Table of Contents

• COURTS AND COURTIERS viii. In the reign of Reżā Shah Pahlavī

  A. Reza Sheikholeslami

  When Reżā Shah (r. 1304-20 Š./1925-1941) acceded to the throne he retained a number of lower officials from the royal court of the Qajars, specifically those who had not been vocal in support of republicanism.

• COURTS AND COURTIERS x. Court poetry

  J. T. P. de Bruijn

  Until modern times there were strong incentives to patronize poets and other writers wherever the seat of power was renowned as a center of culture.

• 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.

• CREATION

  Cross-Reference

  See COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY.

• CREMATION

  Cross-Reference

  See BURIAL.

• CRIMINAL LAW

  Cross-Reference

  See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS v. Judicial System in the 20th Century.

• CRIMINOLOGY

  Parviz Saney

  the study of the causation, prevention, and correction of crime.

• 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.

• CROESUS

  A. Shapur Shahbazi

  last king of Lydia (r. ca. 560-46 B.C.E.) and brother-in-law of Astyages.

• 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.

• 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.

• CROWN i. In the Median and Achaemenid periods

  Peter Calmeyer

  The Old Persian term for such a headdress is not preserved, though it has been suggested that vari­ous contemporary Greek terms—for example, kídaris or kítaris, tiára, and kurbasía—were derived from Persian or other eastern languages.

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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

  Richard Ettinghausen suggested that the Omayyad caliphs, rulers of the first Islamic dynasty (41-132/661-750), wore three kinds of official headdress: the tāj (crown), the emāma, and the qalansowa ṭawīla (tall conical hat).

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• CROWN iv. Of Persian rulers from the Arab conquerors

  A. Shapur Shahbazi

  Despite the collapse of the Persian empire in 30/651 and the abhorrence of imperial titles and regalia in early Islamic traditions, Omayyad and ʿAbbasid governors, as well as the rulers of Ṭabarestān, continued to employ on their coins iconography of the coins of the Sasanian rulers, perpetu­ating familiarity with Sasanian imperial crowns for a further two centuries.

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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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• 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.

• CROWN PRINCE

  A. Shapur Shahbazi

  the officially recognized heir apparent to the throne.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• CRYSTAL, ROCK

  Brigitte Musche, Jens Kr

  a pure, transparent variety of quartz, usually called “rock crystal” to distinguish it from crystal glass.

• CTESIAS

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  (Gk. Ktēsías),  Greek physician at the Achaemenid court and author of Persiká (b. perhaps ca. 441 BCE).

• 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.

• 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.

• ČŪB ḴAṬṬ

  Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Yusofi

  a stick 20-30 cm long formerly used by neighborhood shopkeepers, especially butchers and bakers, to keep accounts.

• 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.

• CUCURBITAE

  Cross-Reference

  See CUCUMBER.

• CULTURE

  Cross-Reference

  See FARHANG.

• CUMIN

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  an umbelliferous plant of the Old World and its aromatic seeds.

• 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.

• 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.

• CUNEIFORM SCRIPT

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  the conventional name for a system of writing ultimately derived from the pictographic script developed by the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia (Uruk) around 3000 B.C.E. Cuneiform was written with a reed stylus, which left wedge-shaped impressions on soft clay tablets.

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• ČŪPA

  Cross-Reference

  See DANCE.

• 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.

• ČUPĀNĪĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See CHOBANIDS; ČOBĀN.

• CUPBEARER

  James R. Russel

  one who fills and distributes cups of wine, as in a royal household.

• CUPPING

  Cross-Reference

  See BLOODLETTING.

• 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.