Table of Contents
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CEREALS
Cross-Reference
See under individual cereals.
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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.
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ČERKES
Cross-Reference
See ČARKAS.
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CERULLI, Enrico
Filippo Bertotti
(born Naples, 15 February 1898; died 1988), Italian orientalist and diplomat.
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CERVIDAE
Cross-Reference
See ĀHŪ.
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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.
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ČEŠTĪYA
Gerhard Böwering
the name of an influential Sufi order in India, derived from the name of the village of Češt.
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CHAARENE
Rüdiger Schmitt
(Gk. Chaarēnḗ), in Achaemenid times one of the easternmost Iranian provinces and the one closest to India.
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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.
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CHALAVID DYNASTY
Cross-Reference
See ĀL-E AFRĀSĪĀB.
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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.
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CHALDEANS
Muhammad Dandamayev
(Kaldu), West Semitic tribes of southern Babylonia attested in Assyrian texts from the early 9th century B.C.
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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.
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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.
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CHAMBERLAIN
Cross-Reference
See ḤĀJEB.
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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.
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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.
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CHARAX
A. Shapur Shahbazi
town in the Seleucid and Parthian province of Rhagiana, the area around modern Ray.
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CHARCOAL
Willem Floor
carbonized wood and other vegetal material, an important household and industrial fuel in Persia and Afghanistan.
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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.
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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.
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CHARIOT
William W. Malandra
chariots in ancient Iran were light horse-drawn, two-wheeled vehicles designed for speed and maneuverability in battle and races.
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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.
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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.
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CHARON OF LAMPSACUS
Rüdiger Schmitt
Greek historiographer, son of Pythocles or Pythes.
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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.
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CHASE
Cross-Reference
See HUNTING IN IRAN.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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CHESS
Bo Utas, Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī
a board game.
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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.
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CH’IEN HAN SHU
Edwin G. Pulleyblank
(Qian Han shu) “History of the Former Han Dynasty,” a historical work which includes information on Iran.
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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.
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CHILDREN
Multiple Authors
This series of articles covers children and child-rearing in Iran and Iranian lands.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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CHINESE TURKESTAN
Multiple Authors
(Sinkiang, Xinjiang), IRANIAN ELEMENTS IN.
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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.
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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.
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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.