Nowruz Mobarak

The Haft Sin

The Ancient Persian New Year, Nowruz, is not just an Iranian holiday marking the Spring Equinox, but one celebrated by a broad swath of countries from the Balkans to Central Asia. I have dealt with many aspects of the tradition in my previous posts through the years, so I will refer you to those posts for for details of the traditional feast.

Chaharshanbe Suri

Fire-jumping (Wikipedia)

Tonight is the eve of the Wednesday before Nowruz, known as Chaharshanbe Suri, "Red Wednesday," an ancient Iranian fire festival marking the waning days of the old year. Celebrated in the same broad areas historically influenced by Persian culture, from Turkey and Kurdistan to India and Central Asia. Celebrations include fire-jumping. Greetings to all who celebrate, as well as early Nowruz wishes a few days early.

Shab-e Yalda

Tonight is the longest night of the year. The Winter Solstice occurs at 5:44 AM tomorrow. That means tonight is Shab-e Yalda, the night of Yalda, the ancient Persian solstice celebration of the birth of the solar divinity Mithra, said to have been born of a virgin at dawn on the longest night of the year. (Yalda is the Aramaic word for birth.) After the Roman Army spread the veneration of Mihra in the West, the solstice became the Roman feast of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, when the sun begins it return to the north and the days begin to lengthen.

Traditional foods

Even in the era of the Islamic Republic, Yalda remains a popular seasonal feast, alongside Nowruz in the spring, in areas influenced by Persian culture: Iran, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and among Zoroastrians worldwide.

Yalda greetings to all who celebrate, as the holiday season gets underway.

Aiming for the PETA Vote? Rouhani Replaces Nowruz Goldfish with an Orange

Traditionally the Persian New Year Nowruz is celebrated with the Haft Sin table of seven items beginning with the letter "s," plus other traditional items such as the poetry of Hafiz and a live goldfish in a bowl. The goldfish are usually released into the wild at the end of the feast, where they are unlikely to live long. Many have called for a symbolic substitute, such as using a plastic fish.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's Nowruz greetings on Twitter included a photo of himself standing next to a Haft Sin table adorned with a goldfish bowl containing what appears to be an orange in place of the goldfish.

On her Twitter feed, Vice President Massoumeh Ebtikar also called attention to the substitution, and to the fact that the bowl contains very little water.
Rouhani will be eligible for a second term in the 2017 Presidential elections.  Is he vying for the PETA and Save Water vote?

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Nowruz Greetings

Nowruz greetings to all readers who celebrate the ancient Persian new year, Iranians, Kurds, Central Asians, Turks, and others.

Today is Sham al-Nassim

Today is Sham al-Nassim, the ancient Egyptian spring holiday celebrated on the Monday following Coptic Easter Sunday. It is not a Christian holiday; its origins are said to be with the Ancient Egyptian Shemu or spring holiday, later in the Christian period localized around Easter; Muslims celebrate equally with Christians and, until their exodus in the Nasser era, Egyptian Jews also participated. Like Nowruz in the Irano-Turkic worlds, it's an opportunity to cerebrate the arrival of spring.

It's usually said that only two Egyptian holidays date back to the days of the pharaohs:  Sham al-Nassim and Wafa' al-Nil in mid-August, which marks the Nile flood (though the Aswan High Dam ended the annual inundation in the 1960s.) Both, like so much of Egyptian history, center on the Nile. On Sham al-Nassim Egyptians picnic on the river, stroll in parks, gardens, or the zoo, and eat seasonal foods: a dried salty fish called fassikh, green onions, lettuce, tirmis (lupinis), and (a borrowing from Easter? Or vice-versa?) they dye colored eggs. (See the photos below.) Even the foods may be ancient. Supposedly Plutarch somewhere wrote that the Ancient Egyptians had a spring holiday involving dried fish, lettuce, and onions, but I've never found a citation to confirm that story, beloved of Egyptian websites, even government ones.

Sham al-Nissim delicacies (Al Kahira-Cairo-LeCaire)

Even the name is interesting. In Arabic sham al-nassim means "smelling the breezes," a delightful description of a spring day on the river. But if it is truly a descendant of Shemu, that Ancient Egyptian word meant "harvest." In Ancient Egypt, the harvest was not in the fall as in most agricultural societies; it was in spring and summer, before the Nile rises in August. Shemu is presumably the origin of the Coptic word for "summer," Shom, and despite the appropriate "smelling the breezes" meaning in Arabic, likely the origin of the Sham part of Sham al-Nassim. This should of course in no way deter anyone from using the day to smell the breezes.

Noted Belatedly: Obama Used "Persian Gulf" in Nowruz Greeting

I overlooked a subtle message in President Obama's Nowruz message to Iran the other day.

I've discussed on earlier occasions (here and here and here  and here and here) what I have called "the  [Insert Name Here] Gulf problem which has led to Iran protesting anyone referring to "the Arab Gulf,," or even, in the case of Google Maps, which tried to avoid the issue by labeling it "the Gulf," a form I sometimes use on this blog, complaining about that, as well as the airline Gulf Air. But one of the links above is to a case of a Saudi case which went the other way, in which a teacher got in trouble for using "Persian Gulf." In the Middle East Journal, I allow either, since I've learned Iranian authors will protest if you change it to just "the Gulf."

It got past me until now that in Obama's Nowruz message urging Iran to agree to a nuclear deal, he specifically appealed to Iranians "from the coasts of the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf."
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Nowruz 2015

This evening the sun will pass the vernal equinox, bringing a much-awaited Spring (at least for us in the winter-bound US). That also means it's Nowruz, usually defined as Persian or Iranian New Year, but as I noted some years back:

It's a pretty broad brush: Iranians, of course, and Kurds, Afghans, many Turks, a lot of other folks where greater Persian civilization once held sway up into Central Asia, and members of a number of religions — Iranians of all varieties, but also Parsees (Zoroastrians) everywhere (who invented the holiday), Baha'is, Syrian ‘Alawites, Turkish Alevis, Albanians of the Bektashi Sufi order (thank you, Wikipedia, I didn't know about that one) — and doubtless many I'm leaving out.

To all those folks, Nowruz Mobarak,  and for more background see my earlier post on the Haft Sin (the "seven S's"), which Michelle Obama explained in the White House's early Nowruz celebration.

Haft Sin Table

White House Marks Nowruz Early

Ten days early, the White House has celebrated Nowruz.

Note midway through, the First Lady (or her speechwriter) explains the haft sin to a crowd that presumably already knew what it was.

I wonder if the early marking of Nowruz had anything to do with the Republican letter to Iran?

Nowruz Greetings

Nowruz greetings to all who are celebrating! The spring equinox is today. I've gone into various aspects of Nowruz in my Nowruz posts for previous years, explaining the traditions associated with the ancient Persian New Year, which is celebrated far beyond the borders of Iran: In Iranian-influenced areas well up into Central Asia on the one side, in Turkey and parts of the Balkans on the other; also among Kurds, Syrian Alawites and others in the Middle East, as well as by followers of the Zoroastrian and Baha'i faiths regardless of ethnic origin, and of course the broad Iranian diaspora. Nowruz means "New Day," a fine note to sound for spring, so a happy Nowruz to all.

Yalda and the Winter Solstice

Most everyone who has had any exposure to Iranian, Kurdish, Turkish, and Central Asian cultures or to adherents of the Zoroastrian and Baha'i faiths knows about Nowruz/New Year's/the Spring Equinox in March. Those outside the Irano-Persian cultural sphere may be less familiar with the Winter Solstice festival. As I noted last year,

For Iranan readers, the Iranian Diaspora and those from countries whose cultural traditions derive from Iran (in Central Asia and the Caucasus), greetings for Yalda, or Shab-e Yalda (شب یلدا, Yalda Night) the ancient Iranian celebration of the Winter Solstice. Originally marking the Birth of Mithra (that is, the annual "rebirth" of the sun at the solstice), it survives, like Nowruz in the spring, as a seasonal celebration of winter, marked by pomegranates, watermelon, and other traditional foods.

I ended last year's post with "Take that, Mayans." (Some of you may have already forgotten that the Mayan Calendar, and the world with it, ended a year ago, although personally I hardly noticed.)

Saturday is the solstice, so Yalda greetings to those who mark it.

The Wikipedia article offers the following:

Yalda (Persian: یلدا‎), Shab-e Yalda (Persian: شب یلدا‎), "Night of Birth", or Zayeshmehr (Persian: زایش مهر‎) "Birth of Mithra", or Shab-e Chelleh (Persian: شب چلّه‎, Azerbaijani: چیلله گئجه‌سی; lit. "Night of Forty") is the Persian winter solstice celebration which has been popular since ancient times. Yalda is celebrated on the Northern Hemisphere's longest night of the year, that is, on the eve of the Winter Solstice. Depending on the shift of the calendar, Yalda is celebrated on or around December 20 or 21 each year.

Yalda has a history as long as the religion of Mithraism. The Mithraists believed that this night is the night of the birth of Mithra, Persian angel of light and truth. At the morning of the longest night of the year the Mithra was born.

Following the fall of the Sassanid Empire and the subsequent rise of Islam in Persia/Iran, the religious significance of the event was lost, and like other Zoroastrian festivals, Yalda became a social occasion when family and close friends would get together. Nonetheless, the obligatory serving of fresh fruit during mid-winter is reminiscent of the ancient customs of invoking the divinities to request protection of the winter crop.

I think that may be a little confused since Zoroastrianism is much older than Mithraism, and the feast relates to both faiths.

The traditional fruits:

 The traditional watermelon:

 The Mithra imagery:

Neirouz: Coptic New Year, 1730

Long before September 11, 2001, September 11 marked a less grim date: new year in the Coptic calendar. This is sometimes referred to as "Egyptian New Year" because the Coptic calendar, being solar, has long been used by Muslim Egyptians for agricultural purposes; the ancient Egyptian new year began after the height of the Nile flood, usually in August; the later Coptic calendar descends from the ancient one, and the first of the month of the Coptic month of Tut today coincides with September 11 in the Gregorian calendar. (And the month of Tut echoes the ancient Egyptian name Thoth, for the god of the same name.) Today marks the first day of the Year of the Martyrs 1730 (the Coptic calendar dates from the persecutions of Diocletian, not from the birth of Christ).

For unclear reasons, Coptic New Year is known as Neirouz, which seems to echo the Persian Nowruz which is in the spring. Some think an ancient "feast of the rivers" (Ni-Yarouou) somehow was conflated after the Arab conquest with the Persian word. Whatever the origin, a happy New Year to Copts (and those living by the Egyptian agricultural year).

It is also the Ethiopian New Year, by the way.

Thoughts for Nowruz: The Haft Sin Table, and Time for a New Day?

Spring begins today, and the ancient spring/New Year's festival of Nowruz, common to Iran and to peoples whose culture derives from Ancient Persia one way or another — Iranians and Kurds and Turks and Azeris and Afghans, a great many Central Asians, some Balkan Muslims, Syrian Alawites and Turkish Alevis, the diasporas of all of the above, and Zoroastrians and Baha'is wherever they reside — it is the New Year (in the Iranian Solar reckoning, 1392). Today is the actual equinox, when many will celebrate; tomorrow is officially the first of Farvardin in the Persian calendar, and thus the "official" date.

The traditional Haft Sin table, where the table is spread with seven items starting with the letter "s" (sin) has its roots in an earlier Haft chin of pre-Islamic times. There is an older version, which includes items such as a mirror and a fish in water (still used by Zoroastrians and others: left), and a newer version with mostly seeds and foodstuffs, more common today (below right).

But given the growing confrontation with Iran over its alleged nuclear program, the coincidence of the tenth annversary of the war with Iraq (when a war over a nonexistent WMD capability led to a decade of disorder), and President Obama's visit to Israel (main cheerleader for pressure on Iran), I thought it might be time for a simple reminder: Nowruz, though usually translated as, and equivalent to, "New Year," does not in fact mean "New Year": it literally means "New Day."

To Americans, Israelis, Iranians and all who mark Nowruz, Nowruz Mobarak: may all of us find in this year a New Day.

Obama's Nowruz Greetings

It's the eve of Nowruz (actually, the astronomical solace is tomorrow, but the first of Farvardin, the Persian Calendar  New Year, is March 21, so when it's celebrated may depend on the country: it's not just Iran but Kurdistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, much of Central Asia, Zoroastrians and Baha'i everywhere, etc.) President Obama, ironically on the eve of his trip to Israel, recorded his Nowruz greetings to Iranians::

I'll post my own in due time.

Chaharshanbe Suri

This evening and tomorrow Iranians, and those whose heritage shares in Iranian cultural traditions from the Middle East to Central Asia, will celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri, the eve of the "Red Wednesday" that precedes Nowruz, the ancient Persian New Year, and begins on the previous Tuesday evening.  [Clarification: this was based on dating Nowruz on March 20 this year, which some are claiming.. Those celebrating Nowruz on the 21st will celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri next week.] Bonfires are lit and celebrations continue into the night; the feast is a survival of a pre-Islamic Zoroastrian celebration of the last week of the year, and honored the souls of the dead and the approach of spring.

Since Nowruz falls on a Wednesday this year, Chaharshanbe Suri begins a full week ahead. It is also a time for spring cleaning. Though not celebrated as far afield as Nowruz (which extends to the Balkans), the fire festival is celebrated in Iran, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and parts of Central Asia that are culturally in the Iranian sphere.

There were reports in 2010 that Ayatollah Khamene'i had banned celebrations of Chaharshanbe Suri, though if true that may have been to prevent public gatherings in that first spring after the post-election revolts of 2009. Though not essentially a religious feast in its present form, and celebrated by Christian and Jewish and Zoroastrian Iranians as well as Muslims, the presence of the bonfires may evoke Zoroastrian fire rituals for some conservative Muslim clerics.

Yalda Greetings

For Iranan readers, the Iranian Diaspora and those from countries whose cultural traditions derive from Iran (in Central Asia and the Caucasus), greetings for Yalda, or Shab-e Yalda (شب یلدا, Yalda Night) the ancient Iranian celebration of the Winter Solstice. Originally marking the Birth of Mithra (that is, the annual "rebirth" of the sun at the solstice), it survives, like Nowruz in the spring, as a seasonal celebration of winter, marked by pomegranates, watermelon, and other traditional foods.

Take that, Mayans!

Neyrouz (Coptic New Year) 1729

For Coptic readers, and members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Churches as well, happy new year. Besides September 11's obvious meaning for so many of us, it also marks the new year in these traditions. Known in Coptic tradition as Neyrouz (said to be a conflation of an ancient Egyptian word with Persian Nowruz, which of course is in the spring), the calendar also dates from the persecutions of Diocletian, AD 284, so that this is Year of the Martyrs 1729.

Haft Sin

A Haft Sin table setting to mark Nowruz. Haft Sin — seven items beginning with "s" — is one of the traditions of Nowruz; Wikipedia offers an account here.

Nowruz Mobarak

Although most of us think of the spring equinox as March 21, this year the astronomical equinox is at 1:14 AM Eastern Daylight Time Tuesday morning. That also makes it Nowruz. I've gone into various aspects of Nowruz in my Nowruz posts for previous years, so let's just say that while it is, of course, the ancient Persian New Year, it is celebrated far beyond the borders of Iran: In Iranian-influenced areas well up into Central Asia on the one side, in Turkey and parts of the Balkans on the other; also among Kurds, Syrian Alawites and others in the Middle East, as well as members of the Zoroastrian and Baha'i faiths everywhere, and of course the broad Iranian diaspora. Nowruz means "New Day," a fine note to sound for spring, so a happy Nowruz to all.

Chahar-Shanbe Suri

Iran is reporting one dead and others injured in the fire celebrations of Chahar-Shanbe Suri, the "Red Wednesday" celebration on the eve of the last Wednesday of the old Persian year. The ancient Persian celebration,k which precedes Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is closely watched by the clerical regime, both for the feast's pre-Islamic Persian content and Zoroastrian echoes, and as a possible outlet for political protest.

Greetings to Iranians and all who celebrate Iranian culture everywhere for Chahar-Shanbe Suri and the approach of Nowruz.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/report-one-killed-74-injured-during-observance-of-iranian-annual-fire-festival/2012/03/13/gIQAFIL59R_story.html