When the Sun Returns to the Human: The Celebration of Nawruz in Tajikistan

Abstract

The Nawruz is the celebration of the Iranian New Year, taking place each year at the spring equinox. This ancient tradition is popularly and widely celebrated throughout the majority of Central Asian countries, where it is incorporated in an often very syncretic way into the yearly events calendar. The main argument in this paper consists of analyzing these celebrations in relation to processes of iden-tification and the negotiation between competing notions of belonging in Tajikistan and especially in the Tajik Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province.