How a village in Badakhshan determines the arrival of Navroz!

Photo Courtesy: Vatani Alidodov 

Islamabad, March 20: The photograph above is a rare snapshot of an ingenious observatory, a stone with a hole, used by a village in Badakhshan region of Tajikistan, to determine the Persian new year, i.e. Navroz.

The rule is simple and it has been used for centuries. The time of the year when the sun fits in the frame carved in the stone, it is Navroz, or the first day of the new year. This particular observatory is known as the “Sufi Mubarak Solar Observatory”, dedicated to the guy who introduced the system of measuring time.