An Iranian National Nature Day, locally known as ‘Sizdah Be-dar’, is held on the 13th day of Farvardin (the first month of the Iranian calendar) to bid farewell to the Nowruz holidays.
The celebration of Nowruz needs a happy ending to make it perfect, so on the last day of this celebration people go outdoors to celebrate the end of the Nowruz holidays.
On the 13th day of Farvardin, which falls on April 2 in normal years and April 1 in leap years, every Iranian people try to spend and enjoy this day in the best possible way.
‘Sizdah Be-dar’ is known on the Iranian calendar as Nature Day and is one of the official holidays.
Tens of millions of people will mark the 13th day of the Persian New Year or Nowruz, leaving their houses to picnic in parks and countryside all over the world. The occasion has deep roots in Iranian history.
As in many other cultures, the number thirteen is unlucky in the Iranian tradition. Iranians believe that by going outdoors, they welcome the spring, and leave behind all the bad luck associated with the number thirteen.
Like many Iranian celebrations, ‘Sizdah Be-dar’ has its own customs.
On the eve of ‘Sizdah Be-dar’, many are thinking about choosing an appropriate place to spend the day. Some choose parks, some go to the countryside and others come together in a garden to celebrate the day. Usually, several families plan to gather in a place to spend the day outdoors. It is believed that joy and laughter clean the mind from all evil thoughts, and a picnic is usually a festive, happy event.
Before leaving the house, they disassemble the Sofreh-ye Haft Sin, the centerpiece of Nowruz, a special table with seven foods or items beginning with the letter ‘S’ in Persian.
The Sabzeh (green sprouts have grown especially for Nowruz and placed on the Haft Sin) is taken and thrown into a flowing stream of water, accompanied by a wish that any misfortune is washed away for the coming year.
Unmarried girls pray for good fortune and success in finding a husband by knotting blades of grass in the fields as a tradition to mark ‘Sizdah Be-dar’. The knotting of the grass represents love and the bondage of a man and a woman.
People spend the day playing traditional games, singing, dancing, listening to music, chatting, or simply resting along the banks of the river. The joy of the day is supposed to ward off an evil that the unlucky number thirteen might bring along with it.
All kinds of food and delicacies are prepared with tea, local drinks, fruits, bread, cheese, and fresh herbs, and noodle soup called ‘ash-e reshteh’ are favorites.
‘Kahoo Sekanjabin’ is one of the special crisp prepared for this special day. ‘Sekanjabin’ is a drink made using vinegar and honey which is used with lettuce.
The lie of the Thirteen is the Persian version of the prank-playing April Fools’ Day which is observed on the day of ‘Sizdah Be-dar’. Pranks have reportedly been played on this holiday since 536 BC in the Achaemenid Empire.
‘Sizdah Be-dar’ is celebrated by all. It marks the end of the Nowruz festivities and ends with the setting of the sun. Schools and offices re-open the following day, and life resumes, leaving behind the previous year’s bad occurrences, with a new and positive outlook for the coming year. / MNA/
The Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) has been honored by the Henry Davison Award, a prestigious international prize intended to recognize outstanding service in improving the lives of vulnerable people by mobilizing the power of humanity.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) will present the award to the IRCS during the 23rd session of the General Assembly, which is to be held in Geneva in the month of June.
The IRCS had received the award in 2005 for its philanthropic activities to relieve survivors of a strong earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale that struck the southeastern city of Bam on December 26, 2003.
It is considered one of the deadliest and most tragic quakes that have jolted Iran as it claimed at least 26,000 lives. Some figures even suggest that the fatalities reach some 43,000.
President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Francesco Rocca, has appreciated the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) as one of the strongest communities in the world.
At present, the Iranian Red Crescent Society provides medical services to people in 13 Asian, African, and Latin American countries.
Currently, some 14 medical facilities are offering humanitarian, relief, and health services to the deprived people in 13 countries, including Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Bolivia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Congo, Kenya, Lebanon, Mali, Niger, and Ecuador. / T.T/
Iran’s export of technical and engineering services rose 400 percent in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20), from its previous year, the head of Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) announced.
Alireza Peyman-Pak put the value of Iran’s technical, engineering exports at over $2.3 billion in the past year, and said that the exports were made to 18 countries.
He said that the export of technical and engineering services is planned to surpass $4 billion in the present year.
Head of Iran’s Planning and Budget Organization (PBO) has said that many of the countries in the region are seeking the Islamic Republic’s engineering and technical services and the country can provide them with such services.
“The 13th government’s major policy is to expand presence in target markets, and many countries in the region are looking for our engineering and industrial capabilities,” Masoud Mir-Kazemi said back in October 2021.
Speaking in a meeting with some of the country’s major contractor companies, Mir-Kazemi noted that such companies should become more productive, value-creating companies.
“Maintaining international economic markets is more important than entering those markets, and to achieve this important goal, the government should pay special attention to organizing the private sector activities in target markets,” he said.
“We know the value of the work of the country’s technical, engineering, and professional organizations. The talent and potential of these companies should not be taken for granted,” the official added. /T.T/
Iran’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations has said the country has achieved notable progress in the biotechnology and stem cells industry despite unfair sanctions and coercive measures of the United States.
“Today, we are honored to announce that Iran is one of the few countries that have managed to produce a vaccine for coronavirus,” Zahra Ershadi said on Tuesday at the 76th General Assembly session on global health and foreign policy.
She also criticized the United States, along with a handful of other countries that blindly follow Washington’s policies, for imposing restrictive measures, including illegal and oppressive economic sanctions, on a number of countries, especially those that are affected by the severe consequences of the coronavirus outbreak, IRIB reported.
Ershadi condemned the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the U.S. as a “serious threat” to the nation’s right to health and having access to medicine.
The development of the stem cells industry in the country has gained momentum over the past year through launching six strategic plans by the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology.
In this line, plans for supporting prioritized products, research, and development, as well as medical equipment and the stem cell industry have been carried out.
Supporting innovation centers, accelerators, and entrepreneurs in science and technology estates are also on the agenda.
Meanwhile, the promotion of knowledge-based products is among the main activities that have helped develop the stem cell industry, especially in the fields of medical tourism.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Technology and Innovation Report 2021 has placed Iran among upper-middle countries in terms of readiness for frontier technologies.
Nearly 800 knowledge-based companies in the country are currently operating in the field of biotechnology and supplying their products and services to the domestic market
In May, the Biotechnology Development Council launched 129 production projects with the aim of saving up to $1.44 billion of foreign currency.
Iran is ranked 12th in the world and first in West Asia in terms of biotechnology, as 9.5 percent of the income of knowledge-based companies and more than 60 percent of their exports are related to biotechnology. /T.T/
Iran football team defeated Lebanon 2-0 on Tuesday to end the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification on high note.
In the match held in Mashhad’s Emam Reza Stadium, Sardar Azmoun opened the scoring in the 35th minute and Iran captain Alireza Jahanbakhsh doubled the lead in the 72nd minute.
Iran ended the campaign with 25 points in Group A.
South Korea sit second with 23 points with one game in hand.
Iran defeated India 25-24 in the 2022 Asian Women’s Youth Handball Championship on Monday.
The Iranian team started the campaign with a 44-35 win over Uzbekistan on Friday and also edged Kazakhstan 20-19 in their second match.
The 2022 Asian Women’s Youth Handball Championship is being held from March 18 to 25 in Almaty, Kazakhstan under the aegis of Asian Handball Federation.
It acts as the qualification tournament for the 2022 Women’s Youth World Handball Championship, with top two teams from the championship directly qualifying for the event to be held in Georgia./ t.t/
The Persian New Year celebration, known as Nowruz, begins this year on Monday, March 21. Here is how Iranians celebrate the 13-day long holiday, and why the rite is still so popular after 3,000 years.
March 21, 2022, may not mean much to most people in the world, but it is a very special day for people in Iran, and a few other countries, as well. It’s the start of a 13-day long, 3000-year tradition called Nowruz, and I’m going to tell you what this ancient tradition is all about and why it is so dear to so many Iranian people and other ethnic groups in the world.
In technical terms, Nowruz is the day of the vernal equinox and marks the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. More accurately, the exactly calculated moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes night and day is marked as the first day of Nowruz in the Iranian calendar, and that is why, unlike Christmas, Nowruz is celebrated at different times of the day or night, with families gathered to observe the rituals together.
Nowruz symbols in Karaj, Alborz Province, Iran
There is this interesting superstition about Nowruz, which some people believe either in seriousness or in jest, that you have to be at your best at the time of Sal Tahvil; otherwise, you will be having an unlucky time throughout the year.There is no question that Nowruz holds a special place in the heart and memory of many Iranian people. And the wonderful thing about the Iranian New Year is that it is not celebrated only in Iran. Many countries along the Silk Road, such as Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, celebrate Nowruz, and the rite is not exclusive to one culture or religion. It has the advantage of being so ancient and having not only survived but actually flourished well into the 21st century, that it is only logical for Nowruz to be so comprehensive, diverse, and all-around a happy, unifying occasion with all its variations and different traditions and customs.
Buying spring flowers is a Nowruz tradition in Iran
Another interesting, and very common, Nowruz superstition is actually tied to the Chinese zodiac tradition of assigning an animal to each year in a twelve-year cycle. This year, which is 1401 on the Iranian calendar, is the Year of the Tiger.
Outside superstition, Nowruz is actually a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, first inscribed on the list in 2009 through the initiative of Iran and joint cooperation of Azerbaijan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. The case was later extended in 2016 to include five more countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
‘Hajji Firuz’, fictional character in Iranian folklore, carnival in Qazvin
The UN’s General Assembly recognized the International Day of Nowruz in 2010, describing it as a Spring festival of Iranian origin. On 15 March 2010, the US House of Representatives passed the Nowruz Resolution by a 384–2 vote, “Recognizing the cultural and historical significance of Nowruz…”
With an impressive number of over 187 million people in nearly a dozen countries observing Nowruz as a national holiday, the occasion is indeed a true cultural heritage to the world. But what does the celebration mainly include in Iran? Well, here are some of the most popular traditions:
People traditionally flock to Tomb of Hafez in Shiraz to celebrate the New Year.
Housecleaning, done a few days before spring. The activity sometimes becomes monstrous, and every child’s nightmare, as it involves all members of the family to engage in vigorous activity to give a thorough scrub to the whole household, giving the walls a fresh paint, washing every piece of carpet and curtain in the house (which, if you have ever been to an Iranian home, it’s a lot!), and even buying new furniture or placing the old one in new arrangements around the house. Although the practice is not fun, it is a vital and unavoidable part of New Year’s preparations.
Chaharshanbe Suri, which falls on the eve of the last Wednesday of the year, and includes jumping over bonfires while singing ‘My sickly yellow paleness is yours; your fiery red color is mine.’ In the metropolis of Tehran, there will be lots of fireworks instead.
People in villages in Golestan province embrace the New Year by spending time in beautiful nature
Going to the cemetery on the last Thursday of the old year to remember the ones who have passed away, and are no longer with us to celebrate the coming year. People usually put hyacinths or sabzeh (sprouts, which are planted especially as a Nowruz decoration) on the tombs of their loved ones.
New Year shopping, where you hop from one shop to another to get yourself a nice, new outfit to wear for the entirety of the 13-day long holidays. Most of the time, it’s a last-minute thing where you have to assemble an acceptable outfit in just a few hours, shouldering your way through a large crowd at various shopping malls. Although with the pandemic, many Iranians took to online shopping and will probably continue the practice for Nowruz.
While the items are the same, each family designs its Haft-sin in a special way
Haft-sin (The Seven S’s), a traditional table setting that symbolizes life, fertility, and love as a whole, and requires all members of the family to gather around the moment the new year begins. The Seven S’s are:
1. Seeb (apple); symbol of beauty and love
2. Seer (garlic); symbol of health
3. Serkeh (vinegar) symbol of progress and change
4. Somaq (sumac); symbol of patience
5. Samanu (sweet pudding); symbol of abundance
6. Sabzeh (sprouts); symbol of rebirth
7. Senjed (Persian olive) symbol of stability and strength
Nowruz; a 3000-year tradition of felicity and connectedness
Tehran enjoying clean air during Nowruz
Tehran enjoying clean air during Nowruz
Eid Didani, or an intensive period of visiting your relatives. During Nowruz holidays, households are busy hosting relatives close and distant, with a wide variety of sweets and ajil (trail mix), baklava, nan berenji (cookies made from rice flour), exciting-looking confections, and generally everything your dietitian would be horrified to find out you have eaten. Last year, the pandemic put a damper on the whole Eid Didani practice, and it will most likely be the case this year, as well.
Eidi, which is the name given to the money the people you go to for ‘Eid Didadni’ give you as a gift. However, the tradition may have gone out of practice in some families, and adults are less eligible to receive eidi. Eidi usually has a spiritual worth, as opposed to a monetary one, so don’t be offended if the only thing you can buy with your eidi is just a sandwich.
Travelling, or a perfect excuse for ditching the whole ‘eid didani’ tradition. Some families would take the opportunity of the long holidays to visit other cities, or other countries if they can afford the atrocious travel costs. Of course, with the coronavirus pandemic still very much present, traveling to certain cities has been banned during Nowruz.
New Year Cuisine, which you can have at any other time of the year, of course, but which taste especially better during Nowruz. They include Ash-e reshteh (a noodle soup), Kuku sabzi (herbs and vegetable soufflé) served for dinner on New Year’s, Reshteh polow (rice cooked with noodles), Sabzi polow with fish, and dolma (cooked vegetables, meat and rice rolled in grape leaves).
A typical Sizdah Be-dar outing in Tehran
And last but definitely not least, Sizdah Be-dar, the last day of the Nowruz holidays, which falls on the 13th of Farvardin, and the number is considered to bring bad luck in Persian folklore. The idea of Sizdah Be-dar (literally, Thirteen Outdoor) is to spend time picnicking outdoors, and throwing away your Sabzeh because it is considered a bad omen to still have it when the Nowruz holidays are over.
The value of Iran’s exports of date rose 5.3 percent during the first 11 months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2021-February 19, 2022), as compared to the same period of time in the past year, an official with Agriculture Ministry announced.
Zahra Jalili-Moqadam, the director-general of the ministry’s office of tropical and subtropical fruits, also said that Iran exported over 292,000 tons of dates during the 11-month period of this year, which was 4.5 percent more than the amount in the same period of time in the last year.
As stated by the head of National Association of Iranian Dates (NAID), there is the capacity for the export of $1 billion of dates from the country in a year.
Rashid Farokhi had said that despite the drought and low rainfall, the annual date production is anticipated to reach 1.2 million tons in the current Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20).
Every year, 30 percent of the product is exported and the rest is consumed in the domestic market, he added.
Every year, up to 1.2 million tons of various types of dates are produced in 203,763 hectares of land in Iran, making the country the second largest producer in terms of production and area under cultivation and the fifth largest exporter. /T.T/
The Monstra-Lisbon Animation Festival that opened on Wednesday in the Portuguese capital has selected five movies by Iranian filmmakers to screen in its different categories.
“The Fourth Wall” by Mahbubeh Kalai and “People and the Moon” by Yunes Kaffashian will be screened in the short competition.
“The Fourth Wall” is about a stuttering boy who transforms an Iranian kitchen into a fantastic cosmos. The father’s body becomes a refrigerator, the mother’s belly a washing machine whose spin cycle gives birth to a screaming baby. Even birds on tiles and detergents have a surprising life of their own.
This exuberant animation, dotted with real-life elements – fried eggs, broken plates, pieces of cheese – develops a subtle wit, ironizing ingrained family patterns.
The movie produced at the Documentary, Experimental and Animation Film Center has previously received the Mephisto 97.6 Award for the best animated film at DOK Leipzig, Germany’s major international festival for documentary and animated films.
The 31st edition of Animafest Zagreb, a Croatian international festival for animated films, honored the film with the Zlatko Grgic Award.
“People and the Moon” shows that the moon always has an important presence when one is in love.
“Stars in the Rain” and “Sympathy Syndrome” have been chosen to be screened in the Family Program category.
Directed by Sara Namju, “Stars in the Rain” follows passengers on a train who see a boy boarding on a rainy day. His presence is like a brief miracle.
“Sympathy Syndrome” by Maral Alizadeh tells the story of a kid who is at home, but the desire to see the beauty of the city makes him leave the house. Why does being outside worry them?
“Anima”, a production from the Documentary, Experimental and Animation Film Center, has been selected for the Perspective section.
Directed and written by Mahbubeh Mohammadzaki, the short animation is about a man who has a problem with his character and is in conflict over his differences with other people. / T.T/
A typical Sizdah Be-dar outing in Tehran
