING xx, xxv, xxviii.
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CARPETS
Multiple Authors
(qālī; Ar. and Pers. farš), heavy textiles used as coverings for floors, walls, and other large surfaces, as well as for various kinds of furnishing.
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CARPETS i. Introductory survey
Roger Savory
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CARPETS ii. Raw materials and dyes
Jasleen Dhamija
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CARPETS iii. Knotted-pile carpets: Techniques and structures
Annette Ittig
The techniques of carpet making are the processes of weaving, knotting, and finishing; structure is the complex of interrelations among the elements of the finished carpet. One of the major problems in carpet studies is the lack of a standard terminology to describe specific techniques, structures, and designs.
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CARPETS iv. Knotted-pile carpets: Designs, motifs, and patterns
Annette Ittig
In this discussion “design” refers to the overall composition of decorative elements on a carpet; the simplest elements in designs are single motifs, which are most frequently combined in more complex units; these units in turn may be arranged in various combinations and sequences to form patterns.
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CARPETS v. Flat-woven carpets: Techniques and structures
Sarah B. Sherrill
Most of the structures in Persian flat-woven carpets belong to the category called “interlacing” by textile specialists; the term designates the most straightforward way in which each thread of a fabric passes under or over threads that cross its path.
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CARPETS vi. Pre-Islamic Carpets
Karen S. Rubinson
Evidence for textiles of all kinds in pre-Islamic Iran is very sparse. It is necessary to supplement the few remains of actual textiles with examination of representations in art and other kinds of indirect evidence of production, for example preserved impressions and pseudomorphs from excavations.
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CARPETS vii. Islamic Persia to the Mongols
Barbara Schimtz
Because of the scarcity of surviving materials it is difficult to separate the history of carpet making in Iran from that of the rest of the Islamic world before the Mongol invasion (656/1258). Furthermore, the kind of rigid distinction between carpet and other textile designs that characterizes later production probably did not exist in the early Islamic period.
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CARPETS viii. The Il-khanid and Timurid Periods
Eleanor Sims
Persian carpets that can be indisputably identified a having been produced in the 8-9th/14-15th centuries are virtually nonexistent. That carpets were used and produced in Persia has been inferred from written sources, both contemporary and slightly earlier. The existence of carpets and weavings from contemporary Anatolia and the Turkman tribal confederations, and possibly also from Egypt and even Spain, also permits the inference.
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CARPETS ix. Safavid Period
Daniel Walker
The high point in Persian carpet design and manufacture was attained under the Safavid dynasty (1501-1739). It was the result of a unique conjunction of historical factors—royal patronage, the influence of court designers at all levels of artistic production, the wide availability of locally produced and imported materials and dyes, and commercial acceptance, particularly in foreign markets.
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CARPETS x. Afsharid and Zand Periods
Layla S. Diba
Although it is probable that magnificent silk-and-brocade rugs in the style of the Safavid court manufactories were no longer produced in significant quantities, it seems reasonable to assume that production of less luxurious wool rugs continued in many traditional centers, even though on a smaller scale and mainly for domestic consumption.
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CARPETS xi. Qajar Period
Annette Ittig
During the Qajar period there were dramatic alterations in the traditional organization and orientation of the Persian carpet industry and, consequently, in Persian carpets themselves. Particularly significant was the substantial increase both in the number of looms and in the volume of carpet exports from the 1870s to World War I.
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CARPETS xii. Pahlavi Period
Willem Floor
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CARPETS xiii. Post-Pahlavi Period
P. R. Ford
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CARPETS xiv. Tribal Carpets
Siawosch Azadi
In Persia rural carpets have been made in nearly every possible technical variation and for a wide range of uses. Yet there are many nomadic groups whose works are absolutely unknown, and the weavings of other groups have been only very imperfectly studied and described. For that reason there are still many objects of which the function is obscure.
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CARPETS xv. Caucasian Carpets
Richard E. Wright
The oldest surviving rugs produced in the Caucasus may be a group with representations of dragons and phoenixes in combat. There is, however, no evidence to permit attribution to the Caucasus. A group of carpets from the 18th century does include patterns and motifs that persisted in subsequent productions; they are predominantly long rugs with bold repeat patterns and have been found primarily in mosques in Turkey.
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CARPETS xvi. Central Asian Carpets
Walter Denny
Central Asian carpets, broadly defined, include those woven by various peoples in what were formerly the Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, Karakalpak Autonomous, Kirgiz, and Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republics (Tzareva, pp. 5-6); in extreme northern and northeastern Persia; in Afghanistan; and in the Turkic (Uighur) areas of Sinkiang (Xinjiang) in western China.
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CARRHAE
A. Shapur Shahbazi
(Ḥarrān), town in Mesopotamia where in May 53 B.C. a decisive battle was fought between the Parthians commanded by a member of the Sūrēn family and the Romans under the triumvir M. Licinius Crassus.
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CARROT
Hūšang Aʿlam
the taproot of Daucus L. subspp., etc. (family Umbelliferae), traditionally called gazar (arabicized as jazar) or zardak (lit. “the little yellow one”), and later also havīj in Persian.
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ČARS
Cross-Reference
See BANG.
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CARTER ADMINISTRATION
Richard W. Cottam
(1977-81): POLICY TOWARD PERSIA. When the administration of President Jimmy Carter took office in January 1977, United States foreign relations overall were remarkably stable. A modus vivendi had been established with the Soviet Union, and the Soviet-American cold war, the primary source of disturbance of world tranquility, was on what would prove to be a temporary hold.
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CARUS
Fridrik Thordarson
Imperator Caesar MARCUS AURELIUS (Augustus), Roman emperor (r. 282-83).
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ČARZA
Ehsan Yarshater
village in the mountainous area of the Upper Ṭārom district (baḵš) in the šahrestān of Zanjān, at 49°1′ E, 36°52′ N, 42 km north of the district center, Sīrdān. It is one of the few villages in Ṭārom where Iranian Tati dialects have not yet given way to Turkish.
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CASARTELLI, LOIS CHARLES
Antonio Panaino
(b. Manchester, 14 November 1852, to a Lombard family settled in England; d. Manchester, 18 January 1925), scholar of ancient Iranian languages and religions and particularly of Pahlavi literature.
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CASES
Gernot L. Windfuhr
their forms and uses in Iranian languages and dialects. The term "case" is used on at least three linguistic levels: 1. the semantic role of a noun (phrase), such as agent, patient, experiencer, and possessor; 2. the syntactic function, such as subject, direct object, and indirect object; 3. the morphological means, such as nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive.
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ČAŠM-PEZEŠKĪ
Ṣādeq Sajjādī
ophthalmology.
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ČAŠM-ZAḴM
Ebrāhīm Šakūrzāda and Mahmoud Omidsalar
(lit. “a blow by the eye”), the evil eye: the supposed power of an individual to cause harm, even illness or death, to another person (or animals and other possessions) merely by looking at him or complimenting him.
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ČAŠMA
Eckart Ehlers
“spring.” Iran and Afghanistan, as well as wide parts of Central Asia, have a great variety of natural springs, especially in mountainous areas and along tectonic thrusts. A very general classification divides all springs into (1) those produced by gravity acting on the groundwater and (2) those that have their origins in tectonic volcanic forces within the earth’s crust.
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ČAŠMA(-YE) ʿALĪ
Abbas Alizadeh
lit. “fountain of ʿAlī,” the name for various natural springs in Iran, the two best-known of which are located near Dāmḡān and Ray respectively.
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ČAŠMHĀYAŠ
Mohammad Reza Ghanoonparvar
(1952; tr. by John O’Kane as Her Eyes, 1989), a novel considered by many critics as the most important contribution of the noted Persian novelist Bozorg Alavi.
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ČĀŠNĪGĪR
C. Edmund Bosworth
literally “taster” (Pers. čāšnī “taste”), the official who at the court of Turkish dynasties in Iran and elsewhere, from the Saljuq period onwards, had the responsibility of tasting the ruler’s food and drink in order to ensure that it was not poisoned.
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CASPIAN DIALECTS
cross-reference
Iranian dialects spoken along the Caspian littoral, including Ṭāleši, Gīlakī, Māzandarāni, and related subdialects, and the extinct dialect of Ṭabarestān. See individual entries.
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CASPIAN GATES
John H. Hansman
an ancient toponym identifying a ground-level pass that runs east and west through a southern spur of the Alborz Mountains in north central Iran.
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CASPIAN SEA
Multiple Authors
actually a lake, the largest in the world (estimated surface area in 1986: 378,400 km², volume 78,600 km³; approx. between lat 37° and 47° N, long 46° and 54° E); it is bounded on the south by Persia.
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CASPIAN SEA i. GEOGRAPHY
Xavier de Planhol
actually a lake, the largest in the world (estimated surface area in 1986: 378,400 km², volume 78,600 km³; approx. between lat 37° and 47° N, long 46° and 54° E); it is bounded on the south by Persia.
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CASPIAN SEA ii. DIPLOMATIC HISTORY IN MODERN TIMES
Guive Mirfendereski
A new area of sub-systemic studies in international relations, which encompasses the Caspian basin and its immediate surroundings, emerged in the post-Soviet Union era.
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CASPIAN SEAL
Eskandar Firouz
(Phoca caspica), the only mammal in the Caspian Sea. It is a relict species, endemic to the Caspian Sea and the deltas of rivers that discharge into it—the region where its ancestors lived when the sea was still connected to the oceans.
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CASPIANS
Rüdiger Schmitt
name of an ancient people dwelling along the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea, whether north or south of the river Kura is not clear.
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CASSANDANE
Muhammad Dandamayev
wife of Cyrus II, an Achaemenian, sister of Otanes and daughter of Pharnaspes.
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CASSIA
Hūšang Aʿlam
a genus of shrubs and trees of the family Leguminosae (or Caesalpiniaceae in some classifications).
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CASSIODORUS, Magnus Aurelius
Marie Louise Chaumont
(b. ca. 485, d. after A.D. 580), Latin author of three historical works containing material on Iran.
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CASTLES
Wolfram Kleiss
primarily fortified country manors but also permanently inhabited defensive installations, maintained by the authorities along important land routes, and urban citadels, which functioned as administrative centers and places of refuge for inhabitants under siege, particularly in prehistoric and early historic times.
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CASTOLUS
Michael Weiskopf
a plain east of Sardis, site of the mustering of troops from the satrapy of Sparda (Lydia) during Achaemenid times.
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CASTOREUM
cross-reference
See BEAVER.
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CASTRATION
Lutz Richter-Bernburg
(of men; ḵaṣī kardan, ḵāya kešīdan, ḵᵛāja kardan), discussion of castration in Islamic medical literature, on its legal status, and on its historical attestation in Islamic Persia.
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CAT I. IN MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
Mahmud Omidsalar
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CAT II. PERSIAN CAT
Jean-Pierre Digard
In western Europe and in North America, what are called “Persian cats” are a breed of longhaired domestic cats with a massive body, measuring 40 to 50 cm in length, and up to 30 cm in the height of their withers. According to the standards, these cats must present a strong bone structure, important muscular masses, and short, straight paws.
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CATALOGUES
Cross-reference
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CATECHISMS
G. Kreyenbroek
treatises for instruction in the fundamental tenets of a religious faith, cast in the form of questions and answers.
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CATHARS, ALBIGENSIANS, and BOGOMILS
J. L M. van Schaik
Manichaeism is said to have been passed via the Paulicians and the Bogomils to re-emerge in the European Cathars but this supposed historical transmission is difficult to demonstrate.
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ČATR
Eleanor Sims
parasol or umbrella, an attribute of royalty in Iran.
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CATTLE
Jean-Pierre Digard, Mary Boyce
the word “cattle” has no precise equivalent in Iranian languages, in which bovines are commonly designated by the words for “cow,” “bull,” and “calf."
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CAUCASUS AND IRAN
Multiple Authors
The Iranian world is bordered in the northwest by the high mountain barrier of the Caucasus, which separates it from the vast Russian plains beyond. In relief, structure, and ecology the Caucasus constitutes a clear frontier between eastern Europe and western Asia, though it is more closely related to the latter.
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CAUCASUS i. Physical Geography, Population, and Economy.
Pierre Thorez
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CAUCASUS ii. Language contact
Fridrik Thordarson
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CAUCASUS, iii. ACHAEMENID RULE IN
Bruno Jacobs
Achaemenid rule in the Caucasus region was established, at the latest, in the course of the Scythian campaign of Darius I in 513-12 BCE.
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CAUTES AND CAUTOPATES
William W. Malandra
the two dadophoroi or torch bearers who often flank Mithras in the bull-slaying scene and who are sometimes shown in the birth scenes of Mithras.
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ČĀV
Peter Jackson
paper currency issued in Mongol Iran in 693/1294.
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CAVALRY
Cross-Reference
See ASB; ASB-SAVĀRĪ.
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CAVES OF THE THOUSAND BUDDHAS
Xin-jiang Rong
Ch’ien Fo Tung (Qianfodong), a large group of grottoes and cave temples carved out of Ming-sha hill in the southeastern Tun-huang (Dunhuang) district of Kansu (Gansu) province, China.
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CAVIAR
Hūšang Aʿlam
ḵāvīar in Persian, the processed non-fertilized roe of sturgeons and some other large fishes, highly valued as a gourmet delicacy. In Iran the roe for caviar is obtained mainly from three species of sturgeon (family Acipenseridae) caught in the southern littoral or fluvial waters of the Caspian Sea.
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ČĀVOŠ
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
or ČĀVŪŠ, used in classical Persian texts with the meanings of 1. army commander; 2. master of ceremony or person in charge of the servants; 3. caravan leader; or, more specifically, 4. a guide on the road to Mecca or holy shrines.
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ČAXRĀ
Cross-Reference
town mentioned in the Avesta. See ČARḴ.
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ČĀY
Daniel Balland and Marcel Bazin
shrub of the genus Camellia and beverage made from its leaves, probably the most popular drink throughout the Iranian world. It is not known when Persians first became acquainted with the beverage. Bīrūnī, in his Ketāb al-ṣaydana, written in the first half of the 11th century, gave some details about the plant čāy and its use as a beverage in China and Tibet.
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ČĒČAST
Aḥmad Tafażżolī
a mythical lake in eastern Iran, later identified in the Pahlavi and Persian sources with Lake Urmia in Azerbaijan.
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CEDRENUS, GEORGIUS
James R. Russell
twelfth-century Byzantine historian who edited the Synopsis Historiōn of John Skylitzēs.
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ČEGEL
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
(Jekel), name of a Turkish people in Central Asia known in Persian poetry for the extraordinary beauty of their youths.
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ČEGĪNĪ
Pierre Oberling
or Čeganī, a tribe that originated in northwestern Persia but is now scattered in Luristan, the Qazvīn region, and Fārs.
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ČEHEL SOTŪN, ISFAHAN
Ingeborg Luschey-Schmeisser
Safavid royal palace used for coronations and the reception of foreign embassies. It stands in the center of a large garden between the Meydān-e Šāh and the Čahārbāḡ. The layout of these gardens, with three walks shaded by plane trees, dates from the period of Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1588-1629).
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ČEHEL SOTŪN, KABUL
Nancy H. Dupree
palace on a small, terraced hill rising at the southern end of a 30-acre walled garden about six miles south of the city center. According to a commemorative marble plaque at the base of the hill the cornerstone of the palace was laid in 1888, and the palace was completed as a seat for Prince Ḥabīb-Allāh three years later.
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ČEHEL SOTŪN, QAZVIN
Wolfram Kleiss
a Safavid pavilion that stands amid gardens in the central meydān (square) of the old city and in which the Qazvīn museum is installed.
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ČEHEL TANĀN
Kerāmat-Allāh Afsar
(“the forty dervishes,” popularly called Čeltan), a minor takīya (monastery) situated in the northeastern section of Shiraz, a short distance north of the tomb of Ḥāfeẓ and south of Haft Tanān (“the seven dervishes”).
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ČEHEL ṬŪṬĪ
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
(forty parrot [stories]), the designation of collections of entertaining stories about the wife of a merchant and a pair of parrots, several versions of which are current in Persia and which are derived from older collections called ṭūṭī-nāmas (book of the parrots).
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ČEHR
Bruce Lincoln
two homographic neuter substantives čiθra- in Avestan, one meaning “face, appearance,” which is translated in Pahlavi as paydāg, and another rendered in Pahlavi as tōhmag and denoting “origin, lineage,” as well as “seed,” although the latter sense is attested only in compounds.
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ČEHRANEMĀ
Nassereddin Parvin
(lit. “mirror”), the name of an illustrated Persian newspaper and periodical published in Egypt (1322-1338 Š./1904-59, with interruptions).
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ČELEBĪ, ʿĀREF
Tahsin Yazici
(670-719/1272-1320), the son of Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Solṭān Walad (q.v.) and the grandson of Mawlānā Jalāl-al-Dīn Moḥammad Rūmī.
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ČELEBĪ, FATḤ-ALLĀH ʿĀREF
Tahsin Yazici
10th/16th-century poet and author of a Šāh-nāma (Solaymān-nāma) extolling the Ottoman rulers.
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ČELLA
Mahmoud Omidsalar, Hamid Algar
term referring to any forty-day period. i. In Persian folklore. ii. In Sufism.
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ČELOW-KABĀB
Ṣoḡrā Bāzargān
a popular Persian dish which consists of cooked rice (čelow; see berenj) and a variety of broiled (kabāb, see below) mutton or veal (though less popular) and is served with butter, egg yolk, powdered sumac, raw onions, broiled tomatoes, and fresh sweet basil.
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CEMETERIES
Mahmoud Omidsalar
(qabrestān, gūrestān) in Persian folklore; cemeteries are found both inside and outside cities and villages, usually close to a holy shrine, or emāmzāda, in order to partake of its blessing.
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ČEMĪKENT
Cross-Reference
See ASFĪJĀB.
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ČENĀR
Hūšang Aʿlam
the “Oriental plane (tree),” Platanus orientalis L. (fam. Platanaceae). This species is indigenous from southeastern Europe to the Iranian plateau. In Persia proper, spontaneous planes have been observed by botanists. The popularity and wide distribution of cultivated planes as ornamental or shade trees in Persia, especially in gardens and along city streets, are due to several features.
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ČENGĪZ KHAN
David O. Morgan
(Mong. Chinggis), probably born in 1167 in northeastern Mongolia, d. 1227, founder of the Mongol empire, the most extensive land empire known to history. Čengīz’s achievement, though hardly positive from the point of view of Persia, was by no means wholly a military and a destructive one. In the 1250s, a relatively coherent Mongol kingdom, the Il-khanate, was set up under Čengīz’s grandson Hülegü.
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CENSORING AN IRANIAN LOVE STORY
Sara Khalili
the first novel published in English by noted modernist writer Shahriar Mandanipour.
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CENSORSHIP
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak
(sānsūr) in Persia; censorship has been exercised in most societies, including Persia, by the religious establishment, by the political authority, and by unofficial groups.
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CENSUS
Firuz Tawfiq, Daniel Balland
(Pers. sar-šomārī). No census for the purpose of ascertaining the population and acquiring statistical data was taken in Persia until the present century.
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CENSUS i. In Iran
Fīrūz Tawfīq
No census for the purpose of ascertaining the population and acquiring statistical data was taken in Persia until the present century, but information about numbers of persons or families was sometimes collected for the purpose of fixing tax dues or conscript quotas. The introduction of systematic census taking in Persia is attributed to Mīrzā Ḥosayn Khan Sepahsālār, the grand vizier from 1871 to 1873 and his enactment of the Reforms Council.
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CENSUS ii. In Afghanistan
Daniel Balland
The first national census of Afghanistan was not conducted until 1979, but the idea of such a survey had already taken root in the reign of Šēr-ʿAlī Khan (r. 1868-79), when gradual suppression of tax farming in favor of direct collection of taxes by government officials made it imperative for the administration to know the number of taxable households.
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CENTRAL ASIA
Multiple Authors
This series of articles covers Central Asia.
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CENTRAL ASIA i. Geographical Survey
EIr
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CENTRAL ASIA ii. Demography
Richard H. Rowland
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CENTRAL ASIA iii. In Pre-Islamic Times
Richard N. Frye
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CENTRAL ASIA iv. In the Islamic Period up to the Mongols
C. Edmund Bosworth
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CENTRAL ASIA v. In the Mongol and Timurid Periods
Bertold Spuler
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CENTRAL ASIA vi. In the 16th-18th Centuries
Robert D. McChesney
In the 16th-17th centuries Central Asia, including Transoxania, Greater Balḵ, and Ḵᵛārazm, witnessed a neo-Chingizid (Jochid) political revival, spearheaded by the ʿArabshahid/Shibanid (Shaibanid) lineage in Ḵᵛārazm and the Abulkhairid/Shibanid and Toqay-Timurid lines in Transoxania and Greater Balḵ. In the main, political life was shaped by the neo-Chingizid appanage system of state and its internal dynamic.
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CENTRAL ASIA vii. In the 18th-19th Centuries
Yuri Bregel
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CENTRAL ASIA viii. Relations with Persia in the 19th Century
Abbas Amanat
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CENTRAL ASIA ix. In the 20th Century
Edward Allworth
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CENTRAL ASIA x. Economy Before the Timurids
Peter B. Golden
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CENTRAL ASIA xi. Economy from the Timurids until the 18th Century
Robert D. McChesney
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CENTRAL ASIA xii. Economy in the 19th-20th Centuries
Ian Matley
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CENTRAL ASIA xiii. Iranian Languages
Ivan M. Steblin-Kamenskij
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CENTRAL ASIA xiv. Turkish-Iranian Language Contacts
Gerhard Doerfer
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CENTRAL ASIA xv. Modern Literature
Keith Hitchins
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CENTRAL ASIA xvi. Music
Walter Feldman
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CENTRAL DIALECTS
Gernot L. Windfuhr
designation of a number of Iranian dialects spoken in the center of Persia, roughly between Hamadān, Isfahan, Yazd, and Tehran, that is, the area of ancient Media Major, which constitute the core of the western Iranian dialects.
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Mark J. Gasiorowski
(CIA) IN PERSIA
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CENTRAL TREATY ORGANIZATION
Joseph A. Kechichian
(CENTO), a mutual defense and economic cooperation pact among Persia, Turkey, and Pakistan, with the participation of the United Kingdom and the United States as associate members.
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ČERĀḠ
Mahmoud Omidsalar
lamps. Various kinds of lamps were used in Persia before the introduction of electric light. The simplest and cheapest was the čerāḡ-e mūšī “mouse lamp,” so called probably because of its small size and poor light.
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ČERĀḠ KHAN ZĀHEDĪ
Roger M. Savory
b. Shaikh Šarīf, a descendant of Shaikh Zāhed Gīlānī, the celebrated moršed (spiritual director) of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn, the eponymous founder of the Safavid order (Ṣafawīya); hence Čerāḡ Khan was also known as Pīrzāda.
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ČERĀḠ-ʿALĪ KHAN SERĀJ-AL-MOLK ZANGANA
Denis M. MacEoin
(d. after 1281/1864-65), a leading government official during the early reign of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah.
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ČERĀḠ-E DEHLĪ
Sharif Husain Qasemi
(b. at Avadh, ca. 675/1276-77; d. at Delhi, 18 Ramażān 757/14 September 1356), the title of Shaikh Naṣīr-al-Dīn Maḥmūd, the last of the five great early saints of the Indian Češtī order (see Âčeštǰya).
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ČERĀḠ-E HEDĀYAT
J. R. Perry
(“lamp of guidance”), a monolingual Persian dictionary by the Indo-Muslim poet and scholar Serāj-al-Din ʿAli Khan Ārzu.
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ČERĀḠĀNĪ
Mahmoud Omidsalar
(also čerāḡān, čerāḡbānī, čerāḡbārān), the decoration of buildings and open spaces with lights during festivals and on occasions like weddings, coronations, royal birthdays, circumcision ceremonies, and so on.
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ČERĀḠHĀ RĀ MAN ḴĀMUŠ MIKONAM
Elham Gheytanchi
(I turn off the lights, Tehran, 2001), the first and most acclaimed novel by Zoya Pirzad (Zoyā Pirzād, b. Abadan, 1952), and the second to be penned by an Iranian-Armenian writer, after Ālice Ārezumāniān’s Hama az yek (All from one,Tehran, 1963).
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ČERĀM
Pierre Oberling
or ČORŪM, a small tribal confederacy (īl) inhabiting the dehestān of Čerām, in the Kūhgīlūya region, in southwestern Persia.
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CERAMICS
Multiple Authors
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CERAMICS i. The Neolithic Period through the Bronze Age in Northeastern and North-central Persia
Robert H. Dyson
The ceramic tradition of northeastern Persia developed in parallel but distinct sequences in the Gorgān lowlands and the Dāmḡān highlands, including the parts of the Atrak (q.v.) region adjacent to both.
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CERAMICS ii. The Neolithic Period in Northwestern Persia
Mary M. Voigt
The initial occupation of Persian Azerbaijan by farming groups took place in the second half of the 7th millennium B.C.E. The best known site of this period is Hajji Firuz (Ḥājī Fīrūz) Tepe, located in the Ošnū-Soldūz valley and approximately contemporary with Hasanlu X (ca. 6000-5000 B.C.E.).
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CERAMICS iii. The Neolithic Period in Central and Western Persia
Peder Mortensen
Present knowledge of the development of Neolithic ceramics in Luristan and Kurdistan, covering a period from the late 8th millennium to the middle of the 6th millennium B.C.E. is based primarily on evidence from three excavated sites and from surveys carried out southwest of Harsīn, on the Māhīdašt plain, and in the Holaylān valley.
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CERAMICS iv. The Chalcolithic Period in the Zagros Highlands
Elizabeth F. Henrickson
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CERAMICS v. The Chalcolithic Period in Southern Persia
Thomas W. Beale
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CERAMICS vi. Uruk, Proto-Elamite, and Early Bronze Age in Southern Persia
William M. Sumner
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CERAMICS vii. The Bronze Age in Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern Persia
Robert C. Henrickson
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CERAMICS viii. The Early Bronze Age in Southwestern and Southern Persia
Elizabeth Carter
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CERAMICS ix. The Bronze Age in Northeastern Persia
Serge Cleuziou
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CERAMICS x. The Iron Age
Robert C. Henrickson
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CERAMICS xi. The Achaemenid Period
Remy Boucharlat and Ernie Haerinck
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CERAMICS xii. The Parthian and Sasanian Periods
Remy Boucharlat and Ernie Haerinck
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CERAMICS xiii. The Early Islamic Period, 7th-11th Centuries
David Whitehouse
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CERAMICS xiv. The Islamic Period, 11th-15th centuries
Ernst J. Grube
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CERAMICS xv. The Islamic Period, 16th-19th centuries
Yolande Crowe
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CEREALS
Cross-Reference
See under individual cereals.
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ČERĪK
Willem Floor
(also jerīk, from Mongol tserig “warrior[s]”), originally troops sent by an individual or camp (yort) to serve in the royal army.
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ČERKES
Cross-Reference
See ČARKAS.
-
CERULLI, Enrico
Filippo Bertotti
(born Naples, 15 February 1898; died 1988), Italian orientalist and diplomat.
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CERVIDAE
Cross-Reference
See ĀHŪ.
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CEŠT
C. Edmund Bosworth
a small settlement on the north bank of the Harirud and to the south of the Paropamisus range in northwestern Afghanistan, lying approximately 100 miles upstream from Herat in the easternmost part of the modern Herat welāyat or province.
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ČEŠTĪYA
Gerhard Böwering
the name of an influential Sufi order in India, derived from the name of the village of Češt.
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CHAARENE
Rüdiger Schmitt
(Gk. Chaarēnḗ), in Achaemenid times one of the easternmost Iranian provinces and the one closest to India.
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CHAGHATAY LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Gerhard Doerfer
Chaghatay is the common designation for a language belonging to the Western Uighur, or Eastern Turkic, language group, the easternmost of the three.
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CHAGHATAYID DYNASTY
Peter Jackson
name given to the descendants of Čengīz Khan’s second son Čaḡatai, who reigned in Transoxania until ca. 771/1370 and in parts of Turkestan down to the 11th/17th century.
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CHALAVID DYNASTY
Cross-Reference
See ĀL-E AFRĀSĪĀB.
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CHALCOLITHIC ERA
Elizabeth F. Henrickson
in Persia; chalcolithic is a term adopted for the Near East early in this century as part of an attempt to refine the framework of cultural developmental “stages” (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages) and used by students of western European prehistory.
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CHALDEANS
Muhammad Dandamayev
(Kaldu), West Semitic tribes of southern Babylonia attested in Assyrian texts from the early 9th century B.C.
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CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, INDUSTRIES, AND MINES OF PERSIA
Ahmad Ashraf
a national federation of local chambers and syndicates created in Esfand 1348 Š./March 1970 through the merger of various local chambers of commerce and the national chamber of industries and mines of Iran.
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CHAMBER of GUILDS
Ahmad Ashraf
(Oṭāq-e aṣnāf), a federation of various guilds formed in 1350 Š./1971 under the “guild-organization act” (Qānūn-e neẓām-e ṣenfī) in most urban centers.
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CHAMBERLAIN
Cross-Reference
See ḤĀJEB.
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CHAMPION, JOSEPH, ESQ.
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Estelle Whelan
(b. London? ca. 1750, d. London? ca. 1813), English poet and translator of selections from the Šāh-nāma and other Persian poetry.
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CHĀNGĀ ĀSĀ
Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal
an eminent Parsi layman who lived in the 15th-16th centuries A.D. at Navsari in Gujarat.
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CHARACENE and CHARAX
John Hansman
(Spasinou) in pre-Islamic times; Characene is the name Pliny gives for the later region of Mesene (called Mēšān or Mēšūn in Middle Persian, Maysān/Mayšān in Syriac, and Maysān in Arabic) in southernmost Mesopotamia, which formed a political district of that name in the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian periods.
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CHARAX
A. Shapur Shahbazi
town in the Seleucid and Parthian province of Rhagiana, the area around modern Ray.
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CHARCOAL
Willem Floor
carbonized wood and other vegetal material, an important household and industrial fuel in Persia and Afghanistan.
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CHARDIN, Sir JOHN
John Emerson
(born Paris, 16 November 1643, died Chiswick, London? 5 January 1713), an Huguenot jeweler who traveled extensively in Asia and wrote the most detailed foreign account of the Persia of his time.
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CHARES of MITYLENE
Rüdiger Schmitt
Greek historiographer, who participated in Alexander’s expedition and wrote “Stories about Alexander” (Perì Aléxandron historíai), of which fragments remain.
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CHARIOT
William W. Malandra
chariots in ancient Iran were light horse-drawn, two-wheeled vehicles designed for speed and maneuverability in battle and races.
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CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONS
Maria Macuch; John R. Hinnells, Mary Boyce, and Shahrokh Shahrokh
(MPers. ruwānagān lit. “relating to the soul”), pious endowments to benefit the souls of the dead, as specified by the individual founders. i. In the Sasanian period. ii. Among Zoroastrians in Islamic times.
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CHARMS
Mahmoud Omidsalar
originally verbal formulas recited to prevent or ward off potential harm by magical power but now also denoting written and even talismanic magic.
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CHARON OF LAMPSACUS
Rüdiger Schmitt
Greek historiographer, son of Pythocles or Pythes.
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CHARPENTIER, JARL
Bo Utas
(Hellen Robert Toussaint; b. 17 December 1884, d. 5 July 1935), Swedish Indologist, Indo-Europeanist, and Iranist, born in Gothenburg as the son of an army officer.
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CHASE
Cross-Reference
See HUNTING IN IRAN.
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CHASE, THORNTON
Moojan Momen
(b. Springfield, Mass., 22 February 1847), regarded by Bahais as the first American Bahai and the first Bahai of the West.
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CHAVANNES, EMMANUEL-ÉDOUARD
Werner Sundermann
(b. Lyons, France, 5 October 1865, d. Fontenay-aux-Roses, 29 January 1918), French sinologist who also contributed to the study of Iranian history and religions.
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CHEESE
Daniel Balland
(Pers. panīr), with milk and other dairy products a significant part of the diet in Persia and Afghanistan.
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CHEMISTRY
Cross-Reference
See KĪMĪĀ.
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CHESS
Bo Utas, Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī
a board game.
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CHESTER BEATTY LIBRARY
Wilfrid Lockwood, J. T. P. de Bruijn, Michel Tardieu
a collection of manuscripts, printed works, and artifacts, predominantly Oriental, assembled by Alfred Chester Beatty and opened to the public in Dublin in 1954.
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CHILAS
Karl Jettmar
township in the upper Indus valley in Pakistani-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, almost directly south of Gilgit and located on the new Karakorum highway between Pakistan and China.
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CHILDREN
Multiple Authors
This series of articles covers children and child-rearing in Iran and Iranian lands.
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CHILDREN i. Childbirth in Zoroastrianism
Jenny Rose
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CHILDREN ii. In Modern Persian Folklore
Mahmoud Omidsalar
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CHILDREN iii. Legal Rights of Children in the Sasanian Period
Mansour Shaki
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CHILDREN iv. Legal Rights of Children in Modern Persia
Shirin Ebadi
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CHILDREN v. Child Rearing in Modern Persia
Erika Friedl
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CHILDREN vi. Child Rearing Among Zoroastrians in Modern Persia
Janet Kestenberg Amighi
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CHILDREN vii. Children's Literature
EIr
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CHILIARCH
Philippe Gignoux
Greek title of one of the chief offices of state in Achaemenid Persia, presumably translated from Old Persian hazārapati-, attested in Greek as azarapateîs, explained as eisaggeleîs, that is, announcers or ushers.
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CHINESE TURKESTAN
EIr, Victor Mair and Prods Oktor Skjærvø
(Sinkiang, Xinjiang), IRANIAN ELEMENTS IN.
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CHINESE TURKESTAN i. Geographical Overview
EIr
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CHINESE TURKESTAN ii. In Pre-Islamic Times
Victor Mair and Prods Oktor Skjærvø
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CHINESE TURKESTAN iii. From the Advent of Islam to the Mongols
Isenbike Togan
-
CHINESE TURKESTAN iv. In the Mongol Period
Morris Rossabi
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CHINESE TURKESTAN v. Under the Khojas
Isenbike Togan
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CHINESE TURKESTAN vi. Iranian Groups in Sinkiang since the 1750s
Kim Ho-Dong
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CHINESE TURKESTAN vii. Manicheism in Chinese Turkestan and China
Samuel Lieu
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CHINESE TURKESTAN viii. Turkish-Iranian Language Contacts
Gerhard Doerfer
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS
Multiple Authors
-
CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS i. In Pre-Islamic Times
Edwin G. Pulleyblank
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS ii. Islamic Period to the Mongols
J. M. Rogers
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS iii. In the Mongol Period
Liu Yingsheng and Peter Jackson
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS iv. The Safavid Period, 1501-1732
J. M. Rogers
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS v. Diplomatic and Commercial Relations, 1949-90
Parviz Mohajer
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS vi. Relations with Afghanistan in the Modern Period
Daniel Balland
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS vii. Persian Settlements in Southeastern China during the T’ang, Sung, and Yuan Dynasties
Chen Da-Sheng
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS viii. Persian Language and Literature in China
EIr
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS ix. Persian Language Teaching in Modern China
EIr
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS x. China in Medieval Persian Literature
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xi. Mutual Influence of Chinese and Persian Ceramics
Oliver Watson
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xii. Mutual Influences in Painting
Toh Sugimura
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xiii. Eastern Iranian Migrations to China
Étienne de la Vaissière
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xiv. The Influence of Eastern Iranian Art
M. L. Carter
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xv. THE LAST SASANIANS IN CHINA
Matteo Compareti
Information on those Sasanians who avoided the submission to the Arabs and lived in Central Asia or at the Tang court can be found in the works of Muslim authors and in Chinese sources.
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CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xvi. Impact of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran
Yidan Wang
The Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11 attracted the attention of the Chinese constitutionalists and revolutionaries immediately upon breaking out.
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CHINGGIS KHAN
Cross-Reference
See ČENGĪZ KHAN.
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CHINKARA
Khushal Habibi
or CHIKARA (Gazella bennetti, Indian gazelle), a small antelope of slender build; its tawny coat has poorly marked facial and body stripes.
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CHIONITES
Wolfgang Felix
a tribe of probable Iranian origin that was prominent in Bactria and Transoxania in late antiquity.
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CHITON
Cross-Reference
See CLOTHING i. Median and Achaemenid periods, iii. Sasanian period.
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CHITRAL
Nigel J. R. Allan, Georg Buddruss
(Čitrāl), river valley in the upper Indus system.
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CHLORITE
Philip Kohl
a mineral consisting of a group of closely related hydrous magnesium aluminum silicates of exceedingly varied chemical compositions owing to isomorphous substitutions.
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CHOAMANI
Rüdiger Schmitt
name of an eastern Iranian tribe (perhaps located in western Bactria), mentioned only by Pomponius Mela in an enumeration of the inhabitants of the interior lands.
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CHOANA
Rüdiger Schmitt
the name of two Iranian towns mentioned by Ptolemy.
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CHOARA
Rüdiger Schmitt
or CHOARENE; a town or village in Parthia mentioned by Ptolemy (6.5.3) and called “the most attractive place of Parthia” by Pliny.
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CHOASPES
Rüdiger Schmitt
(or Coaspēs), ancient name of three rivers.
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CHOBANIDS
Charles Melville and ʿAbbās Zaryāb
a family of Mongol origin descended from the amir Čobān Noyan.
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CHODŹKO, ALEKSANDER BOREJKO
Jean Calmard
(b. 30 August 1804, in Krzywicze, Poland [now in the Lithuanian S.S.R.], d. Noisy-le-Sec, near Paris, 19 December 1891), Polish poet and diplomat, the first European scholar to work on Persian folklore.
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CHOLERA
Xavier De Planhol, Daniel Balland
(Cholera asiatica, Cholera indica), epidemic intestinal disease of Indian origin caused by infectious bacteria.
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CHORASMIA
Multiple Authors
region on the lower reaches of the Oxus (Amu Darya) in western Central Asia.
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CHORASMIA i. Archeology and pre-Islamic history
Yuri Aleksandrovich Rapoport
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CHORASMIA ii. In Islamic times
C. E. Bosworth
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CHORASMIA iii. The Chorasmian Language
D. N. MacKenzie
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CHORASMIAN COINAGE
B. I. Vainberg
issued by the rulers of Chorasmia between the 2nd century BCE and the 8th century CE, Chorasmian coins are important primary evidence for the Old Chorasmian language and the region’s post-Achaemenid history because of the paucity of preserved sources for this period.
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CHORIENES
Marie Louise Chaumont
Sogdian nobleman and opponent of Alexander.
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CHRISTENSEN, ARTHUR EMANUEL
Jes P. Asmussen
(b. Copenhagen 9 January 1875, d. Copenhagen 31 March 1945), Danish orientalist and scholar of Iranian philology and folklore.
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CHRISTIANITY
Multiple Authors
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CHRISTIANITY i. In Pre-Islamic Persia: Literary Sources
James R. Russell
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CHRISTIANITY ii. In Pre-Islamic Persia: Material Remains
Judith Lerner
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CHRISTIANITY iii. In Central Asia And Chinese Turkestan
Nicholas Sims-Williams
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CHRISTIANITY iv. Christian Literature in Middle Iranian Languages
Nicholas Sims-Williams
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CHRISTIANITY v. Christ in Manicheism
Werner Sundermann
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CHRISTIANITY vi. In Persian Literature
Qamar Āryān
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CHRISTIANITY vii. Christian Influences in Persian Poetry
Annemarie Schimmel
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CHRISTIANITY viii. Christian Missions in Persia
Yahya Armajani
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CHRISTIE, CHARLES
Kamran Ekbal
, Captain (d. 1812), of the Bombay Regiment, an Anglo-Indian officer under the command of Sir John Malcolm.
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CHROMITE
Raḥmat-Allāh Ostovār
FeCr2O4, a dark-brown or black mineral from which chromium is refined.
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CHRONICLE OF ARBELA
Peter Kawerau
a Syriac church history of Adiabene, written in the 6th century by Mĕšīḥā-Zĕḵā under the title Kĕtaḇā ḏ-ĕqlisyastīqī ḏă-Mĕšīḥā-Zĕḵā, chosen in conscious imitation of the Ekklēsiastikḕ historía by Eusebius of Caesarea.
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CHRONICLE OF EDESSA
Sebastian P. Brock
a short local history of Edessa (modern Urfa), written in Syriac by an anonymous author and covering chiefly the period from 201-540 C.E.
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CHRONOGRAMS
J. T. P. de Bruijn
dates incorporated into Persian texts in disguised form, especially those in which the letters of the alphabet have numerical value.
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CHRONOLOGY
Cross-Reference
See CALENDARS.
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CHUBAK, Sadeq
Mohammad Reza Ghanoonparvar
(1916-1998), one of most acclaimed Persian short story writers and novelists of the 20th century.
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CHUPANIDS
Cross-Reference
See CHOBANIDS.
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CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN PERSIA
Cross-reference
IN PERSIA. See ENGLAND, CHURCH OF, IN PERSIA.
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CHURNS AND CHURNING
Marcel Bazin and Christian Bromberger
devices and associated techniques for processing milk into butter.
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CH’IEN HAN SHU
Edwin G. Pulleyblank
(Qian Han shu) “History of the Former Han Dynasty,” a historical work which includes information on Iran.
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CH’ÜAN-CHOU
Cross-reference
(Quan-zhou, formerly Jin-jiang; in Islamic sources Zaytūn), Chinese city in southeastern Fu-jian (Fukien) province on the lower reaches of the Jin-jiang river. See CHINA VIII. PERSIAN SETTLEMENTS IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA.
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CIA
Cross-Reference
See CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA) IN PERSIA.
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ČIÇANTAXMA
Rüdiger Schmitt
an Iranian personal name signifying “brave in lineage.”
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CICAST
Cross-Reference
See ČĒČAST.
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CICERO
Michael Weiskopf
as a source for Parthian history; letters written by Roman statesman and political philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 b.c.e.) preserve a virtually unique contemporary extra-Iranian source on Parthian military and diplomatic activities and the Roman response to them, particularly during the military-campaign season of 51-50 b.c.e.
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ČĪDAG ANDARZ Ī PŌRYŌTKĒŠĀN
Mansour Shaki
(Selected precepts of the ancient sages), a post-Sasanian compendium of apothegms intended to instruct every Zoroastrian male, upon his attaining the age of fifteen years, in fundamental religious and ethical principles, as well as in the daily duties incumbent upon him.
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CIGARETTES
Cross-Reference
See DOḴĀNĪYĀT.
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ČIHRDĀD NASK
D. N. MacKenzie
one of the lost nasks of the Avesta.
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CILICIA
Michael Weiskopf
the southeastern portion of the present Turkish coast, a satrapy of the Achaemenid empire (6th-4th centuries b.c.e.), subsequently incorporated into the Macedonian and Roman empires.
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ČĪM Ī DRŌN
Cross-Reference
See DRŌN.
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ČĪM Ī KUSTĪG
Cross-Reference
See KUSTĪG.
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CIMMERIANS
Sergei R. Tokhtas’ev
a nomadic people, most likely of Iranian origin, who flourished in the 8th-7th centuries B.C.
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ČĪN TĪMŪR
Peter Jackson
the first governor of Khorasan and Māzandarān on behalf of the Mongols.
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CINEMA
Multiple Authors
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CINEMA i. History of Cinema in Persia
Farrokh Gaffary
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CINEMA ii. Feature Films
Jamsheed Akrami
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CINEMA iii. Documentary Films
Hamid Naficy
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CINEMA iv. Film Censorship
Jamsheed Akrami
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CINEMA v. Filmography
EIr
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ČĪNĪ
John Carswell
(lit. “Chinese”; borrowed in Arabic as ṣīnī), generic term for Chinese ceramic wares, including porcelain, a translucent, white-bodied ware fired at very high temperatures.
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CINNAMON
Cross-reference
See DĀRČĪNĪ.
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CINNAMUS
Marie Louise Chaumont
putative rival of Artabanus II (12-38) as king of the Arsacids.
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CINTĀMAṆI
Priscilla Soucek
the “wish-fulfilling jewel,” a motif consisting of either a single globe with a pointed extension at the apex or three such globes; either version could be surrounded by a flaming halo.
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ČINWAD PUHL
Aḥmad Tafażżolī
traditionally thought to mean “the bridge of the separator” but recently shown to be “the bridge of the accumulator/collector,” the name of a bridge that, according to a Mazdayasnian/Zoroastrian eschatological myth, leads from this world to the next and must be crossed by the souls of the departed.
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CIRCASSIANS
Cross-Reference
See ČARKAS.
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CIRCESIUM
Joseph Wieseh
a Roman border fortress in Mesopotamia, on the spit of land formed where the Ḵābūr, the present-day al-Boṣayra, flows into the Euphrates (see maps in Kettenhofen).
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CIRCUMCISION
Ebrāhīm Šakūrzāda and Mahmoud Omidsalar
Pers. ḵatna, sonnat (formally also taṭhīr or ḵetān), ḵatnakonān, and sonnatkonān; the last two terms also refer to the festivities associated with the circumcision ritual.
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ČIŠPIŠ
Rüdiger Schmitt
(ca. 675-640 BCE), the son of Achaemenes, legendary founder of the Achaemenid dynasty and father of Darius’s great-grandfather Ariaramnes.
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CISSIANS
Rüdiger Schmitt
a name for the Susians, the Elamite inhabitants of Susiana.
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ČISTĀ
Jean Kellens
and Čisti; Avestan derivatives of the verb cit “to notice, to understand.”
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ČĪSTĀN
Cross-Reference
See RIDDLE.
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ČĪT
Jennifer M. Scarce
cotton cloth decorated with block-printed or painted designs in multiple colors.
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CITIES
Multiple Authors
i. Geographical introduction. ii. City planning, construction, and architecture. See Supplement. iii. Administration and social organization. iv. Modern urbanization and modernization in Persia. v. Modern urbanization and modernization in Afghanistan.
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CITIES i. Geographical Introduction
Xavier De Planhol
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CITIES iii. Administration and Social Organization
Ann K. S. Lambton
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CITIES iv. Modern Urbanization and Modernization in Persia
Eckart Ehlers
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CITIES v. Modern Urbanization and Modernization in Afghanistan
Erwin Grötzbach
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CITIZENSHIP
Muhammad A. Dandamayev, Mansour Shaki, Qajar and Pahlavi Periods, Naser Yeganeh
the legal, political, and social status of every person who belongs to a state.
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ČIΘRA
Cross-Reference
See ČEHR.
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ČIΘRAFARNAH
Rüdiger Schmitt
Iranian personal name meaning “with shining splendor.”
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CITRON
Cross-Reference
See BĀLANG; CITRUS FRUITS.
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CITRUS FRUITS
Hūšang Aʿlam
in Persia, only the citrus trees and fruits of the genus Citrus L. (family Rutaceae, subfamily Aurantioideae) need be considered.
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CITY COUNCILS
Ḥosayn Farhūdī
(anjoman-e šahr) in Persia.
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CIVIL CODE
Naser Yeganeh
(qānūn-e madanī) of Persia, a series of regulations controlling all civic and social relations between individuals in the various circumstances of their lives.
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CLASS SYSTEM
Multiple Authors
(ṭabaqāt-e ejtemāʿī), a generic term referring to various types of social group, including castes, estates, status groups, and occupational categories.
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CLASS SYSTEM i. In the Avesta
Prods Oktor Skjærvø
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CLASS SYSTEM ii. In the Median and Achaemenid Periods
Pierre Briant
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CLASS SYSTEM iii. In the Parthian and Sasanian Periods
Mansour Shaki
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CLASS SYSTEM iv. Classes In Medieval Islamic Persia
Ahmad Ashraf and Ali Banuazizi
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CLASS SYSTEM v. Classes in the Qajar Period
Ahmad Ashraf and Ali Banuazizi
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CLASS SYSTEM vi. Classes in the Pahlavi Period
Ahmad Ashraf and Ali Banuazizi
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CLAVIJO, RUY GONZÁLEZ DE
Beatrice Forbes Manz and Margaret L. Dunaway
(d. 2 April 1412), ambassador from King Henry III of Castile and Leon to Tīmūr in the years 805-08/1403-06 and author of an important travel account.
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CLEANSING
Multiple Authors
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CLEANSING i. In Zoroastrianism
Mary Boyce
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CLEANSING ii. In Islamic Persia
Hamid Algar
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CLEARCHUS
Rüdiger Schmitt
(b. ca. 390 or 410 BCE, the latter date based on Memnon’s report of his age as fifty-eight years at his death in 352), tyrant of Pontic Heracleia (modern Ereğli) in 363-52 BCE.
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CLEARCHUS OF SPARTA
Rüdiger Schmitt
(b. Sparta ca. 450 BCE, d. Babylon 401 BCE), son of Rhamphias, Greek general in the service of Cyrus the Younger.
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CLEITARCHUS
Rüdiger Schmitt
(Gk. Kleítarchos), Greek historian of the 4th century BCE, son of the historian Dinon of Colophon and author of a history of the exploits of Alexander the Great.
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CLEMEN, CARL CHRISTIAN
Rüdiger Schmitt
(1865-1940), German Protestant theologian and historian of religions who compiled the classical passages on Iranian religion.
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CLEMENT of Alexandria
Marie Louise Chaumont
(Titus Flavius Clemens, probably b. Athens ca. 150 C.E., d. Cappadocia ca. 215), Greek convert to Christianity who became the leading theologian of his time, a polemicist particularly noted for his attempts to reconcile Greco-Roman thought with Christian teachings.
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CLEMENT, PSEUDO-
Marie Louise Chaumont
the unknown author of a work of fiction falsely ascribed to Pope Clement I (88-97 CE) and now generally known as the Pseudo-Clementines, which contains passages reflecting myths and teachings of Persian origin.
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CLIBANARIUS
Cross-reference
in Roman sources a designation for a Parthian armored cavalryman. See ASB; ASB-SAVĀRĪ.
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CLIMATE
Eckart Ehlers
both the climate of Persia as a whole and the differences in weather among its various regions are determined primarily by its location within the arid belt of the eastern hemisphere.
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CLIME
Aḥmad Tafażżolī
(kešvar), ancient division of the earth’s surface.
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CLOCKS
Willem Floor
devices for measuring and registering time.
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CLOQUET, LOUIS-ANDRÉ-ERNEST
Lutz Richter-Bernburg
(1818-1855), French anatomist and French minister to the court at Tehran 1846-55, serving as personal physician to Moḥammad Shah (r. 1834-48) and Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah Qājār (r. 1848-96).
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CLOTHING
Multiple Authors
(Ar. and Pers. lebās, Pers. pūšāk, jāma, raḵt). The articles in this series are devoted to clothing of the Iranian peoples in successive historical periods and of various regions and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Iran.
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CLOTHING i. General remarks
EIr
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CLOTHING ii. In the Median and Achaemenid periods
Shapur Shahbazi
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CLOTHING iii. In the Arsacid period
Trudi Kawami
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CLOTHING iv. In the Sasanian period
Elsie H. Peck
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CLOTHING v. In Pre-Islamic Eastern Iran
Gerd Gropp
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CLOTHING vi. Of the Sogdians
Aleksandr Naymark
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CLOTHING vii. Of the Iranian Tribes on the Pontic Steppes and in the Caucaus
S. A. Yatsenko
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CLOTHING viii. In Persia from the Arab conquest to the Mongol invasion
Elsie H. Peck
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CLOTHING ix. In the Mongol and Timurid periods
Eleanor Sims
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CLOTHING x. In the Safavid and Qajar periods
Layla S. Diba
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CLOTHING xi. In the Pahlavi and post-Pahlavi periods
ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī
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CLOTHING xiii. Clothing in Afghanistan
Nancy Hatch Dupree
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CLOTHING xiv. Clothing of the Hazāra tribes
Klaus Ferdinand
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CLOTHING xv. Clothing of Tajikistan
Guzel’ Maĭtdinova
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CLOTHING xvi. Kurdish clothing in Persia
Shirin Mohseni and Peter Andrews
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CLOTHING xvii. Clothing of the Kurdish Jews
Ora Shwartz-Beeri
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CLOTHING xviii. Clothing of the Baluch in Persia
Iran Ala Firouz and Mehremonīr Jahānbānī
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CLOTHING xix. Clothing of the Baluch in Pakistan and Afghanistan
Pamela Hunte
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CLOTHING xx. Clothing of Khorasan
Ḥosayn-ʿAlī Beyhaqī
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CLOTHING xxi. Turkic and Kurdish clothing of Azerbaijan
P. A. Andrews And M. Andrews
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CLOTHING xxii. Clothing of the Caspian area
Christian Bromberger
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CLOTHING xxiii. Clothing of the Persian Gulf area
R. Shahnaz Nadjmabadi
The people on the shores of the Persian Gulf are divided among three provinces, each with a distinctive style of dress: Ḵūzestān, Būšehr, and Hormozgān. The last is the main focus here. Women’s clothing consists of four basic parts: head covering, dress, trousers, and shoes. The normal head covering is a rectangular black scarf of thin silk (maknā) wrapped round the head and fastened on top with a metal pin (čollāba).
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CLOTHING xxiv. Clothing of the Qašqāʾī tribes
Lois Beck
In the 19-20th centuries the Qašqāʾī constituted a tribal confederacy of people of ethnolinguistically diverse origin; they were predominantly nomadic pastoralists who migrated seasonally between the lowlands and the highlands in the southern Zagros mountains. They created their own distinctive dress from market-derived goods and the work of village and urban craft specialists.
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CLOTHING xxv. Clothing of the Baḵtīārīs and other Lori speaking tribes
Jean-Pierre Digard
Members of the Lori-speaking ethnic groups, including the Lors themselves, the Baḵtīārīs, and the Boīr-Aḥmadīs are characterized by similar styles of dress, with variations reflecting differences in tribe and social class of the wearer, variations that can have strong symbolic meaning, particularly among the Baḵtīārīs.
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CLOTHING xxvi. Clothing and jewelry of the Turkmen
P. A. Andrews
Until the 1970s the clothing and jewelry of the Turkmen formed the most elaborate tribal costume still used in Persia. The principal women’s garment is a shift (köynek), formerly of silk, now replaced by synthetic fibers; a raspberry red was common in the hand-woven material, sometimes with shot effects.
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CLOTHING xxvii. Historical lexicon of Persian clothing
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yūsofī
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CLOTHING xxviii. Concordance of clothing terms among ethnic groups in modern Persia
EIr
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CLOUDS
Eckart Ehlers
Large tracts of central Persia and the adjacent arid plateaus of Afghanistan lie under cloudless skies for most of the year, which contributes to typical “continental” climatic conditions.
-
CLOVER
Cross-Reference
See ŠABDAR.
-
CLOWN
Cross-Reference
See DALQAK.
-
COAL
Willem M. Floor
(zoḡāl-e sang). Although Persia and Afghanistan are rich in coal deposits (Harrison, pp. 492-96; Research Group, pp. 58-149; Arens, pp. 126-28), these deposits have only recently come to be exploited.
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COASTAL REGION
Cross-Reference
See BALUCHISTAN, FĀRS.
-
COBALT
Elisabeth West FitzHugh and Willem M. Floor
a chemical element that imparts a blue color to glass and glazes and to certain pigments.
-
ČOBĀN
Charles Melville
eponymous founder of the Chobanid dynasty and the leading Mongol amir of the late Il-khanid period.
-
ČŌBĪN, BAHRĀM
Cross-reference
See BAHRĀM ČŌBĪN.
-
COCK
James R. Russell, Mahmoud Omidsalar
the male of the subfamily Phasianinae (pheasants), usually having a long, often tectiform tail with fourteen to thirty-two feathers.
-
COCKSCOMB
Cross-Reference
See BOSTĀNAFRŪZ.
-
COCONUT
Hūšang Aʿlam
the fruit of the palm Cocos nucifera L., which grows in the East Indies, as well as in most other humid tropical regions.
-
CODES
C. Edmund Bosworth
(romūz, sg. ramz), including the use of secret writing and cryptanalysis, in Persia.
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CODEX CUMANICUS
D. N. MacKenzie
a manuscript of eighty-two paper leaves, measuring approximately 20 x 14 cm, preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale of the cathedral of San Marco in Venice and comprising principally vocabularies and texts of the Northwest Middle Turkic language of the Cumans, or Komans, recorded in Latin script.
-
CODICES HAFNIENSES
Jes P. Asmussen
forty-three Avestan and Pahlavi codices acquired by Rasmus Kristian Rask (1787-1832) in Bombay, India, and Niels Ludvig Westergaard (1815-1878) in Persia, all originally deposited in the library of the University of Copenhagen but later transferred to the Royal Library.
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CODOMANNUS
Cross-Reference
See DARIUS III.
-
COFFEE
ʿAlī Āl-e Dāwūd
a drink made by steeping in boiling water the dried, roasted, and ground berries of the coffee tree (Coffea arabica).
-
COFFEEHOUSE
ʿAlī Āl-e Dawūd
a shop and meeting place where coffee is prepared and served.
-
COFFEEHOUSE PAINTING
Cross-Reference
See PAINTING.
-
ČOḠĀ BONUT
Abbas Alizadeh
archeological site in lowland Susiana, in the present-day province of Ḵuzestān in southwestern Iran; to date, Čoḡā Bonut has provided evidence of the earliest stages of settled agricultural life in Ḵuzestān.
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ČOḠĀ MĪŠ
Helene J. Kantor
(Chogha Mish), the largest prehistoric and protohistoric site (ca. 17 ha) in the area below the Zagros foothills between Dezfūl and Šūštar.
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ČOḠĀ SAFĪD
Frank Hole
or Chogha Sefid, a prehistoric site on the Dehlorān (Deh Luran) plain in Ḵūzestān, dating back to the 8th millennium B.C.E.
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ČOḠĀ ZANBĪL
Elizabeth Carter
or Chogha Zanbil, a city founded by the Elamite king Untaš Napiriša (ca. 1275-40 B.C.E.) about 40 km southeast of Susa at a strategic point on a main road leading to the highlands. After his death it remained a place of religious pilgrimage and a burial ground until about 1000 B.C.E.
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ČOḠONDAR
Cross-Reference
See BEET.
-
ČOḠŪR
Jean During
(also čoḡor, čogūr, more commonly called sāz in former Soviet Azerbaijan), is the typical pyriform lute of the ʿāšeq, the professional minstrel of Azerbaijan.
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COINS AND COINAGE
Stephen Album, Michael L. Bates, and Willem Floor
During the reign of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah (1797-1834) the first steps toward a modern currency were taken. At the Tabrīz and Isfahan mints well-executed silver and gold coins were struck along with the normal, less carefully minted products, with full, even pressure and reeded edges similar to those found on contemporary British Indian coins. It is unclear whether these coins were intended only for presentation or as prototypes for a technically superior circulating coinage,
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COLCHIS
Fridrik Thordarson
ancient Greek name of the region at the eastern end of the Black Sea and south of the Caucasus mountains, corresponding to the Georgian provinces of Imeretia, Mingrelia (Samegrelo), Guria and Ač’ara and the Pontic regions of northeastern Turkey.
-
COLETTI, Alessandro
Adriano Rossi
(b. Trieste, 1928, d. Rome, 1985), Italian scholar of Iranian languages and general oriental subjects, co-author with his wife, Hanne Grünbaum, of the most comprehensive Persian-Italian dictionary (1978) published in modern times.
-
COLLEGE
Cross-reference
term used to designate the American College, founded by Presbyterians and later renamed: see ALBORZ COLLEGE.
-
COLLEGES
Cross-reference
For important individual colleges, see EDUCATION; FACULTIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TEHRAN.
-
COLOGNE MANI CODEX
Werner Sundermann
or Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis, a lump of parchment fragments the size of a matchbox, containing a portion of the life and teachings of Mani, discovered in 1969 at an indeterminate spot in the area of Asyūṭ (ancient Lycopolis) in upper Egypt, the smallest ancient codex known to date.
-
COLOR
Annemarie Schimmel, Priscilla P. Soucek
(Pers. rang). i. Color symbolism in Persian literature. ii. Use and importance of color in Persian art.
-
COLUMNS
Wolfram Kleiss
one of several kinds of upright, load-bearing architectural members encompassed, along with piers, in the term sotūn. In the Achaemenid palaces at Persepolis and Susa columns, whether plain or fluted, reached a height of 19 m and a diameter up to 1.60 m; they were topped by double-protome capitals, themselves an additional 8 m high.
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COMISENE
Cross-Reference
See KŪMEŠ.
-
COMMAGENE
Michael Weiskopf
the portion of southwestern Asia Minor (modern Turkey) bordered on the east by the Euphrates river, on the west by the Taurus mountains, and on the south by the plains of northern Syria. It was part of the Achaemenid empire and its successor kingdoms and did not achieve status as an independent kingdom until the mid-2nd century B.C.E.
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COMMERCE
Multiple Authors
within Persia and between Persia and other region.
-
COMMERCE i. In the prehistoric period
Oscar White Muscarella
-
COMMERCE ii. In the Achaemenid period
Muhammad A. Dandamayev
-
COMMERCE iii. In the Parthian and Sasanian periods
Richard N. Frye
-
COMMERCE iv. Before the Mongol conquest
Bertold Spuler
-
COMMERCE vi. In the Safavid and Qajar periods
Willem Floor
The Dutch and English East Indies companies were the first well-capitalized trading partners established in Persia, initially providing a much-needed source of cash for the shahs. In return the companies demanded and obtained treaties (in 1617 and 1623) granting them freedom of trade, exemption from duties and various other charges, and even extraterritorial rights.
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COMMERCE vii. In the Pahlavi and post-Pahlavi periods
Vahid Nowshirvani
A prominent feature of Persian export trade was the steady rise in both the value and volume of oil shipments through almost the entire Pahlavi period until the Revolution, when this trend was reversed. Because of the large increase in price in 1352 Š./1973 the value of Persian oil exports climbed substantially more than the volume in the 1970s. Other exports fared less well.
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COMMUNICATIONS in Persia
Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi and ʿAlī Mohammadi
the growth of post, telegraph, and telephone service in Persia was closely linked with the growth of railway and highway networks and other modern transportation systems; it was thus a central element in the development of a modern infrastructure in Persia.
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COMMUNISM
Multiple Authors
-
COMMUNISM i. In Persia to 1941
Cosroe Chaqueri
-
COMMUNISM ii. In Persia from 1941 to 1953
Sepehr Zabih
-
COMMUNISM iii. In Persia after 1953
Torāb Ḥaqšenās
-
COMMUNISM iv. In Afghanistan
Anthony Arnold
The Afghan Communist party, Ḥezb-e demōkrātīk-e ḵalq-e Afḡānestān (People’s democratic party of Afghanistan, P.D.P.A.) was officially founded in 1344 Š./1965, at a time when political parties were illegal in Afghanistan. Two other durable Afghan Marxist-Leninist groups were active in the same general period.
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COMPUTERS in Persia
Moḥammad-Reżā Moḥammadīfar
electronic data-processing equipment, in Persia.
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CONCESSIONS
Willem Floor, Mansoureh Ettehadieh [neẓām māfī]
(emtīāzāt), grants by a state to citizens, aliens, or other states of rights to carry out specific economic activities and of capitulatory rights on its territory.
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CONCOBAR
Cross-Reference
See KANGĀVAR.
-
CONFEDERATION OF IRANIAN STUDENTS, NATIONAL UNION
Afshin Matin-Asgari
(Konfederāsīūn-e jahānī-e moḥaṣṣelīn wa dānešjūyān-e īrānī etteḥādīya-ye mellī), an organization purporting to be the political and corporate (ṣenfī) representative of Persian students abroad, as well as in Persia, during the 1960s and 1970s.
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CONFEDERATIONS, TRIBAL
Richard Tapper
tribal groups commonly comprise several levels of organization, from a nomad camp to (sometimes) a nation-state, with different criteria defining membership of groups at each level.
-
CONFESSIONS
Jes P. Asmussen
i. In the Zoroastrian faith. ii. In Manicheism.
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CONGRATULATIONS
Žāla Āmūzgār
the custom of conveying congratulations on such happy occasions as the birth of a child, a birthday anniversary, a marriage, a coronation, or a national or religious festival.
-
CONIFERAE
Cross-Reference
See DERAḴT.
-
CONJUNCTIONS
Cross-Reference
See QERĀN.
-
CONON OF ATHENS
Rüdiger Schmitt
(b. before 444 BCE., d. after 392 BCE), a leading Athenian admiral during the Peloponnesian and Corinthian wars.
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CONSERVATION
Cross-Reference
-
CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION OF PERSIAN MONUMENTS
Eugenio Galdieri and Kerāmat-Allāh Afsar
in almost every historical period some restoration of Persian monuments has been undertaken either by state authorities or through the efforts of charitable individuals.
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CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Ahmad Ashraf
a complex of beliefs attributing the course of Persian history and politics to the machinations of hostile foreign powers and secret organizations.
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CONSTANTIUS II
Cross-reference
See SHAPUR II.
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CONSTELLATIONS
D. N. MacKenzie
Nowhere in the Gathas of Zoroaster or the Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenids are even individual stars mentioned. The first and only two constellations to be named in Old Iranian sources are Ursa Major and the Pleiades, in the Younger Avesta. The next possible mentions of constellations are of two kinds, both dating from late Middle Persian times but only actually attested in works or manuscripts from the Islamic period.
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CONSTITUTION OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
Said Amir Arjomand
After the overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy in 1979, Persia was declared an Islamic republic. Until that time there had been virtually no discussion, outside religious circles, of the conception of welāyat-e faqīh (lit. “mandate of the jurist”) propounded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. During the revolutionary turmoil of 1978-79, only the vaguer notion of “Islamic government” was current.
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF AFGHANISTAN
M. Ḥassan Kākaṛ
-
CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION
Multiple Authors
(Enqelāb-e mašrūṭa) of 1323-29/1905-11, during which a parliament and constitutional monarchy were established in Persia.
-
CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION i. Intellectual background
Abbas Amanat
-
CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION ii. Events
Vanessa Martin
-
CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION iii. The Constitution
Said Amir Arjomand
-
CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION iv. The aftermath
Mansoureh Ettehadieh
-
CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION v. Political parties of the constitutional period
Mansoureh Ettehadieh
-
CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION vi. The press
ʿAlī-Akabr Saʿīdī Sīrjānī
-
CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION vii. The constitutional movement in literature
Sorour Soroudi
-
CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES in Persian architecture
Wolfram Kleiss
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CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS INDUSTRY
Willem Floor
to sustain its economic development Iran requires construction materials of all kinds; these include cement, lime, plaster, asbestos (products), and decorative stones, which are discussed in this article.
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CONSUMERS AND CONSUMPTION
Cross-Reference
See ECONOMY.
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CONTARINI, AMBROGIO
Filippo Bertotti
(1429-99), Venetian merchant and diplomat, author of a noteworthy report on Persia under the Āq Qoyunlū Uzun Ḥasan.
-
CONTI, NICOLO` DE’
Paola Orsatti
(1395-ca. 1469), Venetian merchant who traveled in the east from 1414 until 1438.
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CONTINENTS
Cross-Reference
See KEŠVAR.
-
CONTRACTS
Muhammad A. Dandamayev, Mansour Shaki, EIr
(usually ʿaqd), legally enforceable undertakings between two or more consenting parties.
-
CONVERSION
Multiple Authors
the act of adopting another religion.
-
CONVERSION i. Of Iranians to the Zoroastrian faith
Gherardo Gnoli
-
CONVERSION ii. Of Iranians to Islam
Elton L. Daniel
-
CONVERSION iii. To Imami Shiʿism in India
Juan Cole
-
CONVERSION iv. Of Persian Jews to other religions
Amnon Netzer
-
CONVERSION v. To Babism and the Bahai faith
Juan R. I. Cole
-
CONVERSION vi. To Protestant Christianity in Persia
Paul S. Seto
-
CONVERSION vii. To the Zoroastrian faith in the modern period
Pargol Saati
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COOKBOOKS
Mohammad R. Ghanoonparvar
classical, in Persian; relatively few books in Persian exclusively devoted to the preparation of food are known, even though references to a highly developed cuisine in Persia in premodern times are found in medical, religious, historical, and poetic texts.
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COOKIES
Ṣoḡrā Bāzargān
(kolūča, nān-e kolūča, kolīča) in Persia; in this article the cookies most frequently made in major Persian cities today, both traditional types and those reflecting foreign influence, will be described.
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COOKING
Multiple Authors
i. In ancient Iran. ii. In Pahlavi literature. iii. Principles and ingredients of modern Persian cooking. iv. In Afghanistan.
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COON, CARLETON STEVENS
Robert H. Dyson, Jr.
(b. Wakefield, Massachusetts, 23 June 1904, d. Gloucester, Massachusetts, 4 June 1981), American anthropologist and educator.
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COOPERATIVES
Amir I. Ajami
(šerkat-e taʿāwonī), economic organizations owned jointly by and operated for the benefit of groups of individuals. Such cooperatives were first introduced and recognized in Persia under the Commercial code (Qānūn-e tejārat) of 1303 Š./1924, which provided for both production (tawlīd) and consumer (maṣraf) cooperatives.
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ČOPOQ
Willem Floor
or ČEPOQ, a long-stemmed pipe with a small bowl for smoking tobacco, distinct from the ḡ/qalyān, or water pipe.
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COPPER i. In Islamic Persia
James W. Allan and Willem Floor
the metallic element Cu.
-
Copper ii. Copper resources in Iran
Manṣur Qorbāni and Anuširavān Kani
With the advancement of the knowledge of metallurgy in the Achaemenid era, finely crafted copper and bronze objects were created, continuing on through ancient times. The medieval Arab traveler Abu Dolaf wrote about the Nišāpur copper mine, but the extent of the deposits in Iran became known only from accounts of European travelers from the Safavid period onwards.
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COPRATES
Cross-Reference
See ĀB-E DEZ.
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COPTIC MANICHEAN TEXTS
Aloïs van Tongerloo
primary source text fragments, written in previously undeciphered or little-known languages and scripts which considerably changed the interpretation and appreciation of Manicheism.
-
COPYRIGHT
Karīm Emāmī
(ḥaqq-e moʾallef, a direct translathe exclusive right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter or form of a created work, for example, a novel or musical composition.
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CORAL
Hūšang Aʿlam
the skeletal deposit of marine polyps, often treated as a gem material.
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ČORĀS, ŠĀH-MAḤMŪD
Robert D. McChesney
b. Mīrzā Fāżel, historian of the 17th-century Chaghatay khanate (see chinese turkestan v) in Moḡūlestān and hagiographer and staunch supporter of the “Black Mountain” khojas.
-
CORBIN, HENRY
Daryush Shayegan
(b. Paris 14 April 1903, d. Paris 7 October 1978), French philosopher and orientalist best known as a major interpreter of the Persian role in the development of Islamic thought.
-
CORIANDER
Hūšang Aʿlam
an herb indigenous to the Mediterranean area, the Caucasus, and Persia and valued for its aromatic leaves and seeds.
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ČORMĀGŪN
Peter Jackson
Mongol general and military governor in Persia, d. ca. 639/1242.
-
CORMICK, JOHN
Kamran Ekbal and Lutz Richter-Bernburg
one of the first English surgeons to work in Persia and personal physician to the crown prince ʿAbbās Mīrzā.
-
CORMICK, WILLIAM
Moojan Momen
(b. Tabrīz 1822, d. Tabrīz 25 Ḏu’l-ḥejja 1294/30 December 1877), a British physician in Tabrīz.
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CORN
Cross-Reference
See ḎORRAT.
-
CORNELIAN CHERRY
Hūšang Aʿlam
the male cornel tree, a dogwood shrub with edible berries.
-
CORONATION
A. Shapur Shahbazi
in ancient Iran, the ceremonial act of investing a ruler with a crown.
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CORPSE
Mary Boyce
disposal of, in Zoroastrianism; in Zoroastrianism the corpse of a righteous believer was held to be the greatest source of pollution in the world, as the death of such a one represented a triumph for evil, whose forces were thought to be gathered there in strength.
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CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM IRANICARUM
Nicholas Sims-Williams
(C.I.I.), an association devoted to the collection and publication of Iranian inscriptions and documents.
-
CORRESPONDENCE
Multiple Authors
-
CORRESPONDENCE i. In pre-Islamic Persia
Aḥmad Tafażżolī
-
CORRESPONDENCE ii. In Islamic Persia
Fatḥ-Allāh Mojtabāʾī
-
CORRESPONDENCE iii. Forms of opening and closing, address, and signature
Hashem Rajabzadeh
-
CORRESPONDENCE iv. On the subcontinent of India
Momin Mohiuddin
-
ČORTKA
Yaḥyā Ḏokāʾ
(or čortaka, čotka < Russ. schëty “abacus”), an ancient calculation device, a rectangle strung with parallel metal wires along which clay, metal, or wooden beads can be moved.
-
ČORŪM
Cross-Reference
See ČERĀM.
-
CORVÉE
Cross-Reference
See BĪGĀR.
-
CORVIDAE
Cross-Reference
See CROW.
-
COSMETICS
This article is based on information provided by Žāla Mottaḥedīn and Eqbāl Yaḡmāʾī.
preparations for personal beautification, in Persian tradition used mainly by women on special occasions.
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COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY
Multiple Authors
theories of the origins and structure of the universe.
-
COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY i. In Zoroastrianism/Mazdaism
Philip G. Kreyenbroek
-
COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY ii. In Mithraism
Roger Beck
That Mithraism had an elaborate cosmology, central to its doctrines, is proven first by the structure of its cult shrines (mithraea), which took the form of caves (real or artificial) because, as Porphyry (6) stated, the cave is an “image of the cosmos.” For this reason mithraea were equipped with “symbols of the cosmic elements and climates set at appropriate intervals.”
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COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY iii. In Manicheism
Werner Sundermann
-
COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY iv. In the Mazdakite religion
Werner Sundermann
-
COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY v. In Twelver Shiʿism
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi
-
COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY vi. In Ismaʿilism
Wilferd Madelung
-
COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY vii. In Shaikhism
Denis M. MacEoin
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COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY viii. In the Bahai faith
Moojan Momen
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COSSACK BRIGADE
Muriel Atkin
a cavalry unit in the Persian army established in 1879 on the model of Cossack units in the Russian army. The formation of the Cossack Brigade was part of a larger process in which the Persian government, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, engaged various European soldiers to train units of the Persian armed forces.
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COSSAEANS
Rüdiger Schmitt
a tribe of mountain people settled in western Iran; their land was called Cossaea/Kossaîa.
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COSTE, Pascal-Xavier
Cross-Reference
(1787-1879), French architect, famous for the illustrated account of his travels in Persia. See FLANDIN AND COSTE.
-
COTTAM, Richard
Susan Siavoshi
political scientist and Iranist (1925-1997).
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COTTON
Multiple Authors
Cotton (panba < Mid. Pers. pambag; katān; in Isfahan kolūza; genus Gossypium), particularly the short-staple species Gossypium herbaceum, is cultivated in almost all parts of Persia, and is of great economic importance both for home consumption and for export.
-
COTTON i. Introduction
Eckart Ehlers and Ahmad Parsa
-
COTTON ii. Production and Trade in Persia
Hassan Hakimian
-
COTTON iii. In Afghanistan
Daniel Balland
-
COUP D’ETAT OF 1299/1921
Niloofar Shambayati
the military coup that eventually led to the founding of the Pahlavi dynasty.
-
COUP D’ETAT OF 1332 Š./1953
Mark J. Gasiorowski
the appointment of Moḥammad Moṣaddeq as prime minister of Persia on 9 Ordībehešt 1330 Š./29 April 1951 and the nationalization two days later of Persia’s British-owned oil industry initiated a period of tense confrontation between the Persian and British governments.
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS
Multiple Authors
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS i. In the Median and Achaemenid periods
Muhammad A. Dandamayev
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS ii. In the Parthian and Sasanian periods
Philippe Gignoux
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS iii. In the Islamic period to the Mongol conquest
C. E. Bosworth
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS iv. Under the Mongols
Peter Jackson
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS v. Under the Timurid and Turkman dynasties
Monika Gronke
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS vi. In the Safavid period
Roger M. Savory
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS vii. In the Qajar period
Abbas Amanat
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS viii. In the reign of Reżā Shah Pahlavī
A. Reza Sheikholeslami
-
COURTS AND COURTIERS x. Court poetry
J. T. P. de Bruijn
-
COURTS OF LAW
Cross-Reference
See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS v. Judicial System in the 20th Century.
-
ČOVĀRĪ
Cross-Reference
See LORESTĀN.
-
COW
Cross-Reference
See CATTLE.
-
COWELL, EDWARD BYLES
Parvin Loloi
(1826-1903), polymath, scholar, and translator from Indian languages and Persian.
-
ČOWGĀN
Cross-Reference
See POLO.
-
COX, PERCY ZACHARIAH
Floreeda Safiri
, Sir (b. Herongate, near Brentwood, Essex, England, 20 November 1864, d. Bedford, England, 20 February 1937), officer of the political service in the British Indian government who held several diplomatic posts in the Persian Gulf region in 1893-1923 and played a leading role in negotiating the Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919.
-
COYAJEE, JEHANGIR COOVERJI
Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa
, Sir (b. Bombay, 11 September 1875, d. Bombay, 14 July 1943), Parsi economist and student of ancient Iranian mythology.
-
CRAFTS
compiled from personal observations and reports by Carole Bier, Mehdī Ebrāhīmīān, Iran Ala Firouz, and Jay Gluck.
Although crafts have always played a predominant role in the artistic history of Persia, in this century new market forces and social currents have interacted with deeply rooted traditions to produce new types of objects, as well as variations on more familiar ones.
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CRANE
Hūšang Aʿlam
(kolang), any of the large migratory wading birds of the family Gruidae. The kolang is mentioned in the Bundahišn as one of 110 species of birds. In classical Persian poetry the crane’s ability to fly high and far; its order, discipline, and characteristic whooping sounds in flight are mentioned.
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CRASSUS
Cross-Reference
See CARRHAE.
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CREATION
Cross-Reference
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CREMATION
Cross-Reference
See BURIAL.
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CRIMINAL LAW
Cross-Reference
See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS v. Judicial System in the 20th Century.
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CRIMINOLOGY
Parviz Saney
the study of the causation, prevention, and correction of crime.
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CROCODILE
S. C. Anderson
(nahang, Baluchi gandū), Crocodylus palustris, the marsh crocodile. It inhabits fresh-water marshes, pools, and rivers, and probably the only suitable crocodile habitat in Persian Baluchistan is along the Sarbāz river. The present intermittent distribution of this species in Pakistan and Persian Baluchistan represents a fragmentation of a once more continuous range during moister climatic regimes in the recent past.
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CROCUS
Hūšang Aʿlam
generic name of a large number of hardy bulbous flowering plants of the family Iridaceae.
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CROESUS
A. Shapur Shahbazi
last king of Lydia (r. ca. 560-46 B.C.E.) and brother-in-law of Astyages.
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CROSBY, OSCAR TERRY
Ronald E. Emmerick
(born Ponchatoula, Louisiana, 21 April 1861, d. Warrenton, Virginia, 2 January 1947), collector of an important group of Khotanese texts.
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CROW
Hūšang Aʿlam
a bird of the family Corvidae, represented in Persia and Afghanistan by six genera. Several of their features are more or less reflected in Persian literature and folklore. In poetry the blackness of the feathers (par[r]-e zāḡ) has often been used in similes to emphasize the blackness or darkness of a lock of hair, a certain night, clouds, and the like.
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CROWN
Multiple Authors
(Pers. and Ar. tāj), royal and divine headdress.
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CROWN i. In the Median and Achaemenid periods
Peter Calmeyer
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CROWN ii. From the Seleucids to the Islamic conquest
Elsie H. Peck
It was under the Sasanian monarchs that the crown, quintessential symbol of royal power, received its most elaborate and varied forms. From the earliest representations it is clear that new shapes were not adopted immediately; rather, the royal headgear of the conquered enemy was at first continued.
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CROWN iii. On monuments from the Islamic conquest to the Mongol invasion
Elsie H. Peck
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CROWN iv. Of Persian rulers from the Arab conquerors
A. Shapur Shahbazi
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CROWN JEWELS of Persia
Patricia Jellicoe
the assemblage of jewels collected by the kings of Persia, kept now in the Bānk-e markazī-e Īrān (Central bank of Iran) in Tehran.
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CROWN PRINCE
A. Shapur Shahbazi
the officially recognized heir apparent to the throne.
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CROWN v. In the Qajar and Pahlavi periods
Yaḥyā Ḏokāʾ
Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah (r. 1797-1834) ordered the creation of a tall, jeweled crown with eight peaks on a red velvet cap, the Kayānī crown. From that time on all Qajar kings wore this crown, which is now kept in the Bānk-e markazī-e Īrān (Central bank of Iran).
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CROYANCES ET COUTUMES PERSANES
Mahmoud Omidsalar
by the French orientalist Henri Massé (b. Lunéville, France, 2 March 1886, d. Paris, 9 November 1969), published in 1938, one of the most comprehensive and reliable texts on general Persian folklore in a Western language.
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CRUSADES
Peter Jackson
in relation to Persia; the term “crusade” refers to a series of Christian holy wars fought in the Middle Ages against the Muslims in Syria and Palestine and subsequently elsewhere in the Near East and, by extension, to wars against other enemies, both within and outside Christendom, that were put on the same spiritual footing by the popes.
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CRYSTAL
Layla S. Diba
originally a type of fine glass developed in England in the 17th century and owing its special clarity and brilliance to the high refractive index of lead oxide in the metal; the term is often applied to fine glass in general.
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CRYSTAL, ROCK
Brigitte Musche, Jens Kr
a pure, transparent variety of quartz, usually called “rock crystal” to distinguish it from crystal glass.
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CTESIAS
Rüdiger Schmitt
(Gk. Ktēsías), Greek physician at the Achaemenid court and author of Persiká (b. perhaps ca. 441 BCE).
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CTESIPHON
Jens Kröger
(Ṭīsfūn), ancient city on the Tigris adjacent to the Hellenistic city of Seleucia, ca. 35 km south of the later site of Baghdad.
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ČŪB BĀZĪ
Robyn C. Friend
a category of folk dance found all over Persia (Hamada) and distinguished from other types of folk dance by the fact that the dancers carry sticks, which they strike together.
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ČŪB ḴAṬṬ
Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yusofi
a stick 20-30 cm long formerly used by neighborhood shopkeepers, especially butchers and bakers, to keep accounts.
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CUCUMBER
Hūšang Aʿlam
Cucumis sativus L. (of the family Cucurbitaceae), in Persia generally called ḵīār (with occasional slight variants), a term that is also employed to designate the fruit of certain other plants.
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CUCURBITAE
Cross-Reference
See CUCUMBER.
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CULTURE
Cross-Reference
See FARHANG.
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CUMIN
Hūšang Aʿlam
an umbelliferous plant of the Old World and its aromatic seeds.
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CUMONT, FRANZ VALÉRY MARIE
Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin
classical philologist and historian of religions, whose research resulted in a substantial contribution to the understanding of Mithraism and other oriental religions in the Roman empire.
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CUNAXA
A. Shapur Shahbazi
the Greek form of the name of a village located some 50 miles north of Babylon, where a decisive battle was fought on 3 September 401 B.C.E. between Cyrus the Younger and his brother Artaxerxes II.
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CUNEIFORM SCRIPT
Rüdiger Schmitt
The term “cuneiform” script in its broader sense includes that in which Old Persian was written, a simplified version invented in the 6th century B.C.E. It was the official script adopted by the Achaemenid kings (from Darius I to Artaxerxes III) for writing their mother tongue.
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ČŪPA
See DANCE.
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ČŪPĀN
Jean-Pierre Digard
or čōbān “shepherd” (Mid. Pers. and NPers. šobān); even today the shepherd remains a central figure, in both the technological life and consequently the symbolic life, of all systems of animal husbandry.
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ČUPĀNĪĀN
Cross-Reference
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CUPBEARER
James R. Russel
one who fills and distributes cups of wine, as in a royal household.
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CUPPING
Cross-Reference
See BLOODLETTING.
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CURTIUS RUFUS, QUINTUS
Philip Huyse
(probably fl. 1st century c.e.), author of the only extant Latin monograph on Alexander the Great, usually called Historiae Alexandri Magni, in many respects the most complete and liveliest account of Alexander’s exploits in Asia.
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CURZON, GEORGE NATHANIEL
Denis Wright
(1859-1925), 1st Marquess of Kedleston, British statesman, traveler, and writer.
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CUSTOMS DUTIES
Willem Floor
a tax levied on the movement of trade. A new law ensuring Persian autonomy in establishing tariffs (ḥoqūq-e gomrokī) was enacted on 1 May 1928; it provided for an ad valorem tariff on most goods, with special rates for certain luxuries like gold, silver, and tobacco.
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CUT PAPER
Barbara Schmitz
(qeṭʿa “decoupage,” also monabbat-kārī “filigree work”), a type of applied ornament documented in Persian manuscripts and sometimes on bookbindings from the approximate period 895-1060/1490-1650.
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CYAXARES
I. M. Diakonoff
(Gk. Kyaxárēs) king of Media in the 6th century B.C.E.
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CYLINDER SEALS
Edith Porada
The seals of ancient Persia correspond in their types and use to those of Mesopotamia, beginning with amuletic pendants, which could also be used as seals, and developing into elaborately engraved seal stones, with a change in the Uruk period from stamp to cylinder seals.
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CYPRESS
Hūšang Aʿlam
(sarv). Many remarkable cypresses have been reported in Persia by foreign travelers. One of the earliest of these reports is the one by Engelbert Kaempfer (pp. 366-69), who mentioned the elegant cypresses of Shiraz, especially those at the tomb precinct of the poet Ḥāfeẓ.
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CYPRUS
Michael Weiskopf
an island in the eastern Mediterranean off the southern coast of central Anatolia, not mentioned in any of the Old Persian imperial inscriptions but under Achaemenid control from the reign of Cambyses son of Cyrus (520s B.C.E.) to the reign of Darius III (336-31 B.C.E.).
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CYPRUS in the Achaemenid Period
Antigone Zournatzi
The kings of the southeastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus reportedly submitted willingly to Cyrus II and offered military assistance to the Persians in their campaigns against Caria and Babylon (539 BCE).
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CYRIACUS AND JULITTA, ACTS OF
Nicholas Sims-Williams
Christian martyrological text.
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CYROPAEDIA
Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg
(Gr. Kúrou paideía, The education of Cyrus), a partly fictional biography of Cyrus the Great (q.v.; 559-29 b.c.e.), founder of the Achaemenid empire.
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CYROPOLIS
Igor V. P’yankov
(Latin form of Gr. Kuroúpolis), ancient town in Central Asia probably founded by Cyrus the Great (559-30 B.C.E.).
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CYRTIANS
Rüdiger Schmitt
a tribe dwelling mainly in the mountains of Atropatenian Media together with the Cadusii, Amardi (or “Mardi”), Tapyri, and others.
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CYRUS
Multiple Authors
a Persian name, most notably of the founder of the Achaemenid empire, Cyrus the Great.
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CYRUS i. The Name
Rüdiger Schmitt
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CYRUS ii. Cyrus I
A. Shapur Shahbazi
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CYRUS iii. Cyrus II The Great
Muhammad A. Dandamayev
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CYRUS iv. The Cyrus cylinder
Muhammad A. Dandamayev
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CYRUS v. The Tomb of Cyrus
Antigoni Zournatzi
The tomb of Cyrus is generally identified with a small stone monument approximately 1 km southwest of the palaces of Pasargadae, in the center of the Morḡāb plain. According to Greek sources, the tomb of Cyrus II 559-29 B.C.E.) was located in the royal park at Pasargadae.
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CYRUS vi. Cyrus the Younger
Rüdiger Schmitt
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CYRUS RIVER (1)
Cross-reference
River in Fārs. See KOR.
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CYRUS RIVER (2)
Cross-reference
River in Central Asia. See KURA.


