Shāh-e Sarāb: A Hazara Solar Festival in Bamiyan and Connections with Ancient Khordādgān

Abstract The annual festival of Shāh-e Sarāb has been a major Hazara pilgrimage in Waras district of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Province on the fourteenth day of Jawzā/Khordād (June 4). Drawing on published accounts, virtual ethnography, remote interviews, and satellite imagery, this article describes the shrine and the principal ritual components of the celebration in arguing that Shāh-e Sarāb represents a “Shi’i-ized” continuation of Khordādgān, the ancient Iranian month/day festival of the Zoroastrian goddess Khordād. This connection rests primarily on the festival’s fixed position in the solar calendar and is further supported by a cluster of characteristic features, including the central role of a sacred spring and ritual bathing, attributing healing powers to water, and prominent female devotional practices and terminology. Viewed in the context of Bamiyan’s millennia-long history of religious transformation, the festival offers a rare example of the persistence of pre-Islamic Iranian practices within later vernacular Islamic forms.