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COAL (zoḡāl-e sang), carbonized organic material used as a solid fuel. Although Persia and Afghanistan are rich in coal deposits (Harrison, pp. 492-96; Research Group, pp. 58-149; Arens, pp. 126-28), these deposits have only recently come to be exploited. In Transoxania coal was used for fuel as early as the…

COBALT (sang-e lājavard “blue stone,” also ap­plied to lapis lazuli and ultramarine; lājavard-e kāšī “ceramic blue”; lājavard-e solaymānī “Solaymān blue”), a chemical element that imparts a blue color to glass and glazes and to certain pigments. The term lājavard actually refers to lapis lazuli (e.g., lājavard-­e aṣl “genuine lapis lazuli,”…

ČOBĀN (Čūpān, Ar. Jūbān; ca. 660-727/1262-­1327), eponymous founder of the Chobanid dynasty and the leading Mongol amir of the late Il-khanid period. He effectively ruled Persia from 716/1316 until his fall in 727/November 1327, when he was in his sixties (Šabānkāraʾī, p. 283; Ṣafadī, XI, p. 222). Čobān was a member…

COCK, the male of the subfamily Phasianinae (pheasants), usually having a long, often tectiform tail with fourteen to thirty-two feathers. The thirteen genera (twenty-nine species) of this subfamily all originated in Asia (Raethel, p. 49); one species, the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus), the ancestor of the do­mestic chicken, lives…

COCONUT (nārgīl < Mid. Pers. anārgēl < Skt. nārīkel/ra; cf. Hindi and Urdu nāriyal “coconut”), the fruit of the palm Cocos nucifera L., which grows in the East Indies, as well as in most other humid tropical regions. Copra (maḡz-e nārgīl, lit. “coconut kernel”) and in recent times coconut oil...

CODES (romūz, sg. ramz), including the use of secret writing and cryptanalysis, in Persia. The use of codes in communications and diplomacy goes back to classical Greece, and an interest in codes and secret writing was carried into early Islamic times, not only for diplomatic purposes but also for magic…

CODEX CUMANICUS, a manuscript of eighty-two paper leaves, measuring approximately 20 x 14 cm, preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale of the cathe­dral of San Marco in Venice and comprising princi­pally vocabularies and texts of the Northwest Middle Turkic language of the Cumans, or Komans, recorded in Latin script. The Cumans…

CODICES HAFNIENSES, forty-three Avestan and Pahlavi codices acquired by Rasmus Kristian Rask (1787-1832) in Bombay, India, and Niels Ludvig Westergaard (1815-1878) in Persia, all originally de­posited in the library of the University of Copenhagen but later transferred to the Royal Library. They include some of the oldest and most valuable…

COFFEE (Ar. qahwa, Pers., qahva, etymology uncertain), a drink made by steeping in boiling water the dried, roasted, and ground berries (Pers., Ar. bonn) of the coffee tree (Coffea arabica); a related drink, sometimes confused with coffee in the early sources, is qešr, brewed from the husks of the coffee…

COFFEEHOUSE (qahva-ḵāna), a shop and meeting place where coffee (q.v.) is prepared and served. In Persia tea replaced coffee as the most popular beverage in the late 19th century (see Âčāy), but the term qahva-ḵāna continued to be used interchangeably with čāy-ḵāna for any establishment supplying tea, soft drinks, and…