Table of Contents

  • COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY iii. In Manicheism

    Werner Sundermann

    Manicheism, like contemporary Zoroastrianism and various gnostic sects, offered a detailed cosmogonic myth, or cosmology.

  • COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY iv. In the Mazdakite religion

    Werner Sundermann

    The most important source for modern knowledge of Mazdakite cosmogony is the description of the Mazdakite religion in Ketāb al-melal wa’l-neḥal, writ­ten by Abu’l-Fatḥ Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-al-Karīm Šahrestānī, in 624/1227, several hundred years after the period in which the sect flourished. 

  • COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY v. In Twelver Shiʿism

    Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi

    Imami traditions contain a chaotic abundance of material portraying the origin and structure of the universe. Book XIV, “On the heavens and the earth,” of Moḥammad-Bāqer Majlesī’s Beḥār al-anwār, fills ten volumes (LVII-LXVI) in the most recent edition and contains several thousand traditions.

  • COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY vi. In Ismaʿilism

    Wilferd Madelung

    The physical world consists of nine celestial spheres, the highest sphere, the sphere of the fixed stars, the seven spheres of the planets, as well as the sublunar world of generation and corruption.

  • COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY vii. In Shaikhism

    Denis M. MacEoin

    It is in some respects redundant to speak of a “Shaikhi cosmology” distinct from that of Imami Shiʿism as a whole. Shaikhi ideas never developed independently of ordinary Shiʿite thought but were either part of it or in dialogue or conflict with it.

  • COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY viii. In the Bahai faith

    Moojan Momen

    First, the human mind is strictly finite and limited in knowledge and understanding. Second, no absolute knowledge of God or reality or the cosmos is therefore available to man. Third, from the above it follows that all conceptualizations and attempts by men to portray cosmology are “but a reflection of what has been created within themselves.”

  • 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.

  • 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

    Cottam was convinced of the moral superiority of U.S. and allied forces in their fight against fascism in Europe and the Far East. This belief lingered for some time after the end of the war, allowing him to form an idealistic view of the validity of U.S. values in its post-war struggle against communism.

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