Inalco celebrates spring in music and verse جشن بهار

Nowrouz means "new day" (now = "new" and rouz = "day"). In Persian civilization, this is the celebration of the equinox of spring, which corresponds to the new year in the Persian calendar. Celebrated over 13 days, it is the most important festival in the Persian-speaking world. It commemorates a very ancient custom linked to ancient pre-Islamic Persian civilization.

The tradition of Nowrouz also involves :

• Cleaning the house from top to bottom
• Dressing the table with the seven "dishes whose names begin with the letter sin" haft-sin (corresponding to our "s")
• The table of seven haft-mivah fruits
• Buy new clothes and dress well for the occasion
• Go from house to house to eat and dance all day

To mark the occasion, a concert of traditional Persian music was held, featuring artists and musicians from Afghanistan and Iran. Photographs and drawings bearing witness to the situation in Afghanistan were also screened.

Two of the Inalco Foundation scholarship winners, Meena Lleida and Sephora Vallotton, made a video on this occasion in Dushanbe, where they are currently on an academic exchange contracted between Inalco and the National University of Tajikistan.

In this video, they read a poem by Rûdaki - Persian poet of the IX-Xth century, national poet of Tajikistan - the original in Persian and the French translation made by Sephora Vallotton, singing the beauties of spring and the renewal of nature, marking the passage to a new year.

View the video "Nowruz 2022 - Qaside Rudaki قصیده رودکی - نوروز ۱۴۰۱"

This day was organized by Abdul-Azam Azizi, Sophie Hohmann, in collaboration with the associations AFRANE, Azadi and Parmida and the participation of the Students of Persian and the DU Hospitalité, Médiations, Migrations (H2M) with the support of the Fondation Inalco

Nowrouz Mobârak !

Edited by: Sephora Vallotton and Cécile Leblond / Inalco Foundation