KHUJAND, March 18, 2016, Asia-Plus — All the 22 mahallas and apartment buildings in the northern city of Khujand are making preparations for the upcoming Navrouz festival.
According to the Khujand mayor’s office, 100 pots of ‘sumanak’ will be cooked in the city for the Navrouz festival.
Sumanak is a sweet paste made entirely from germinated wheat (young wheatgrass), which is prepared especially for Navrouz (March 21) in a large pot (like a kazan). This practice has been traced back to the pre-Islamic Persia.
The wheat is soaked and prepared for days and so the entire process takes up to a week. Traditionally, the final cooking would take from late in the evening till the daylight and was a party, involving only women.
Women begin to cook ‘sumanak’ on the night of March 20-21. This would be full of laughter and music and singing related songs. In Tajikistan they sing: “Sumanak dar joushu mo kafcha zanem – digaron dar khobu mo dafcha zanem (Samanak is boiling and we are stirring it, others are sleeping and we are playing daf (large frame drum)”).
Navrouz, which literary means New Day in Persian, Dari and Tajik languages, is the traditional Iranian new year holiday, celebrated by Iranian and many other peoples. It marks the first day of spring and is celebrated on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox (the start of spring in the northern hemisphere), which usually occurs on March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed. Today, the festival of Navrouz is celebrated in many countries, including Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, as well as Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. Many peoples in West and South Asia, Northeast China, the Crimea, as well as Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia also celebrate this holiday.
