Unique Votive Food Annually Cooked in Iran’s Yazd

The soup which is devoted to the third Shiite Imam, Hussein ibn Ali (AS), is cooked in 100 pots!

The sponsor of this big ritual has noted in a Farsi interview with Mehr News Agency that this votive food has been cooked in the neighbourhood since 40 years ago; it started with one pot and now there are 100 pots.

It takes 17 hours to make the soup ready. Each year, on the day before Arba’een (the fortieth day after Imam Hussein’s martyrdom anniversqry), the cooking process begins at the time of noon prayers, and it is distributed among people at the time of morning prayers on the day of Arba’een.

Some days before Arba’een, people in the neighbourhood cooperate with each other with great effort.

More than 100 large copper pots should be placed on fire. So a half metre wide, one metre deep and 500 metres long pit is dug to put the firewood in.

The pit will be refilled after the end of the ceremony. All people help in preparing wheat and legumes, slaughtering camels and sheep, digging the pit and washing the pots to have their own share in cooking this votive food.

Here are Mehr’s photos of the ritual: