Newroz: the Kurdish New Year, Kawa’s legend and traditions

Newroz is the Kurdish New Year and the biggest festival of the Kurdish year. It falls around 20 or 21 March, just as spring begins, and Kurds celebrate it outdoors with fires, music, dancing and food shared with family and friends.

This guide explains what the name means, retells the old legend of Kawa the blacksmith and shows how Newroz is celebrated today. Along the way you will pick up spring and festival words in Kurmancî (Northern Kurdish) and Soranî (Central Kurdish), plus the greeting everyone uses on the day.

When is Newroz?

Newroz falls at the spring equinox, the moment in March when day and night are about the same length. The equinox usually falls on 20 or 21 March, and many Kurds keep 21 March as the main day of the festival.

The celebrations usually begin on the evening before, when the first fires are lit, and carry on through the next day. In the traditional Kurdish solar calendar, the new year also starts at Newroz.

Above all, Newroz is a festival of spring. Here is the word in both dialects:

Bihar /biˈhaɾ/ بەهار behar Spring

To say how you feel about the season, try Ez ji biharê hez dikim in Kurmancî. In Soranî you say حەزم لە بەهارە. Both mean “I love spring”.

What does Newroz mean?

The name is made of two short words, “new” and “day”. So Newroz simply means “new day”: the first day of a fresh year. The Persian name Nowruz has exactly the same meaning.

If you have started learning Kurdish, you may already know the building blocks:

In Kurmancî, roj also means “sun”. That suits a festival that welcomes the longer, brighter days of spring.

The legend of Kawa the blacksmith

Every Newroz fire comes with a story. It is a legend, passed down from grandparents to grandchildren, and like every folk tale it changes a little from one teller to the next. This is how it usually goes.

Long ago, a cruel king called Zahhak ruled the land. Kurds call him Dehak. Two snakes grew from his shoulders, and the only way to keep them quiet was to feed them the brains of young people, every single day. In some versions, the land grew so dark under his rule that spring stopped coming.

Kawa was a blacksmith who had already lost sons to the king’s snakes. In the end he refused to give up any more. He gathered the people, led them to the palace and brought his blacksmith’s hammer down on the tyrant.

To spread the news, Kawa lit a great fire. People saw the flames and lit fires of their own on the hills, until the mountains glowed from one valley to the next. The next morning, spring returned. That is why Kurds light fires at Newroz: they stand for light after darkness and warmth after a long winter.

Another old tale adds a twist. The palace cooks are said to have saved one young person each day, sending them off to the mountains and feeding the snakes a sheep’s brain instead. In some tellings, the young people who were saved became the ancestors of the Kurds.

The same story appears in the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings, written by the poet Ferdowsi about a thousand years ago. There the blacksmith is called Kaveh. He raises his leather apron on a spear as a banner, and the people follow him to help the hero Fereydun defeat Zahhak.

Words to retell the story:

Fires, dances and picnics

On Newroz eve, bonfires and torches light up hilltops, villages and town squares. Friends and families gather around the flames, and the bravest jump over them for good luck and health in the year ahead.

Then the dancing starts. In the govend, the Kurdish line dance, dancers link hands or little fingers and move together to traditional music. Kurmancî speakers also use the word dîlan for dancing, and in Soranî the line dance is often called halparke. A line can be a few cousins or hundreds of people, and it can keep going for hours.

Newroz is also a day for picnics. Families head out to green fields, riversides and mountain slopes with blankets and food, and spend the day outdoors. In Soranî such a day out in nature is called a seyran.

Picnic food is simple and generous: dolma (stuffed vegetables and vine leaves), meat dishes, fresh bread and plenty of tea to share. Our guide to Kurdish food has more dishes to try.

Everyone dresses up for the day. Women and girls wear long, brightly coloured dresses, and many men and boys wear traditional Kurdish clothes too. Seen from a hillside, a Newroz picnic looks like a meadow full of flowers.

How to say “Happy Newroz”

On the day you will hear one greeting again and again. In Kurmancî you say it to anyone you meet, and Soranî has its own version:

Newroz pîroz be! نەورۆزتان پیرۆز بێت! newroztan pîroz bêt Happy Newroz!

Word for word, the Kurmancî greeting means “may Newroz be blessed”, because pîroz means blessed or holy. The Soranî greeting adds -tan, “your”, so it wishes a happy Newroz to everyone you are talking to.

To reply, return the same wish or simply say thank you: Spas in Kurmancî. In Soranî it is سپاس. More ways to thank someone are in how to say thank you in Kurdish.

A few sentences for a day outdoors:

One festival, many peoples

Kurds are not the only ones who welcome spring this way. Nowruz is celebrated in Iran and Afghanistan, in Azerbaijan and across Central Asia, in the Caucasus and the Balkans, and by families all over the world. By most estimates, more than 300 million people mark it every year, and its roots are often traced back some 3,000 years.

Each community has its own customs, dishes and songs, but the heart of the festival is shared: spring, a fresh start and time with the people you love. UNESCO lists Nowruz as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and the United Nations marks 21 March as the International Day of Nowruz.

For Kurds, the fires and the tale of Kawa give Newroz its own special glow. To learn more about the people who light them, read who are the Kurds?

The Kurdish words and sentences in the tables come from the ZimanGo lessons. If you would like to greet your family in Kurdish next Newroz, ZimanGo teaches Kurmancî and Soranî in short lessons, and the core course is free.