What it means
داس (dâs) is the Persian word for a sickle or scythe, the hand tool with a curved blade used to cut grain stalks, grass, and weeds. The word is pure Persian, traceable to Middle Persian dās, and has been in continuous use since ancient times. A sickle (داس) has a short handle and is held in one hand; a scythe has a longer handle for two-handed swinging, though in Persian both are often called داس without distinction in everyday speech. The tool is also called داس دروگر (dâs-e derugar) in some dialects, referencing the harvester who wields it.
How to use it
- با داس گندم درو کردن. (bâ dâs gandom doru kardan.) “They harvested the wheat with a sickle.”
- داسم تیز نیست، باید ببرمش پیش آهنگر. (dâsam tiz nist, bâyad bebramesh pish-e âhangar.) “My sickle is not sharp, I need to take it to the blacksmith.”
- قبلاً همه با داس برداشت میکردن. (qablan hame bâ dâs bardâsht mikardan.) “Before, everyone harvested with a sickle.”
- داس رو بالا برد و یه دسته گندم برید. (dâs ro bâlâ bord o ye doste gandom borid.) “He raised the sickle and cut a bundle of wheat.”
Cultural note
Before mechanical combines arrived in Iran, the داس was the primary harvest tool across the country, and entire villages would mobilize for the دروگری (derogari), the communal wheat-cutting season. Classical Persian poets used the داس as a metaphor for fate and the passage of time, similar to how the scythe figures in Western imagery of death. Rumi and other poets draw on its image of merciless cutting. Today the داس is largely replaced by machinery on large farms, but it remains in use on small hillside plots in the Alborz and Zagros mountains where tractors cannot easily reach.