Table of Contents

  • CEREALS

    Cross-Reference

    See under individual cereals.

  • ČERĪK

    Willem Floor

    (also jerīk, from Mongol tserig “warrior[s]”), originally troops sent by an individual or camp (yort) to serve in the royal army.

  • ČERKES

    Cross-Reference

    See ČARKAS.

  • CERULLI, Enrico

    Filippo Bertotti

    (born Naples, 15 February 1898; died 1988), Italian orientalist and diplomat.

  • CERVIDAE

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀHŪ.

  • CEŠT

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    a small settlement on the north bank of the Harirud and to the south of the Paropamisus range in northwestern Afghanistan, lying approximately 100 miles upstream from Herat in the easternmost part of the modern Herat welāyat or province.

  • ČEŠTĪYA

    Gerhard Böwering

    the name of an influential Sufi order in India, derived from the name of the village of Češt.

  • CHAARENE

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    (Gk. Chaarēnḗ), in Achaemenid times one of the easternmost Iranian provinces and the one closest to India.

  • CHAGHATAY LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

    Gerhard Doerfer

    Of all the Turkic languages Chaghatay enjoyed by far the greatest prestige. For instance, the khans of the Golden Horde and of the Crimea, as well as the Kazan Tatars, wrote in Chaghatay much of the time.

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  • CHAGHATAYID DYNASTY

    Peter Jackson

    name given to the descendants of Čengīz Khan’s second son Čaḡatai, who reigned in Transoxania until ca. 771/1370 and in parts of Turkestan down to the 11th/17th century.

  • CHALAVID DYNASTY

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀL-E AFRĀSĪĀB.

  • CHALCOLITHIC ERA

    Elizabeth F. Henrickson

    in Persia; chalcolithic is a term adopted for the Near East early in this century as part of an attempt to refine the framework of cultural developmental “stages” (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages) and used by students of western European prehistory.

  • CHALDEANS

    Muhammad Dandamayev

    (Kaldu), West Semitic tribes of southern Babylonia attested in Assyrian texts from the early 9th century B.C.

  • CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, INDUSTRIES, AND MINES OF PERSIA

    Ahmad Ashraf

    a national federation of local chambers and syndicates created in Esfand 1348 Š./March 1970 through the merger of various local chambers of commerce and the national chamber of industries and mines of Iran.

  • CHAMBER of GUILDS

    Ahmad Ashraf

    (Oṭāq-e aṣnāf), a federation of various guilds formed in 1350 Š./1971 under the “guild-organization act” (Qānūn-e neẓām-e ṣenfī) in most urban centers.

  • CHAMBERLAIN

    Cross-Reference

    See ḤĀJEB.

  • CHAMPION, JOSEPH

    Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Estelle Whelan

    (1750-ca. 1813), English poet and translator. His three books devoted to Persian litera­ture were all first published in India. The earliest contains English odes in imitation of the poems of Ḥāfeẓ, mostly on the theme of wine and drinking.

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  • CHĀNGĀ ĀSĀ

    Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal

    an eminent Parsi layman who lived in the 15th-16th centuries A.D. at Navsari in Gujarat.

  • CHARACENE and CHARAX

    John Hansman

    (Spasinou) in pre-Islamic times; Characene is the name Pliny gives for the later region of Mesene (called Mēšān or Mēšūn in Middle Persian, Maysān/Mayšān in Syriac, and Maysān in Arabic) in southernmost Mesopotamia, which formed a political district of that name in the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian periods.

  • CHARAX

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    town in the Seleucid and Parthian province of Rhagiana, the area around modern Ray.

  • CHARCOAL

    Willem Floor

    car­bonized wood and other vegetal material, an important household and industrial fuel in Persia and Afghanistan.

  • CHARDIN, Sir JOHN

    John Emerson

    (born Paris, 16 November 1643, died Chiswick, London? 5 January 1713), an Huguenot jeweler who traveled extensively in Asia and wrote the most detailed foreign account of the Persia of his time.

  • CHARES of MITYLENE

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Greek historiographer, who participated in Alexander’s expedition and wrote “Stories about Alexander” (Perì Aléxandron historíai), of which fragments remain.

  • CHARIOT

    William W. Malandra

    chariots in ancient Iran were light horse-drawn, two-wheeled vehicles designed for speed and maneuverability in battle and races.

  • CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONS

    Maria Macuch; John R. Hinnells, Mary Boyce, and Shahrokh Shahrokh

    (MPers. ruwānagān lit. “relating to the soul”), pious endow­ments to benefit the souls of the dead, as specified by the individual founders.  i. In the Sasanian period.  ii. Among Zoroastrians in Islamic times.

  • CHARMS

    Mahmoud Omidsalar

    originally verbal formulas recited to prevent or ward off potential harm by magical power but now also denoting written and even talismanic magic.

  • CHARON OF LAMPSACUS

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Greek historiographer, son of Pytho­cles or Pythes.

  • CHARPENTIER, JARL

    Bo Utas

    (Hellen Robert Toussaint; b. 17 December 1884, d. 5 July 1935), Swedish Indologist, Indo-Europeanist, and Iranist, born in Gothenburg as the son of an army officer.

  • CHASE

    Cross-Reference

    See HUNTING IN IRAN.

  • CHASE, THORNTON

    Moojan Momen

    (b. Springfield, Mass., 22 February 1847), regarded by Bahais as the first Amer­ican Bahai and the first Bahai of the West.

  • CHAVANNES, EMMANUEL-ÉDOUARD

    Werner Sundermann

    (b. Lyons, France, 5 October 1865, d. Fontenay-aux-Roses, 29 January 1918), French sinologist who also contributed to the study of Iranian history and religions.

  • CHEESE

    Daniel Balland

    In Persia and Afghanistan both nomadic pastoralists and sedentary peasants make the same basic kinds of domestic cheese. The only clear distinction is between acid and rennet cheeses, both made from mixed milks, except in Gīlān; there acid cheeses are usually prepared from cow’s and buffalo’s milk and rennet cheeses from ewe’s and goat’s milk.

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  • CHEMISTRY

    Cross-Reference

    See KĪMĪĀ.

  • CHESS

    Bo Utas, Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī

    a board game.

  • CHESTER BEATTY LIBRARY

    Wilfrid Lockwood, J. T. P. de Bruijn, Michel Tardieu

    a collection of manuscripts, printed works, and artifacts, predominantly Oriental, assembled by Alfred Chester Beatty and opened to the public in Dublin in 1954.

  • CH’IEN HAN SHU

    Edwin G. Pulleyblank

    (Qian Han shu) “History of the Former Han Dynasty,” a historical work which includes information on Iran.

  • CHILAS

    Karl Jettmar

    township in the upper Indus valley in Pakistani-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, almost directly south of Gilgit and located on the new Karakorum high­way between Pakistan and China.

  • CHILDREN

    Multiple Authors

    This series of articles covers children and child-rearing in Iran and Iranian lands.

  • CHILDREN i. Childbirth in Zoroastrianism

    Jenny Rose

    The Zoroastrian community has traditionally regarded marriage as having a threefold function: to propagate the human race, to spread the Zoroastrian faith, and to contribute to the victory of the good cause. The birth of a child furthers each of these objec­tives.

  • CHILDREN ii. In Modern Persian Folklore

    Mahmoud Omidsalar

    Childbirth (zāymān, formal ważʿ-e ḥaml) in traditional Persian society, as in many other cultures, has generally been associated with magical practices and superstitions.

  • CHILDREN iii. Legal Rights of Children in the Sasanian Period

    Mansour Shaki

    Although the corpus of Sasanian civil law was designed primarily to regulate matters among the lower classes, that is, the common people and slaves, the portions on adop­tion, inheritance, guardianship, and the like were equally applicable to the upper classes.

  • CHILDREN iv. Legal Rights of Children in Modern Persia

    Shirin Ebadi

    A person is consid­ered a minor (ṣaḡīr) until he or she has attained the physical and psychological growth necessary for full participation in society. When a child has reached the age of maturity (bolūḡ) determined by the law he ir she is consid­ered mature (bāleḡ).

  • CHILDREN v. Child Rearing in Modern Persia

    Erika Friedl

    The topic of child rearing (from birth to social adulthood in the mid-teens) is largely neglected in systematic research; there are no comparative studies of child-rearing practices among different ethnic and cultural groups in the country and only a few specialized studies.

  • CHILDREN vi. Child Rearing Among Zoroastrians in Modern Persia

    Janet Kestenberg Amighi

    In the first half of the 13th/20th century most children were born at home with the assistance of the midwife. Immediately after birth the infant was bathed to cleanse it of polluting substances and wrapped in pieces of cloth called landog.

  • CHILDREN vii. Children's Literature

    EIr

    Up to the Constitutional movement the standard curriculum of traditional Persian elementary schools (maktabs), which were pri­vately operated, included the alphabet, the Koran, selec­tions from popular Persian poetry and prose, and the traditional sciences. 

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  • CHILIARCH

    Philippe Gignoux

    Greek title of one of the chief offices of state in Achaemenid Persia, presumably translated from Old Persian hazārapati-, attested in Greek as azarapateîs, explained as eisaggeleîs, that is, announcers or ushers.

  • CHINESE TURKESTAN

    Multiple Authors

    (Sinkiang, Xinjiang), IRANIAN ELEMENTS IN.

  • CHINESE TURKESTAN i. Geographical Overview

    EIr

    The eastern portion of the Central Asian land mass (see central asia i. geography), between 70° and 100° E and 25° and 45° N, encompasses Chinese Turkestan, now Sinkiang (Xin-jiang) Uighur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China.

  • CHINESE TURKESTAN ii. In Pre-Islamic Times

    Victor Mair and Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    In antiquity the Tarim and Dzungar (Zungar, Jungar) basins lay at the crossroads of three main Eurasian routes including the Southern Silk Road, the Northern Silk Road, and a northern route passing between the Bogdo-ola (Bo-ko-tuo) range and the Tien Shans.

  • CHINESE TURKESTAN iii. From the Advent of Islam to the Mongols

    Isenbike Togan

    Chinese influence in the Tarim basin began to wane after the battle of Talas (Ṭarāz) in 134/751, though Islam did not gain a permanent foothold there until much later.