Sangisari

The Sangisaris (Sangsaris) are the native people of Sangesar, a mountain town 15 km north of Semnan, renamed Mahdishahr ('City of the Mahdi') after the 1979 revolution. Local people still use the old name. They speak Sangisari, a Komisenian language of the Northwestern Iranian branch, related to Semnani, Sorkhei, Lasgerdi and Aftari but distinct from all of them. Like Zazaki in Anatolia, it keeps an old two-gender system that marks gender on verbs (no shund-e 'he goes', na shund-a 'she goes'). Arthur Christensen judged Sangisari grammar more archaic than Semnani in places, and its vocabulary keeps Avestan- and Parthian-looking words and Zoroastrian-era terms. The Sangisaris are also a famous transhumant herding people, the Il-e Sangsari, whose shepherds move flocks of Sangsari sheep up to 1,500 km a year between the Kavir edge and the Alborz pastures. Estimates of speakers range from 26,000 to 43,000 (36,000 in 2006, about 43,000 in 2021). Community sources claim 100,000-200,000 people of Sangsari descent, including families in Tehran and the Caspian provinces. Darjazini and Talebabadi are local dialects.

Sangisari life combines town and tent. Many families keep houses in Mahdishahr and also move with their flocks: in spring the herders climb to summer pastures (yaylaq) along the Alborz, around Neyzva, Firuzkuh and Damavand, and in autumn they return to winter quarters (qeshlaq) on the edge of the central desert. Their black goat-hair tent, the goot, is divided into guest, family and kitchen spaces. The herders make more than 30 dairy products, including arishe and the yellow butter-oil warohun, and the Sangsari sheep is a prized native breed. The community keeps its own pastoral calendar of twelve 30-day months plus five extra days, which fixes the dates of migrations and festivals such as the Tir festival and Nowruz. Women's embroidered headscarves and naturally dyed wool carpets are typical crafts, and a nomad museum in Mahdishahr displays the tribe's heritage. There is a large body of Sangisari oral poetry about migration, the seasons and the hardships of herding. Sangesar also produced Fakhr-e Afaq Parsa, a journalist of the Constitutional era who was the first woman exiled for her journalism in Iran. Most Sangisaris are bilingual and switch to Persian with outsiders. Many parents no longer speak Sangisari to their children to avoid problems at school, though some families and local linguists are working to keep it alive, including through a revived Avestan-based script.

Most Sangisaris today are Twelver Shia Muslims, and the post-revolution renaming of the town to Mahdishahr made the Shia identity official. Sangesar has an unusual religious history. It was one of the first places in Iran where the Babi movement took root in the 1840s; several Sangsari and Shahmirzadi Babis survived the siege of Shaykh Tabarsi (1848-49), and the town became one of the main Baha'i centres in the country. Baha'is of Sangsar were persecuted repeatedly: in 1906 they fled to the hills, in 1937 and 1941 Baha'is were imprisoned or banished for closing their shops on Baha'i holy days, and after 1979 and again in 2011 Baha'is in Sangsar, Shahmirzad and Semnan were arrested and their homes demolished. Many families left for Tehran and abroad. Older pastoral customs, such as a calendar with Zoroastrian-style month counting and words for sacred garments and ritual purity, survive in the language and in seasonal festivals.

There is no Scripture in Sangisari and no Jesus Film. Global Recordings Network has produced a 'Good News' audio-visual Bible-lesson program in Sangisari (program 37916, MP3 and MP4 downloads). Sangisaris are fluent in Persian and can use Persian Bibles and Persian Christian media. Nothing is known of outreach to Sangisaris or of believers among them. Because of the town's long Baha'i history, many Sangisaris know religious minorities and the persecution they face.

The herding branch of the Sangisaris, the Il-e Sangsari, is famous in Iran for the length of its seasonal migration, which community and media sources put at more than 1,500 km between winter grounds on the desert edge and summer pastures along the Alborz from Firuzkuh to Damavand. Herders (khil-khun) live in black goat-hair tents (goot) and rely on the hardy Sangsari sheep, and the language has many special words for animals and dairy products. Their own calendar of 12 months of 30 days plus five extra days sets the timing of departures and festivals. Persian media and tourism promote the migration, and the town has a museum of Sangsari nomad life.