Modern Pamir house and calendar and astronomical views of the Pamiris

Abstract

This paper presents the evolution of the Pamir house over the past 100 years since the explorations of the Russian ethnographer Mikhail S. Andreev took place. Despite the availability of the studies of the 1920s–1950s on the Tajik traditional dwelling (Pisarchik, 1958a; Voronina, 1951, 1975; review studies: Mamadnazarov, 1978; Muradov, 2021), the classical Andreev’s work (1958), conducted in the valley of the Khuf River (Pamir), remains topical. The Gorno-Badakhshan variant of the house construction (Pamir and Pamir region), distinguished on the basis of its ingenuity, stands apart amongst the other four geographical types. The paper concerns the comparison of the main elements of the contemporary dwelling of the population of the Western Pamir with the traditional ones. A special attention is given to the calendar and astronomical matters that relate the design of the Pamiri house to timekeeping. Our research is based upon the results of the study of 26 residential houses in the village of Midensharv (located 20 km southeast of Khorog in Roshtkala District of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Okrug) and several buildings in the villages of Parzudzh, Barodzh, and Tusen. Most of the houses were built in the 1960s–1980s. Modern Pamiris know the places in the house where the sunbeam falls on one or another special day, but in modern buildings there are no marks for the days of Nowruz, and summer and winter chillas, which were reported by Andreev. The methods of mathematical modeling show that in some cases the informants are accurate with the dates, but sometimes they confuse the holidays. Over the last hundred years, the Pamir house has undergone certain changes associated with the natural development. The changes of the traditional society, the beginning of which was noted by M. Andreev, have led to the widespread use of the Gregorian calendar, whilst the functions of individual timekeeping have lost their value. Nowadays, amongst local residents few people would remember the timekeeping by the human body ‘mard’, whilst the modern Pamir house has not preserved the marks of certain days of the year that were present earlier. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the Pamir inhabitants have retained quite a lot of knowledge and traditions. Although there are already no signs in the modern Pamir house, people continue to navigate in time using sunlight marks, which give an accuracy of about 20 minutes, which is enough for a rural lifestyle. All new houses are built according to the Pamir canon, and not by the projects of modern designers.