Table of Contents

  • 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).