Table of Contents

  • COAL

    Willem M. Floor

    Ordinary Per­sians claimed that, as they could not burn coal in their water pipes, they had no need of it. Only Europeans living in Tehran and Tabrīz used coal for heating; they collected it from the surface in bas­kets.

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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

    It is likely that substitution ciphers were used by early Persian states, for nearly identical versions were still in use in Qajar Persia. During the reigns of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah and Moḥammad Shah (1834-48) the minister Abu’l-Qāsem Qāʾemmaqām devised a number of letter-substitution codes for communicating with different princes and viziers.

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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.