Welcome to the new face of the Nizami Ganjavi Library blog!
It’s been a long time since our last post, but going forward we hope to use this site more actively to keep our visitors up to date on the Library’s holdings, events, and related activities in Oxford and beyond.
Given the theme of renewal, it seems only fitting that the first post on our new site would revolve around the theme of Nowruz — the Persian New Year and a spring festival celebrated across much of Eurasia — which is also, incidentally, the theme for our book display for the month of March 2023!
What is Nowruz?
Nowruz is, at its core, a celebration of spring and – more specifically – of the spring equinox. In the Iranian calendar, which is a solar calendar, this is also the first day of the first month, فروردین Farvardīn, making Nowruz the Iranian New Year celebration.
While Nowruz is celebrated by numerous groups which do not make use of the Iranian calendar, the name Nowruz and certain traditions associated with it betray a common origin somewhere in the distant, pre-Islamic past of greater Iran.
Though the ultimate origins of the holiday are debated, the Persian epic poem, the شاهنامه Šāhnāma of Firdawsī, tells of how the legendary king Jamšēd saved the world from an endless winter by building a gold and bejewelled throne which, when raised up towards the sky, shone like the sun and banished the darkness, saving humanity. In commemoration of this “New Day”, the Iranians celebrate Nowruz < Persian نو naw “new” + روز rōz “day”.
One of the Library’s many versions of the Šāhnāma — Dick Davis’ English translation, Shahnameh: the Persian book of kings (New York/London: Penguin, 2007) can be found on our book dispaly this month.
Nowruz is celebrated in different cultures across Eurasia, so it’s no surprise that there are different ways to render/spell/pronounce the name of the holiday. One book on our display, Fatih Köse’s Osmanlı Devletinde Nevrûz (İstanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat, 2007) relates how Nowruz celebrations were once common among certain classes and populations within the Ottoman Empire, even if they are primarily associated with Kurds in Turkey today.
Here are some other versions of the name for this holiday in languages you may come across.
| name | language(s) | |
|---|---|---|
| Navrez | Crimean Tatar | |
| Neowrez | Mazandarani | |
| Nevruz | Albanian, Turkish | |
| Newroz | Kurmanji, Zazaki | |
| Novruz | Azerbaijani | |
| Nowruz | Turkmen | |
| Nûroj | Kurmanj (rare/learned) | |
| Навруз | Navruz | Nogay, Russian |
| Науруз | Nauruz | Bashkir |
| Наурыз | Nauryz | Kazakh |
| Нәүрүз | Näwrüz | Volga Tatar |
| Нооруз | Nooruz | Kyrgyz |
| نەورۆز | Newroz | Sorani |
| نورۇز | Noruz | Uyghur |
| نوروز | Nowruz | Gilaki, Iranian Persian |
| Nawrōz | Balochi, Dari, Pashto | |
| نوورځ | Nawwraź | Pashto (rare/learned) |
The Nizami Ganjavi Haft-Sin Table
The Haft-Sin (“Seven S’s”) Table — سفرهای هفت سین Sofre-ye Haft-Sin (Sufra-yi Haft-sīn) in Persian — is a fixture of most Iranian households during the Nowruz season, much the same way as a Christmas tree or Chanukkiah. The table is decorated with seven items, each starting with the letter س S in Persian.
In many regions, Nowruz traditions involve the number seven. Exactly why this is in uncertain, but it likely derives from the importance of the number in the Zoroastrian tradition.
In the Avesta, the most holy text of the Zoroastrian religion, Aməša Spəṇta “The Eternal Holies” are seven emanations of the supreme god, Ahura Mazdā, personified in the form of seven divine beings, each representing one of the seven eternal aspects of creation. You can read about this yourselves in an original-language copy of a portion of the Avesta in the form of William A. V. Jackson’s Avesta Reader (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1893), currently adorning our Nowruz dispay in the NGL.
The seven items on a Haft-Sin table sometimes vary, but the standard seven are, along with the things they are often said to represent:
| Persian | translation | symbolic meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| سیب | sib (sēb) | apple | beauty |
| سیر | sir (sīr) | garlic | health |
| سنجد | senjed (sinjid) | oleaster | love |
| سمنو | samanu (samanū) | malted wheat pudding | strength |
| سماق | somāgh (sumāq) | sumac | the sun |
| سرکه | sirke (sirka) | vinegar | patience |
| سبزه | sabze (sabza) | greens | rebirth |
Additional items beginning with س S that are sometimes used alongside or instead of the above are:
| Persian | translation | symbolic meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| سکه | sekke (sikka) | coin | prosperity |
| ساعت | sāʿat | clock | time |
| سنبل | sonbol (sunbul) | hyacinth | spring |
Other items are often placed on the Haft Sin table for their symbolic significance regardless of the letter they start with:
| Persian | translation | symbolic meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| آینه | āyine (āyina) | mirror | introspection |
| شمع | shame’ (šam‘) | candle | light |
| تخم مرغ رنگی | tokhm-e morgh rangi (tuxm-i murğ rangī) | red painted egg | fertility |
| نارنج | nārenj (nārinj) | orange in a bowl of water | the earth |
| شیرینی | shirini (šīrīnī) | sweets | pleasure |
| اسفند* | esfand (isfand) | seeds of Ruda graveolens (rue) | banishing evil |
| شیر | shir (šīr) | milk | purity |
| بیدمشک | bid-meshk (bēd-mišk) | branch of a Salix aegyptiaca (musk willow) | nature |
| **کتاب | ketāb (kitab) | book | wisdom |
(* Indeed, in some dialects and in older varieties of Persian, this word was pronounced سفند sifand or سپند sipand and would have therefore begun with س S.)
(** The book in question is traditionally one of four: the Qur’ān, the Avesta, the Šāhnāma, or the Dīvān of the poet Ḥāfiẓ of Shiraz. For our display at the NGL, we’ve chosen a version of the دیوان حافظ شیرازی Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ-i Šīrāzī — one of many available in our collections!)
Haft-Sin tables are nevertheless as varied as the people who make them, and no book demonstrates this better than Maryam Khosrowshahi’s Sofreh: the art of Persian celebration (London: ACC Art Books, 2014), also on our book display.
In the two-volume set, you’ll find superbly decorated tables, not only for Nowruz but for other Persian celebrations.
Speaking of which, you can learn more about traditional Persian holidays from another of our holdings on display this month, Aly Mazahéri‘s Le Nowroûz et le Mihrikân (Paris: Association des disciples d’Aly Mazahéri, 1992).
Since Nowruz is such a big part of the culture of so many regions within the NGL’s purview, we’ve decided to celebrate this year by adorning our Nowruz book display with a traditional Haft-Sin table!
The board shows even more information about Nowruz traditions from around Eurasia, so don’t forget to stop by before the end of March and see how many of the items above you can spot on our display.