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Next: about 8 Oct 2026

Mehregan

The autumn festival of friendship and harvest, with saffron rice, barberry and pomegranate.

MEHREGAN TABLE, at Mehregan (Persian Festival of Autumn) in Amersfoort, The Netherlands, Oct. 2011. Table Setting: Jaleh Daftarian - Photo by Persian Dutch Network
Photo: PersianDutchNetwork, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Spices for Mehregan

Mehregan is an old Persian autumn festival and is still marked by Zoroastrians in Yazd and Kerman. A harvest feast includes jewelled rice with barberries, orange peel, pistachios and saffron, along with ash and sweets such as halva scented with rose water and saffron. The festival coincides with the picking of saffron in Khorasan, so the spice is fresh at this time.

The spices

SaffronFresh from the Khorasan harvest.

Also part of it, and being written: Barberry (Sour red jewels in festive rice.).

About this page

Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Mehregan" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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