Gilaks and Mazandaranis

Cross the Alborz from Tehran and the country changes in an hour: from dry slopes to forest, mist and rice paddies. This narrow strip between the mountains and the Caspian is home to two closely related peoples, the Gilaks of Gilan, centred on Rasht and Lahijan, and the Mazandaranis of Mazandaran, centred on Sari, Babol and Amol, who also call themselves Tabari after the old name of their land, Tabaristan.

Languages

Gilaki and Mazandarani are north-western Iranian languages, related to each other and distinct from Persian, although nearly all speakers are bilingual. Mazandarani has an old written history: the Marzban-nameh, a book of fables, was composed in Tabari in the tenth century and survives in a Persian version of the thirteenth. Amir Pazvari, the best-loved Tabari poet, is still sung in the villages, though his dates are uncertain. In the twentieth century Nima Yushij, born in the Mazandarani village of Yush and the father of modern Persian poetry, also wrote verse in Tabari.

History

The Caspian lands, shielded by the mountains and forest, long held out against outside rule. The Bavandid and other local dynasties of Tabaristan kept older Iranian traditions alive well into the Islamic era. In the early twentieth century the Jangal (‘forest’) movement of Mirza Kuchak Khan held much of Gilan from 1915 until his death in 1921; he remains a local hero to many Gilaks, while historians debate the movement’s alliances.

What is kept

Life here is built on water. Rice is the staple, and the kitchens are among the most admired in Iran: mirza ghasemi of smoked aubergine, sour pomegranate stews, fish from the Caspian and herbs from every garden. Rasht was named a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy in 2015. Tea came to Lahijan around 1900 with Kashef-ol-Saltaneh, who brought plants from India, and the terraced gardens around the town still supply much of Iran’s home-grown tea. The Hyrcanian forests on the mountain slopes, among the oldest broadleaf forests on earth, were inscribed by UNESCO in 2019.

The Caspian peoples keep festivals that the rest of Iran has largely forgotten. In Mazandaran the night of Tirma Sizeh Sho, the thirteenth night of the month of Tir in the old local calendar, is celebrated with stories, fortune-telling and food. Before Nowruz, singers called nowruz-khan go door to door with songs announcing spring. Wooden houses with deep verandas, the stepped village of Masuleh, where one house’s roof is the next one’s street, and the silk and hand-woven cloth of Gilan all belong to the same world of rain and forest. Most Gilaks and Mazandaranis are Shia Muslims, and the region’s many shrines, emamzadeh, stand in groves among the paddies. Weekly markets, many named after the day they are held, such as the jomeh bazar or Friday market, are where village women sell herbs, eggs, fish and cloth.