In the village of Lalehzar in Iran's Kerman Province, the rhythms of life were still described as turning with the stars. Local people divided night and day using their own traditional expressions, and agricultural timing could be determined through a “star clock.” [source]
The documentary The Star Clock, directed by Dr. Majid Fadaei and produced for Kerman television in the Iranian year 1391, explores how villagers used the positions of stars in the night sky to determine times for irrigation, animal husbandry, travel, and navigation. [source]
In simple everyday language, the documentary illustrates the traditional role that the positions of night-sky stars played in the daily lives of Iranians, particularly among Iran's nomadic communities.
The article says that one of the documentary's most enjoyable features is hearing the late Homayoun Sanati-zadeh, a prominent writer and translator from Kerman who also contributed to renewed interest in ancient Iranian history. [source]
Among the notable works he translated, the source lists Mary Boyce's work on the history of Zoroastrianism, Bartel L. van der Waerden's work on the origins of astronomy, Wilhelm Barthold's historical geography of Iran, Arnold J. Toynbee's work concerning Achaemenid administrative geography, John Limbert's Shiraz in the Age of Hafez, and Ernst Herzfeld's work on Iran in the ancient East. [source] [source]
Note: In the sense used by this article, a “star clock” means determining and comparing time through the positions of particular stars. The method commonly makes use of Polaris or of the changing positions of selected stars over the course of the year. [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source]