Nowruz: The Persian New Year and the Spring Equinox
A Tehran apartment, 20 March 2024, 8:45 in the evening. The Tahvil, the astronomical moment of the spring equinox, is at 11:06. Around the Haft-sin table the family gathers: the grandmother, the parents, the children, an uncle who has driven in from Karaj. The seeb (apple) is shining; the sabzeh (sprouted lentils) is on a dish, three weeks old, the green stalks two inches high; the samanu (sweet wheat pudding) is in a small bowl, viscous and gold; the senjed (oleaster fruit), the serkeh (vinegar), the seer (garlic), and the somaq (sumac) complete the seven. There is a mirror. There are coins. There is a Divan of Hafez for the fal-e Hafez that will follow. There is a Quran and a Shahnameh in a place of honour. The family holds hands. The father says the Salaam Nowruz at the moment the clock ticks over. The grandmother kisses the youngest child. The mother begins to serve the sabzi polo with the fish. The new year has begun.
This is what Nowruz looks like in Tehran in the twenty-first century, and it is the same ceremony, with regional variations, in Kabul, in Dushanbe, in the Kurdish highlands, in the Azerbaijani republics, and in the Persian diaspora of Los Angeles, Toronto, Hamburg, and Sydney. It is also, in its underlying form, the same ceremony that the Achaemenid kings performed at Persepolis 2,500 years ago, and the same ceremony that the Sasanian kings performed at Ctesiphon 1,400 years ago. The continuity is one of the longest in the history of festivals.
The most thorough scholarly treatment in English is the late Mary Boyce’s chapter on the Zoroastrian calendar in A History of Zoroastrianism (vol. 1, 1975; vol. 2, 1982), together with the relevant entries in the Encyclopaedia Iranica. The wider context is in the Persian Culture and Society pillar.
What the festival is
Nowruz — literally, “New Day” — is the Persian New Year, celebrated on the day of the astronomical spring equinox, usually on 20 or 21 March. The moment of the Tahvil, the precise instant when the sun crosses the celestial equator moving north, is calculated by the Iranian astronomical tradition that descends from the Sasanian Zij (the astronomical tables) and from the medieval Islamic astronomical tradition. At the moment of the Tahvil the family gathers around the Haft-sin, exchanges the greetings of the new year, kisses, gives gifts, and reads from the Divan of Hafez in the practice known as fal-e Hafez, the omen of Hafez.
The festival is celebrated by perhaps 200–300 million people in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, the Kurdish regions, Azerbaijan, the Central Asian republics, and the diaspora. It was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009, in a joint nomination by Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — one of the largest and most representative UNESCO inscriptions to date, and a measure of the trans-national reach of the festival.
The Sizdah Bedar, the thirteenth day of the new year, is the final festival of the Nowruz celebration. The tradition, which is rooted in the older Zoroastrian belief that the number thirteen is unlucky, requires the family to spend the day outdoors, in the parks and the countryside, with the sabzeh of the Haft-sin, which is thrown into a stream or a field at the end of the day. The Sizdah Bedar is one of the most popular outdoor festivals of the Iranian world, and the parks of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and the other major cities are filled with families on the thirteenth day.
The Zoroastrian background
Nowruz has its roots in the Zoroastrian calendar, in which the first day of the first month of the year, Farvardin, fell on the day of the spring equinox and was dedicated to the Amesha Spenta of fire, of warmth, and of the cosmic order. The Zoroastrian calendar, in its Sasanian form, divided the year into twelve months of thirty days, with five intercalary days at the end, and the six Gahambars, the seasonal festivals, fell at fixed intervals through the year. Nowruz, the first day of Farvardin, was the most important of the Gahambars, and the celebration of the festival was the central ritual of the Zoroastrian year.
The Sasanian celebration of Nowruz was a major event of the imperial year. The Yazdegird calendar, the Sasanian calendar of 365 days, was the last major astronomical reform of the dynasty, traditionally ascribed to the reign of Yazdegerd III in 632 CE, and the Nawruz-e Sultani, the “Royal Nowruz,” the celebration of the festival at the Sasanian court, was one of the most elaborate ceremonies of the late ancient world. The Sasanian king received the golaba, the “flower-water,” in a golden cup, and the gifts of the court, the feasts, the music, the games, and the haoma ceremony were all part of the celebration. The Bundahishn, the Middle Persian text of the Zoroastrian tradition, mentions a Nawruz-e Ameghad, the “Nowruz of the Silent,” a period of purification at the turn of the year, although the specifics of a three-day fast and the meat prohibition are later elaborations and not firmly in the Sasanian sources.
The Achaemenid celebration of Nowruz is documented in the reliefs of Persepolis, which show the delegations of the subject peoples bringing their tribute to the king at the spring equinox. The Apadana staircase reliefs, in the standard reading, depict the Nowruz tribute ceremony, with the delegations from twenty-three subject peoples approaching the enthroned king. The visual evidence is consistent with a major spring festival in the Achaemenid period, although the exact nature of the festival is debated. The Persepolis Fortification Tablets, the administrative documents from the Persepolis economy in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, document the distribution of food, wine, and animals for the spring festival, and the documents are the most concrete evidence we have for the celebration.
The Haft-sin
The most distinctive feature of the modern Nowruz celebration is the Haft-sin, the “Seven S’s,” the table on which seven symbolic items, all beginning with the letter sin in Persian, are arranged. The seven items are: seeb, the apple, symbol of beauty and health; seer, the garlic, symbol of medicine and health; sabzeh, the sprouted wheat or lentil, symbol of rebirth; samanu, the sweet pudding of wheat, symbol of wealth and fertility; senjed, the oleaster fruit, symbol of love; serkeh, the vinegar, symbol of age and patience; and somaq (or sekkeh, a coin — sources differ on which item completes the seven). Additional items, including a mirror, painted eggs, a goldfish in a bowl, the Shahnameh, the Divan of Hafez, a copy of the Quran, candles, and coins, are also traditionally placed on the table.
The Haft-sin is a relatively modern elaboration. The older tradition, attested in the Sasanian and early Islamic periods, was the Haft-meva, the “Seven Fruits,” a mixture of seven dried fruits and nuts eaten at the moment of the Tahvil. The transition from the Haft-meva to the Haft-sin occurred gradually in the Safavid period, and the Haft-sin table as we know it is essentially a Qajar and Pahlavi-era development. The Haft-sin draws on a much older symbolic vocabulary from Zoroastrianism — each item is a reminder of the cosmic, ethical, and ritual order of the asha — but the specific seven-item table is recent.
Chaharshanbe Suri
The last Wednesday of the Persian year, the Chaharshanbe Suri, is the most popular Nowruz-related festival, and the practice of jumping over bonfires, the atash-gardan, is one of the most distinctive customs of the Iranian cultural world. The Chaharshanbe Suri is a pre-Islamic Zoroastrian practice, in which the fires of the old year were extinguished and re-lit, and the leaping over the flames was a symbolic act of purification, of the casting off of the sickness and the evil of the past year. The tradition of ghashogh-zani, the spoon-banging, in which the children and the youth go door to door banging on a pot and demanding treats, is another Chaharshanbe Suri custom. The tradition of fal-e Chaharshanbe, the omen of the last Wednesday, in which the names of the living are drawn on slips and hidden in a copy of the Divan of Hafez, is also part of the Chaharshanbe Suri observance.
The foods of Chaharshanbe Suri — the ash-e reshteh, the noodle and herb soup; the ajil, the mixture of nuts and dried fruits; the kuku sabzi, the herb kuku; the kebab; the sholeh zard, the saffron rice pudding; the samanu, the sweet wheat pudding; and the naan, the flat bread — are some of the most elaborate of the Persian cuisine. The ash-e reshteh is the most important, and the making of the ash, often a community event in which the women of a neighbourhood gather to cook and to share, is one of the great communal rituals of the Iranian world.
The Gahambars
The Nowruz festival was, in the Sasanian tradition, the first of six Gahambars, the seasonal festivals of the Zoroastrian year. The six Gahambars were the Maidyozarem, the mid-spring festival; the Maidyoshahem, the mid-summer festival; the Paitishahem, the harvest festival; the Ayathrem, the sowing festival; the Maidyarem, the mid-winter festival; and the Hamaspathmaidyem, the pre-Nowruz festival of the five intercalary days. The Gahambars were, and still are, occasions for the Zoroastrian community to gather, to perform the Yasna ritual, to share a meal of the seasonal foods, and to celebrate the cosmic order.
The six Gahambars were tied to the agricultural cycle of the Iranian plateau, and each Gahambar marked a specific stage in the cycle of the seasons. The Maidyozarem marked the sprouting of the winter wheat, the Maidyoshahem the ripening of the spring grain, the Paitishahem the harvesting of the grain, the Ayathrem the sowing of the winter wheat, the Maidyarem the gathering of the winter stores, and the Hamaspathmaidyem the pre-Nowruz preparation. The Gahambars, taken together, formed the structure of the Zoroastrian year, and the cycle of the Gahambars was the basis of the Sasanian calendar and the Persian tradition of the seasonal festivals.
Nowruz and Islam
The Arab conquest of the seventh century did not abolish the celebration of Nowruz, although the Islamic authorities were at first suspicious of the festival, which was associated with Zoroastrianism. The Sunni and Shia jurists debated the legality of the celebration, and the festival was, in some periods, suppressed or restricted. In general, however, the Islamic Persianate tradition preserved the celebration, and the Nowruz festival became, in the Islamic period, a celebration of the new year in the Persian, Turkish, Mongol, and Indian cultures. The Samanid, Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Ilkhanid, Timurid, and Safavid courts all celebrated Nowruz with great ceremony, and the Nawruz Khana, the hall of Nowruz in the imperial palaces, was a major feature of the Persian royal architecture.
The Mughal emperor Akbar, who ruled India from 1556 to 1605, made Nowruz a major festival of the Mughal court, and the Mughal tradition of the Nawruz, with the Dastarkhwan, the great feast laid out on the royal table, became one of the most elaborate celebrations of the imperial year. The Ottoman court, the Uzbek khanates, the Persian Qajar and Pahlavi courts, and the modern Islamic Republic of Iran have all celebrated Nowruz, and the festival has become, in the modern period, a major symbol of Iranian, Central Asian, and Kurdish cultural identity.
What we don’t know
The hardest question, in my view, is the question of continuity. The modern Nowruz, with its Haft-sin, its Chaharshanbe Suri, and its Sizdah Bedar, is a Qajar-and-Pahlavi-era elaboration of older Sasanian and Achaemenid practices, but the relationship between the modern festival and the Sasanian one is not straightforward. The Sasanian New Year was a court festival; the modern one is a household festival. The Sasanian New Year was Zoroastrian; the modern one is practised by Shia, Sunni, Zoroastrian, Christian, Jewish, and Baha’i Iranians. The Sasanian New Year was held on a specific date in a calendar that the modern Iranian calendar no longer uses. The continuity is real, but the festival has been transformed, and the transformation is part of the long history of the Iranian cultural world, not a corruption of an earlier form.