Table of Contents

• CHINESE TURKESTAN vii. Manicheism in Chinese Turkestan and China

  Samuel Lieu

  Manicheism was probably introduced into Inner Asia by Sogdian (Hu) merchants, though the process of its diffusion there is entirely obscure.

• CHINESE TURKESTAN viii. Turkish-Iranian Language Contacts

  Gerhard Doerfer

  Contacts between the Iranian peoples and the Turks occurred at least as early as 552 C.E., when the Turks spread from their northern settlements and established an empire extending from the Greater Khingan mountains to the Aral Sea and Sogdians farther west.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS

  Multiple Authors

  This series of articles deals with Chinese-Iranian relations spanning from Pre-Islamic times to the Constitutional Revolution in Iran.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS i. In Pre-Islamic Times

  Edwin G. Pulleyblank

  Contact between China and Iran was initiated toward the end of the 2nd century B.C.E. by the envoy Chang Ch’ien (Zhang Qian), who searched for the Yüeh-chih (Yue-zhi), a people that had migrated from the borders of China after having been defeated by the Hsiung-nu (Xiongnu).

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS ii. Islamic Period to the Mongols

  J. M. Rogers

  Ṣīn in Arabic sources referred not only to China but also to eastern Turkestan and the Far East as a whole, whereas Chinese texts rarely distinguished among Persian, Central Asian, and Arab Muslims. 

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS iii. In the Mongol Period

  Liu Yingsheng and Peter Jackson

  The incorporation of Persia into a vast empire that extended as far as China, following the conquests of Čengīz (Chinggis) Khan (q.v.: 602-24/1206-27) and his grandson Hülegü (Hūlāgū; 654-63/1256-65), inaugurated an era of intense contact between Persia and China. 

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS iv. The Safavid Period, 1501-1732

  J. M. Rogers

  In the Safavid period relations with China were, unsurprisingly, indirect. In eastern Khorasan the Uzbeks and their successors blocked the land route to northwest­ern China through Transoxania.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS v. Diplomatic and Commercial Relations, 1949-90

  Parviz Mohajer

  There were three distinct periods in Chinese-Persian diplomatic relations: 1328-49 Š./1949-70, 1350-57 Š./ 1971-78, and 1358-69 Š./1979-90.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS vi. Relations with Afghanistan in the Modern Period

  Daniel Balland

  Throughout history China and Afghanistan shared a certain amount of trade, mostly tea and fruit, via the direct caravan route from Chinese Turkestan across the high passes of the Pamirs and the Wāḵān corridor to northern Afghanistan.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS vii. Persian Settlements in Southeastern China during the T’ang, Sung, and Yuan Dynasties

  Chen Da-Sheng

  The ports along the southeastern coast of China had a long history of trade with Persia before the coming of Islam. In addition, there is considerable evidence for the settlement of early Muslims, including Persians, in China.

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• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS viii. Persian Language and Literature in China

  EIr

  The earliest Persian inscription in China is the tombstone of the Zoroastrian Ma (Pahl. *Māhnūš), wife of General Su-liang (Pahl. Farroxzād; Humbach), inscribed in both Pahlavi and Chinese and dated 874, has been discovered at Xi-an, the capital of Shan-xi province.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS ix. Persian Language Teaching in Modern China

  EIr

  Persian has been taught in Muslim schools in China since the 1920s.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS x. China in Medieval Persian Literature

  Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh

  In medieval writings Čīn may mean either China proper or eastern Turkestan; when it refers to the latter China proper is sometimes called Māčīn (contraction of Skt. Mahāčīna “great China”).

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xi. Mutual Influence of Chinese and Persian Ceramics

  Oliver Watson

  Chinese ceramics were the single most important stimulus to the development of fine pottery in the Islamic world, arriving first in the 3rd/9th century.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xii. Mutual Influences in Painting

  Toh Sugimura

  In the Chinese cultural sphere Persian artistic influence was at its peak under the Tang dynasty (618-906 c.e.), contemporary with the end of the Sasanian period (30/651) and the first centuries after the Islamic conquest.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xiii. Eastern Iranian Migrations to China

  Étienne de la Vaissière

  There are two different stages in the history of Eastern Iranian migrations to China: the first, still extremely obscure, is dominated by Bactrian immigrants, coming from Bactriana and the Kushan empire, and the second, from the fourth to the ninth century CE is dominated by Sogdians.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xiv. The Influence of Eastern Iranian Art

  M. L. Carter

  The output of Chinese artisanship, especially in bronze, jade, ceramics, and silk textiles is unparalleled in Asia, and influences from non-Chinese sources were quickly assimilated and often transformed into an aesthetic vocabulary beyond easy recognition of their origin.

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• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xv. THE LAST SASANIANS IN CHINA

  Matteo Compareti

  Information on those Sasanians who avoided the submission to the Arabs and lived in Central Asia or at the Tang court can be found in the works of Muslim authors and in Chinese sources.

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• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xvi. Impact of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran

  Yidan Wang

  The Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11 attracted the attention of the Chinese constitutionalists and revolutionaries immediately upon breaking out.

• CHINGGIS KHAN

  Cross-Reference

  See ČENGĪZ KHAN.

• CHINKARA

  Khushal Habibi

  or CHIKARA (Gazella bennetti, Indian gazelle), a small antelope of slender build; its tawny coat has poorly marked facial and body stripes.

• CHIONITES

  Wolfgang Felix

  a tribe of probable Iranian origin that was prominent in Bactria and Transoxania in late antiquity.

• CHITON

  Cross-Reference

  See CLOTHING i. Median and Achaemenid periods, iii. Sasanian period.

• CHITRAL

  Nigel J. R. Allan, Georg Buddruss

  (Čitrāl), river valley in the upper Indus system.

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• CHLORITE

  Philip Kohl

  a mineral consist­ing of a group of closely related hydrous magnesium aluminum silicates of exceedingly varied chemical com­positions owing to isomorphous substitutions.

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• CHOAMANI

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  name of an eastern Iranian tribe (perhaps located in western Bactria), mentioned only by Pomponius Mela in an enumeration of the inhabitants of the interior lands.

• CHOANA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  the name of two Iranian towns mentioned by Ptolemy.

• CHOARA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  or CHOARENE; a town or village in Parthia mentioned by Ptolemy (6.5.3) and called “the most attractive place of Parthia” by Pliny.

• CHOASPES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  (or Coaspēs), ancient name of three rivers.

• CHOBANIDS

  Charles Melville and ʿAbbās Zaryāb

  a fam­ily of Mongol origin descended from the amir Čobān Noyan.

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• CHODŹKO, ALEKSANDER BOREJKO

  Jean Calmard

  (b. 30 August 1804, in Krzywicze, Poland [now in the Lithuanian S.S.R.], d. Noisy-le-Sec, near Paris, 19 December 1891), Polish poet and diplomat, the first European scholar to work on Persian folklore.

• CHOLERA

  Xavier De Planhol, Daniel Balland

  (Cholera asiatica, Cholera indica), epidemic intestinal disease of Indian origin caused by infectious bacteria.

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• CHORASMIA

  Multiple Authors

  region on the lower reaches of the Oxus (Amu Darya) in western Central Asia.

• CHORASMIA i. Archeology and pre-Islamic history

  Yuri Aleksandrovich Rapoport

  At the turn of the 3rd millennium b.c.e. the Neolithic Kel’teminar culture flourished in the Chorasmian oasis (Vinogradov, 1968; idem, 1981). Remains of the Bronze Age Suyargan.

• CHORASMIA ii. In Islamic times

  C. E. Bosworth

  The Islamic history of Ḵᵛārazm begins with the two invasions of Arab troops under the governor of Khorasan Qotayba b. Moslem Bāhelī in 93/712, who intervened in the region on the pretext of internecine strife among members of the native Afrighid dynasty of ḵᵛārazmšāhs

• CHORASMIA iii. The Chorasmian Language

  D. N. MacKenzie

  Old Chorasmian was written in an indigenous script descended from the Aramaic, brought to the region by the administration of the Achaemenid empire and characterized by heter­ography, that is, the occasional writing of Aramaic words to represent the corresponding Chorasmian.

• CHORASMIAN COINAGE

  B. I. Vainberg

  issued by the rulers of Chorasmia between the 2nd century BCE and the 8th century CE, Chorasmian coins are important primary evidence for the Old Chorasmian language and the region’s post-Achaemenid history because of the paucity of preserved sources for this period.

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• CHORIENES

  Marie Louise Chaumont

  Sogdian nobleman and opponent of Alexander.

• CHRISTENSEN, ARTHUR EMANUEL

  Jes P. Asmussen

  (b. Copenhagen 9 January 1875, d. Copenhagen 31 March 1945), Danish orientalist and scholar of Iranian philology and folklore.

• CHRISTIANITY

  Multiple Authors

  This article treats Christianity in pre-Islamic Persia as seen through literary sources and material remains, in Central Asia, in Christian literature in Middle Iranian languages, in Manicheism, and in Persian literature. It also covers Christina influences in Persian poetry and Christian missions in Persia.

• CHRISTIANITY i. In Pre-Islamic Persia: Literary Sources

  James R. Russell

  In Middle Persian there are three terms used for Christians: KLSTYDʾN and NʾCLʾY in the inscription on the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt of the 3rd-century Zoroastrian high priest Kartir; and tarsāq, Sogdian loan-word trsʾq, New Persian tarsā.

• CHRISTIANITY ii. In Pre-Islamic Persia: Material Remains

  Judith Lerner

  Although Christians may have been among the deportees from Roman Syria who worked on the monuments of Šāpūr I (240-70 c.e.) at Bīšāpūr (q.v.) and the dam at Šūštar, nothing identifiably Christian has been excavated in Persia itself.

• CHRISTIANITY iii. In Central Asia And Chinese Turkestan

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  The main early centers of Syriac-speaking Christians were Edessa and Arbela. By the end of the 3rd century the Syrian church was strongly established also in the western Persian empire, where it was sometimes harshly persecuted during the following centuries under Sasanian rule.

• CHRISTIANITY iv. Christian Literature in Middle Iranian Languages

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  In Persia itself Syriac eventually regained its status as the sole literary and liturgical language of the church, with the result that none of this Christian Persian literature survived, apart from a few texts preserved in Syriac translation, such as two legal works by the metropolitans Išoʿbōḵt and Simon.

• CHRISTIANITY v. Christ in Manicheism

  Werner Sundermann

  In Manicheism, as in earlier gnostic systems, the terms Christ (Gk. “the anointed”) and Jesus Christ were used in various ways, though less commonly than the name Jesus alone.

• CHRISTIANITY vi. In Persian Literature

  Qamar Āryān

  Christian beliefs and institutions are frequently mentioned in various genres (lyric, epic, didactic, mystic), and many works contain allusions to legends of Christian saints, martyrs, and ascetics.

• CHRISTIANITY vii. Christian Influences in Persian Poetry

  Annemarie Schimmel

  Persian poetry contains a good number of allusions to Jesus Christ (ʿĪsā Masīḥ), Mary (Maryam), and Christians (naṣārā, tarsā) in general. Most of the images and ideas expressed in poetry are elaborations of the Koranic data about Jesus and his virgin mother, though sometimes developed very ingeniously.

• CHRISTIANITY viii. Christian Missions in Persia

  Yahya Armajani

  Christianity was introduced in Persia in the Parthian period, and several bishoprics were established there. That the Persian church was itself active in proselytizing abroad at the end of the Sasanian period (224-651) and immediately after is clear from remains in India and China.

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• CHRISTIE, CHARLES

  Kamran Ekbal

  Captain (d. 1812), of the Bombay Regiment, an Anglo-Indian officer under the command of Sir John Malcolm.

• CHROMITE

  Raḥmat-Allāh Ostovār

  FeCr2O4, a dark-brown or black mineral from which chromium is refined.