About Nowruz

What Nowruz marks

Nowruz means "new day" in Kurdish and Persian. It falls on the spring equinox, usually March 20 or 21, when day and night reach equal length and the Northern Hemisphere turns toward spring. The celebration is shared across a wide arc of Central and West Asia — Persians call it Nowruz, Kurds Newroz, Afghans Nauruz, Azerbaijanis Novruz — and its roots reach back through Zoroastrian and Mithraic tradition into pre-Islamic Iranic culture.

For Kurds specifically, Newroz carries a second layer of meaning that goes well beyond marking the turn of the seasons.

The legend of Kawa the Blacksmith

The Kurdish telling of Newroz centers on a story from the Persian epic Shahnameh, written down around the year 1000 CE. In it, a tyrant named Zahhak rules with two serpents growing from his shoulders, which must be fed the brains of two young people every day to keep him alive. Under his oppression, it is said, spring itself stops coming.

Kawa, a blacksmith who has lost his own children to the serpents, secretly saves one victim each day by mixing a sheep's brain in with the offering, and gathers the survivors into a hidden rebellion. He eventually leads an uprising that kills Zahhak, lighting a fire on a mountaintop to announce the tyrant's defeat and the people's freedom. The following day, spring returns.

Kurdish poets and political movements revived this story explicitly as a national symbol starting in the 1930s, and Kawa has since become a recurring figure in Kurdish art, theater, and political iconography — including a 1948 play in Iraqi Kurdistan in which a teenage Jalal Talabani, who would later become President of Iraq, played the role of Kawa.

A celebration that became an act of resistance

Because the Kawa legend is fundamentally a story about an oppressed people overthrowing a tyrant, Newroz took on unmistakable political weight for Kurds living under governments that restricted or banned Kurdish language, dress, and identity.

In Turkey, Newroz celebrations were outlawed for decades. The date carries additional historical weight there: March 20, 1937 was also when Turkish forces launched a campaign against Kurdish communities in the Dersim region that killed tens of thousands of people. Turkey did not begin to legally permit Newroz celebrations until 1992, and even then required the holiday be spelled "Nevruz" and its origins described as Central Asian rather than Kurdish. Large gatherings continued to draw confrontation with authorities in the years that followed.

Across the border in Syria's Kurdish-majority Afrin region, a similar pattern played out far more recently: after Turkish-backed forces took the city in 2018, a prominent statue of Kawa was torn down, and an outright ban on Newroz celebrations followed in 2019, lifted only in 2021 after international pressure.

In Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran, where restrictions have generally been lighter, Newroz has long functioned as an openly national holiday — though even there, some traditional elements such as men and women dancing together have faced restriction at times in Iran.

The bonfire itself

Fire is the unavoidable center of Newroz. On the evening of March 20, bonfires are lit on mountaintops, in town squares, and in courtyards across the four regions of Kurdistan and the diaspora beyond. People leap over the flames — a ritual sometimes called Newroz agir — asking the fire to carry away illness and misfortune from the year just ending.

Communities gather around the flames to sing and dance the traditional circle dances, govend and halparke, often through the night and into the following day, which marks the new year itself.

Global recognition

In 2010, UNESCO inscribed Nowruz on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and the United Nations General Assembly recognized March 21 as the International Day of Nowruz, acknowledging a tradition observed by an estimated 300 million people across the region and its diaspora.

This project

This site is a small, ongoing tribute to that tradition. Every bonfire placed on the globe is a virtual flame, lit by a real person, somewhere, joining a chain of fire that stretches back thousands of years. Create an account to light your own.