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CROESUS, last king of Lydia (r. ca. 560-546 b.c.e.) and brother-in-law of Astyages. When the Achaemenid Cyrus the Great (559-29 b.c.e.) de­feated Astyages in 549 Croesus found a casus belli against the Persians (Herodotus, 1.74-75). He made an alliance with Babylonia, Egypt, and Sparta against Persia, but, without waiting for…

CROSBY, OSCAR TERRY (born Ponchatoula, Loui­siana, 21 April 1861, d. Warrenton, Virginia, 2 Janu­ary 1947), collector of an important group of Khotanese texts. He began his career as an electrical engineer, having a particular interest in high-speed electric loco­motion. He became the first president of the Potomac Electric Power Company…

CROW, a bird of the family Corvidae, represented in Persia and Afghanistan by six genera (Garrulus, Pica, Nucifraga, Podoces, Pyrrhocorax, and espe­cially Corvus; Figure 1) including fourteen species, of which the jay (Garrulus glandarius) and Pleske’s ground jay (Podoces pleskei) occur only in Persia and the black­-throated jay (Garrulus lanceolatus)…

CROWN, (Pers. and Ar. tāj), royal and divine headdress. i. In the Median and Achaemenid periods. ii. From the Seleucids to the Islamic conquest. iii. On monuments from the Islamic conquest to the Mongol invasion. iv. Of Persian rulers from the Arab conquerors. v. In the Qajar and Pahlavi periods.

CROWN i. In the Median and Achaemenid periods In ancient Persia the crown occurred in a variety of forms. 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…

CROWN ii. From the Seleucids to the Islamic conquest In 312/11 B.C.E. Alexander’s general Seleucus I took control of Iran, Mesopotamia, much of Asia Minor, and northern Syria, which remained under Seleucid rule until the mid-2nd century B.C.E. There are few surviving representations of the headgear of the Seleucid monarchs…

CROWN iii. On monuments from the Islamic conquest to the Mongol invasion 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 (turban; see ʿamāma), and the qalansowa ṭawīla (tall conical hat). The last he…

CROWN iv. Of Persian rulers from the Arab conquerors Despite the collapse of the Persian empire in 30/651 and the abhorrence of imperial titles and regalia in early Islamic traditions (Madelung, p. 84), Omayyad and ʿAbbasid governors, as well as the rulers of Ṭabarestān, continued to employ on their coins…

CROWN JEWELS of Persia, 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. Approximately fifty of the larger gems are engraved with the names and dates of particular rulers. Although there are references to the dazzling…

CROWN PRINCE, the officially recognized heir apparent to the throne. The position of crown prince was attested in the Median and early Achaemenid periods (Herodotus, 1.74: Astyages, 1.208: Cambyses II), when kingship was becoming institutionalized, under the influence of Mesopotamian, Urartian, and Elamite traditions. The Avestan term vīsō puθra (AirWb.,…

CROWN v. In the Qajar and Pahlavi periods When he regained his freedom after the death of Karīm Khan Zand (1163-93/1750-79) Āḡā Moḥammad Khan Qājār returned hastily to his tribe and supporters in northern Persia. He declared himself shah and began the long process of retaking both the territory and the…

CROYANCES ET COUTUMES PERSANES, by the French orientalist Henri Massé (q.v., 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. Massé believed that the rapid modernization of Persia was…

CRUSADES, 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…

CRYSTAL (bolūr “crystal, rock crystal”; see crystal, rock; also ābgīna, lit. “like water”; šīša “glass”), 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…