Every year, on the advent of each Iranian New Year (which coincides with the beginning of spring), Pasargad Heritage Foundation (PHF) designates a name for the coming year that signifies a certain aspect of its mission. PHF is an organization established a decade ago outside Iran with the aim of preserving Iranian cultural heritage and has observed this name designation for the last 10 years.  The main purpose is to emphasize on the priceless values of the ancient cultural heritage of Iran that are exposed to constant destruction due to intentional and accidental negligence of the relevant authorities in that country.

The coming New Year of the Iranian calendar has been named as the “Year of Mahasti Ganjavi”, to commemorate a Farsi-speaking courageous poetess of 900 years ago who thought and spoke about the very subject matters that are expressed today by great anti-discrimination women of our times.

She was born in Ganje, an Iranian city that now is located in Azerbaijan Republic, before the language of that area was turned into Turkish. Thus, she is now being introduced as an Azerbaijani poetess whereas all her poetry is in Farsi.

Unfortunately, all through history, religious zealots have banned the spread and publication of her poetry in as many ways as possible. And then, by the advent of the Islamic Republic in Iran, she has been officially been recognized as a non-Iranian poet and the Islamic government has not accepted even to co-apply, together with Azerbaijanis, for the registration of her name as a poetess of Farsi literature in the Intangible Heritage Index of UNESCO.

Proposed by Pasargad Heritage Foundation