Among the most prominent of these characteristics is the adaptation of Iranian world-view into the rituals of Nowruz. Although we have evidence that in the mid years of the Sasanian period, due to the neglect in maintaining the calendar, Nowruz was sometimes celebrated in the early summer or mid-winter, we should remember that the original place of Nowruz was always at the beginning of the spring. Different branches of Iranian Gnosticism that were popular in the late Sasanian and early Islamic era, most prominently displayed in Manichaeism, saw the world as a place of battle between the forces of good and evil. Manichaeism, and its Iranian roots in the religion of the Magi, defined darkness and cold as the signs of evil and lightness as the force of rightness. In fact, the most obvious characteristic of the Manichean deities is their extraction of light, a fact that later even influenced Christianity and its concept of halo. Thus, it was easy for most people to associate winter with forces of evil and see spring as the rebirth of light. Subsequently Nowruz was seen as the triumph of light over dark and the beginning of the rejuvenation of the world.
