Dohuk, Iraq – Members of the Yazidi group have rung within the 12 months 6773 surrounded by gorgeous surroundings in a mountain valley within the Kurdish area of Iraq.
At sundown, when Yazidis imagine a brand new day begins, 1000’s of worshippers on Tuesday lit candles at Lalish Temple, the holiest of all Yazidi temples. Supreme religious chief Baba Sheikh Ali Alyas presided over the ceremony commemorating the approaching of sunshine into the world.
The Yazidi New Yr falls on the primary Wednesday of April in accordance with the Jap Julian, or Selucid, calendar, which is 13 days later than the Gregorian calendar.
Youngsters boil and color 12 eggs every for the months of the 12 months. The egg symbolises the Earth. Boiling it epitomises the time it lies frozen, and colouring it stands for the top of the chilly, frozen months.
For Hilda Dakhil, a 17-year-old who has come to the temple each New Yr’s for so long as she will be able to bear in mind, the colouring of the eggs is “one of many important rituals”.
On the temple outdoors Dohuk, younger folks play an egg-tapping recreation that symbolises one of many 4 divine occasions the Yazidis commemorate on New Yr’s: the bursting of the “White Pearl”, which led to all life.
“April has a particular sanctity for Yazidis,” mentioned Luqman Suleiman, 40. “We don’t lower down bushes or plough the land within the first 15 days as a result of this distorts the fantastic thing about nature. We additionally don’t marry in April as a result of we imagine this brings misfortune. For us, April is the 12 months’s bride through which there aren’t any different marriages.”
Households dangle bouquets of anemones on their doorways and gown in pastel-coloured, festive garments which might be pressed and made prepared effectively prematurely.
Ewes are additionally not milked forward of the New Yr to allow them to absolutely fulfill their younger.
Amir al-Hajj Hassan Zainal, 63, a Yazidi cleric, says, “This vacation is taken into account the creation of the universe as a result of Lalish is the leaven of the earth, and that is a very powerful vacation we now have as a result of it’s the feast of the King Peacock as a result of God honoured him on this holy Wednesday.”