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Authors: Ben K. <benk@tilde.team>
Date: 2021-03-21
Today is the first day of the Iranian calendar, which marks the beginning of the new year. (On this particular calendar, the year 1400.) It's one of the biggest holidays in Iran, so celebrations had already started prior to the date, and yesterday was also one of the main events because it was the moment of the Vernal Equinox, which determines when the new year will start. (The following day becomes the 1st of Farvardin.)
This is a nice a little holiday that celebrates springtime primarily, and I enjoy it every year, though this year it is harder being away from family and also still in a COVID-19 situation. We basically just stayed home and watched movies. Celebrations are still ongoing, of course, as I have my window open now and can hear festive music being played outside.
I decided to write about this today in part because I wanted to do a post about something Iran-related. When I was checking Gemini this morning, I noticed that the main gmisub feed is down, so I turned to my old staple Spacewalk for some new content. In doing so, I ran across Nader Rad's capsule (nader.pm), which I must say is very nice. I hadn't noticed it before because it's not in the format that gmisub uses, so it wasn't on my feed.
Nader had written to me before after hearing me talk about Iran on my gemcast, which I thought was really nice of him. So far he's the first Iranian I've come across on Gemini, and hopefully not the last since Gemini supports Unicode and is an international community. One thing that jumped out at me this time that I hadn't noticed before is the name "Rad", and I was eager to share that with my readers. However, as I looked through Nader's site, I started to notice that he's hiding the fact that he's Iranian.
Now, I don't mean people on Gemini or their websites have to say where they are from (of course not!), but on the other hand, his site seems very focused on his work, which it would be nice to know a little bit of what is relevant in his background. On his "about" page, he makes this cryptic statement:
I've written about 50 books in my mother tongue, many of them related to project management.
So he even has a large repertoire of books in his language, but aside from mentioning the books and the language, he otherwise gives no more relevant information. The page does partly feature his personal life, backgrond, and interests, so leaving out the fact that he's Iranian is a massive hole.
The quesiton is, why? I can't pretend to guess exactly what reason there would be to omit such information, but it seems like a pretty big deal to me. In my opinion, people shouldn't feel ashamed or pressured not to mention things like that... things that are definitely not private and perfectly natural.
Anyhow, that made me wonder what I should do. Should I mention his Persian name, should I not mention it? Well, I don't know, but seeing as it's Nowruz I just decided to go ahead and write this post. First and foremost to congratulate him as well as everyone else in the world on this occasion, and also to geek out about my specialty, which is Persian language:
In today's Persian, the word "rād" is no longer in use. It's actually an ancient/archaic word. In Middle Persian (also known as "Pahlavi"), the word "rādīh" existed, meaning "generosity". (I know this because I saw it in a Middle Persian text.) The word is also constructured like "generosity", so you basically have to remove the -ity and you get "generous", and so "rād" should mean generous. In my opinion, it's a very cool name.
I had a professor once whose name was "Rādmard", where the word "mard" means "man". Basically it's the same thing, but something like "Generousman". The word "mard" shares its root with the word "mortal", i.e. human. Of course like the word "man" in English, it today connotes the male gender, and also in the traditional patriarchal culture can connote concepts like honor and good character. So that name in particular always appealed to me because of how it carries prestige and comes from ancient roots. (Granted, so many words have ancient roots anyway.)
Speaking of ancient stuff, Nowruz is also ancient, although the exact form of the holiday has evolved over time until today. Nowruz today in Iran is fairly formalized with specific rituals like creating an arrangement with specific symbolic items (called "sofreye haft sin"), a practice which is said to be ancient in folklore, but seems not to have existed for more than two centuries or so going back to the Qajar dynasty. People who celebrate Nowruz outside of modern Iran that had the holiday from an earlier time period don't typically have such practices.
In fact, Nowruz itself wasn't always in the spring, but used to be a separate celebration observed based on the calendar date (1 Farvardin), which in previous versions of the Iranian calendar used to occur at another time of year, in the summer. This may have just been due to calendar drift (I'm not sure), but I don't think there's historical evidence the the first or original Nowruz celebrations were held specifically on the Vernal Equinox, or perhaps even the Spring. The Shahnameh, for example, which is a collection of Iranian myths featuring some ancient stories, gives an (obviously fictional) account of Nowruz's origin, not mentioning anything to do with Spring. Of course, that story would not have reflected the true historical origin of the holiday.
So at least for a time, Iranians in ancient times had two different holidays, Nowruz (special/holy calendar date), and Vahārjashn ("Spring Celebration") going on in different months. Ostensibly the two were merged together later on after calendar reform. Possibly they used to be one and split apart, so maybe they were being brought back together, but I guess we can only speculate about that.
One of the oldest and most universal practices of Nowruz, observed even outside of Iran, is the making of a dessert called "samanu", which is made from young tender wheat grass. I had samanu every year in Tajikistan where it is home made from the natural ingredients, and it is the most delicious thing and the highlight of the holiday. There's really nothing else important about Nowruz besides this and otherwise enjoying the time with your family in the pleasant weather. Unfortunately, the tradition of samanu has become very weakened and watered down in Iran.
I suppose because Iranian society has evolved in modernity, it's getting more rare for people to make real samanu at home, and people still have the tradition of gathering the grass, but they think it's just a symbol for their display, and then they throw it out after. The samanu now can be bought from the store, and it's bad. In general, I can say that I have not ever had good samanu in Iran, because they didn't make it at home or in the way that it's made in Tajikistan. Too bad!
It makes me feel like Nowruz in Iran is not real or ancient Nowruz, but it's just something just for show, or otherwise artificial that the society goes through every year because they like to show it off or talk about it, but it lacks the organic, natural feel of the humble Nowruz in Central Asia or elsewhere in the world. For me, it's like the quality of the holiday is linked to the quality of the samanu.
Anyway, this post has gotten quite long enough, but I encourage all the readers out there in Gemini space to take this occasion to look up some articles about the holiday. See some pictures, maybe watch videos. Try to get a feel for it if you're not already familiar with it, because it's one of the biggest holidays in the world. The only way you could not know about it is if it's being hidden from you!