Omar Koshan

Omar Koshan (Persian: عمرکشان, "the Killing of Umar"), also known as Jashn-e Hazrat-e Zahra ("Celebration of Fatima al-Zahra'"), is a yearly festival held by some Twelver Shi'i Muslims in Iran. Originally, the festival commemorated the assassination of the second caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (also spelled 'Omar', c. 583–644) by the Persian slave Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz. In its current form, it begins on the 9th day of the month of Rabi' al-Awwal of the Islamic year, and lasts until the 27th of the same month. It is a carnival-type of festival in which social roles are reversed and communal norms upturned. It generally functions as a more lighthearted counterpart of the ta'ziyeh passion plays during the mourning of Muharram, which commemorate the death of the prophet Muhammad's grandson Husayn ibn Ali at the Battle of Karbala in 680. First established in the 16th century during the Safavid conversion of Iran to Shi'i Islam, the festival was originally held around Abu Lu'lu'a's sanctuary in Kashan, each year at the anniversary of Umar's death on 26 Dhu al-Hijja of the Islamic year. However, later it also started to be observed elsewhere in Iran, sometimes on 9 Rabi' al-Awwal rather than on 26 Dhu al-Hijja. The festival celebrated Abu Lu'lu'a, nicknamed for the occasion Bābā Shujāʿ al-Dīn (lit. 'Father Courageous of the Faith'), as a national hero who had defended the religion by killing the oppressive caliph. Umar was not only seen as a persecutor of non-Arabs, he was also thought to have threatened and injured the prophet Muhammad's daughter and Ali's wife Fatima, who had cursed him for this. Being related to the more general institution in early Safavid Iran of the ritual cursing of the first three Rashidun caliphs (who were all seen to have displaced Ali as the rightful caliph), the...