Nowruz-e Sayyad (Fishermen's New Year) · Nowruz-e Sayyad

Culture of origin: Persian Gulf · Ancient festival

Holiday sources: Persian Gulf Coast and Islands

Nowruz-e Sayyad, 'the Fishermen's Nowruz', also called Nowruz-e Darya ('the Sea's Nowruz') or Nowruz-e Arab, opens the year of the old seafaring calendar of the Persian Gulf coast. On Qeshm that year has 365 days, thirty-six ten-day periods called meyhun and five days over, and the new year comes when the storm season ends and the sea has its first calm day, when sailing and fishing begin again. The islanders hold it to be the day the fish are born and the sea is fertile, so no boat goes out and no one eats fish or seafood. In the morning they mark the foreheads of their animals, their palms and the doors of their houses with gelak, the red earth of Hormuz Island, for health and good harvests; then they bathe in the sea for healing, pour seawater over their elders, put on new clothes and throw their old ones into the water. In the cool of the evening the men sing and dance the razif in two rows, and the shushi, two men in black with flour-whitened faces and palm-leaf beards, burst in and chase the musicians with palm branches. Its main venue today is Salakh, an old fishing village on Qeshm, where it has been held as a yearly festival since the early 2000s. The lenj, the hand-built wooden boat of these coasts, is on UNESCO's list of heritage in need of urgent safeguarding (2011), as fibreglass boats replace it.