Table of Contents

  • COURTS AND COURTIERS iv. Under the Mongols

    Peter Jackson

    During the early stages of the Mongol presence Persia was ruled, on behalf of the great khan (qaḡan, qaʾan/qāʾān) in Mongolia, by military governors based in Azerbaijan and in Khorasan, but, with the coming of Hülegü (Hūlāgū) in 654/1256 and the establishment of the Il-khanid state, the country was once again the seat of a resident sovereign.

  • COURTS AND COURTIERS v. Under the Timurid and Turkman dynasties

    Monika Gronke

    Timurid and Turkman rulers and princes established outside of Samarquand and built them into important political and especially religious and cultural centers.

  • COURTS AND COURTIERS vi. In the Safavid period

    Roger M. Savory

    The organization of the court and its administration.

  • COURTS AND COURTIERS vii. In the Qajar period

    Abbas Amanat

    The court (darbār, darbār-e aʿẓam, dar(b)-e ḵāna) in the Qajar period was essentially organized on the ancient Perso-Turkish model inherited from the Safavid and Zand courts but with modifications in practice and function largely designed to accommo­date the Qajars’ nomadic habits.

  • 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.

    Article Pending.

  • COX, PERCY ZACHARIAH

    Floreeda Safiri

    (1864-1937), Sir, 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

    (1875-1943), Sir, 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.

  • CRIMEAN TATAR

    Dan D.Y. Shapira

    (Krim-Tatar, Qırım-Tatar), name for various Turkic peoples who moved to the Crimean peninsula in the past and are now in other areas as well.

  • 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. 560-546 B.C.E.) who pioneered the coining of gold and silver money, was defeated and captured by Cyrus in the plain beside Sardis.

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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.

  • 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

    In the Achaemenid period rulers were represented wearing two different kinds of crown. Most common was a rigid cylinder with crenellated decoration, which had a long tradition in Persia; crenellations appeared on the Elamite rock relief at Kūrāngūn in Fārs and were revived again for the crown of the Pahlavi dynasty.

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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

    One of the most durable types of royal headgear was the winged crown, first observed on coins and reliefs of the Sasanian Bahrām II. 

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  • CROWN iv. Of Persian rulers from the Arab conquerors

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    Despite abhorrence of imperial titles and regalia in early Islamic traditions, Omayyad and ʿAbbasid governors, and the rulers of Ṭabarestān, continued to employ on their coins the iconography of the coins of the Sasanian rulers Ḵosrow II and Yazdegerd III.

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  • CROWN LANDS

    Cross-Reference

    See ḴĀṢṢA.

  • 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 Kröger

    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.

  • Čub-bāzi

    music sample

  • 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.