
What do you kow about CHAHAR SHANBEH SURI
One of the Iranian customs to welcome to Norouz ( New Year ) and spring is ČAHĀRŠANBE-SŪRĪ .
ČAHĀRŠANBE-SŪRĪ (usually pronounced Čāršambe-sūrī), the last Wednesday of the Persian solar year, the eve of which is marked by special customs and rituals, most notably jumping over fire.
Principal rituals:
One or two days before the last Wednesday of the year people go out to gather bushes, camel thorn, date-palm leaves (Ḵūr), desert brush (gavan), or rice stalks (in Gīlān); in the cities they buy brushwood. In the afternoon before the start of Čahāršanbe-sūrī the brushwood is laid out in the yard of the house, if it is spacious enough, or in a village square or city street; it is arranged in one, three, five, or seven bundles (always an odd number) spaced a few feet apart. At sunset or soon after the bundles are set alight, and while the flames flicker in the dusk men, women, and children jump over them, singing sorḵī-e to az man, zardī-e man az to “[let] your redness [be] mine, my paleness yours,” or the equivalent in local dialects (see Honarī, pp. 24-29; Pūr-Karīm, pp. 18-19). It is believed that this ritual renders them immune for a whole year to maladies and misfortunes that make people pale and thin.
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Origin :
According to E. Pūr-Dāwūd (pp. 73, 75), the feast of Čahāršanba-sūrī is derived from the Zoroastrian feast of Hamaspāθmaēdaya, which after the calendar reform under Ardašīr I (a.d. 224-40; see calendars i) was celebrated six days before Noroūz. The choice of Wednesday, as well as the ritual of jumping over fire and “insulting” it, must, however, have originated after the Islamic conquest. The choice of the last Wednesday of the year is likely to have been prompted by an Arab superstition that Wednesdays are unlucky (Jāḥeẓ, p. 227). This belief apparently became widespread in Persia during the first two Islamic centuries (Manūčehrī Dāmḡānī, p. 220; Massé, p. 274 and n. 2; Pūr-Dāwūd, p. 73). On the other hand, the use of fire in celebrations had a long history in Iran. Naršaḵī (p. 37) refers to an old custom under the Samanids of kindling a large fire on one evening before the end of the year; he calls the evening šab-e sūrī (red evening/evening of celebration) but does not mention the specific rituals later associated with Čahāršanbe-sūrī.
Supplementary rituals. In addition to lighting fires, various concomitant rituals are performed in different regions of Iran on Čahāršanbe-sūrī.
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