Table of Contents

• 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 Kr

  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.

• 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.