Bakhtiari Spring Migration Begins · Kuch-e Bahareh-ye Bakhtiari

Culture of origin: Bakhtiari · Cultural

Holiday sources: Bakhtiari

The Bakhtiari winter in the foothills of Khuzestan and, as the grass dries up and the heat of the plains rises, move with their flocks to the summer pastures on the far side of the Zagros. In the anthropologist D. H. M. Brooks's account from his fieldwork among them, the move to the summer pastures begins just after the Persian New Year, once the New Year feasting and visiting is over; the ideal date is the 15th day of the New Year, but the actual day and hour are chosen each year by consulting the omens, and families with poor grazing leave early while those with crops to bring in wait. The trek takes three to six weeks. Today the nomads' comings and goings follow a yearly migration calendar, and drought can delay them. The 1925 documentary Grass filmed a Bakhtiari migration of some 50,000 people across the Karun River and over the Zard Kuh.