Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is celebrated across the wider Iranian cultural world but the festivities in Mazar-i-Sharif are among the most spectacular. Crowds in the tens of thousands fill the plaza around the Blue Mosque on 21 March for the Janda Bala flag-raising ceremony, when a long green silk banner is hoisted on a tall pole in the mosque courtyard while the muezzin chants and the doves circle above.
The festival traditionally lasted forty days and incorporated buzkashi tournaments, music, tulip-festival picnics in the surrounding fields, and pilgrim traffic from across northern Afghanistan and beyond. Under the current Taliban administration the public celebrations have been heavily restricted, but the religious aspects continue. Even outside Nowruz, the spring tulip bloom around Mazar is a famous local sight.