Percy Sykes is best known as spy, consul and military man in Eastern Persia. But, with a Persian author, Khan Bahadur Ahmad Din Khan, he also wrote a “second Haji Baba, which would serve as a true picture of Persia [in around 1900], before constitutional reform appeared on the horizon”. This book is an important source about the shrine in Mashhad in that period. But it also has a whole chapter on some more obscure New Year customs, including:
On eating pearls:
It is most auspicious for ladies to pound up three peas’ weight of pearls with sugar and swallow the mixture; and every one who can afford it performs this rite. Alhamdulillah! Pearls are abundant in Persia
To do with marriage:
Girls who hope for marriage, are taken by a woman mullah to a place where four roads meet. There they sit with a lock fastened on to their dress and offer sweetmeats to passers-by. This is termed “Luck Opening,” as every one who partakes of the sweetmeats first turns the key in the lock and thereby opens the way to good fortune for the damsel.
And the lucky woodlouse(!):
Gold coins and wheat are now held in the palm of the hand, as also the woodlouse, an insect which brings good luck; and as the New Year commences, the sweetmeats and fruit are distributed, and every one gazes at the woodlouse for choice; or, if not, at a narcissus, at water, or at red clothes.
Perhaps less positively, but just as amusingly, people known to be unlucky, or those who bring ill luck to others, such as executioners or members of their families, are rigidly excluded on this day.
There is the story told of Shah Abbas who, when starting on a hunting expedition which proved to be a failure, first looked at an ugly old man. Upon his return he sent for him, intending to kill him. The man asked why he should be doomed to die ; and the Shah said, ” Because thy ill-omened visage has spoilt my hunting.” The intended victim retorted, “May I be thy Sacrifice! but thy visage will be still more ill-omened if it brings death with it.” Upon hearing this. Shah Abbas laughed and dismissed the man with a gift.