Table of Contents

  • 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.