TEHRAN –Nisht, meaning sitting, is one of the rituals of the UNESCO-designated Uramanat, which has fallen into oblivion over time.

The ceremony was held every year in mid-autumn when people left the countryside for the villages.

Since Uramanat’s villages are mostly located in the valley and have hot and dry summers, in the past the people of these villages used to build summer houses on top of mountains and spend their spring and summer in these cottages, in an area full of water that was suitable for gardening.

Usually, in the middle of autumn, when it was time to return to their villages, they held a special ritual called Nisht in which they prayed together, sacrificed animals, and ate food, especially Ash, a thick Persian vegetable soup cooked in a wide variety of styles, together.

Then they ask one another for Halaliat (forgiveness) if they harm each other unintentionally during their stay.

Although the ritual is no longer practiced in the region, it has been inscribed on the National Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

Stretched on the slopes of Sarvabad county at the heart of the Zagros Mountains and shared between the provinces of Kordestan and Kermanshah in western Iran, the Uramanat cultural landscape embraces hundreds of villages, 106,000 hectares of land and 303,000 hectares of surrounding properties.

Archaeological findings dating back about 40,000 years, caves and rock shelters, ancient paths and was along the valleys, motifs and inscriptions, cemeteries, mounds, castles, settlements, and other historical evidence attest to the continuity of life in the Uramanat region from the Paleolithic to the present time.

According to the UN body, Uramanat is an exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition of the semi-nomadic agropastoral way of life of the Hawrami people, a Kurdish tribe that has resided in the Zagros Mountains for millennia. This outstanding cultural tradition is manifested in the ancestral practices of transhumance, the mode of seasonal living in Havars, steep-slope terraced agriculture, soil and water management, traditional knowledge for planning and constructing steeply terraced villages, and rich diversity of intangible heritage, all reflecting harmonious co-existence with nature.

ABU/AM