نه

Nine has folkloric weight in Iranian tradition. نه ماه (noh mâh) is the conventional length of pregnancy in Iranian counting, and the phrase نه ماه و نه روز (noh mâh-o noh ruz), "nine months and nine days," appears in lullabies and grandmother stories about how long a mother carried you. The number echoes through classical poetry: نه فلک (noh falak), "the nine spheres," refers to the medieval cosmological model of nine concentric celestial spheres around the earth, and Hafez and Saadi reach for it as shorthand for the entire cosmos. In folk medicine and traditional remedies you sometimes encounter the instruction to repeat a prayer نه بار (noh bâr), "nine times," especially for protection against the evil eye, where odd numbers are considered more potent than even ones.