Printer-friendly VersionBy Farhad Shakely
The Kurdish Globe
Poetry has always been the main pillar of Kurdish literature. By tracing the history of Kurdish poetry through its manifold themes and forms of expression and through its various periods of expansion and stagnation one also gets an interesting picture of the role and conditions of literature in an oppressed nation.
When the Kurdish poet Ahmad-ī Khānī (1651-1707) wrote the epic Mam ū zīn (Mam and Zīn) in 1694, he not only told a most beautiful love story, but also expressed his own political and philosophical ideals and described the political, economic, social and cultural aspects of a very important period in Kurdish history.
Khānī wished for the Kurds to have their own master, a master possessing his own throne and carrying his own crown, a master who knows how to appreciate science, art and poetry, learned books and dīwān". He expressed own ideal role as a poet and a thinker in this way:
Then I would hoist the flag of rhymed speech to the sky. I would resurrect Malā-y Jazīrī,bring 'Alī Harīrī to lifeand give Faqe Tayrān such joythat it would fill him with admiration for ever."
Khānī was an outstanding pioneer within many fields, including Kurdish literary history. When Xānī in his epic mentioned the Kurdish poets Malā-i Jazīrī, 'Alī Harīrī and Faqe Tayrān, it was the first reference to Kurdish literature ever given by a Kurd or a non-Kurd. However, this was no more than a reference, and a fuller recording of Kurdish literature was not to come for yet another century.
Literary history: First attempts
Any literary scientist who wants to research Kurdish literature will face great difficulties. This is because no comprehensive recording of Kurdish literature yet exists. Recorded Kurdish literary history consists of a number of articles and pamphlets and a few books, all written during the last 120 years. Furtherance all the existing recordings suffer from two important shortcomings. Firstly, it is obvious that they are the first attempts at scientific research in this field, lacking back up material, literary sources and models. Consequently the works are rather superficial, incomplete and unsystematic. Secondly the works generally include merely certain periods of Kurdish literature, often restricted to a certain genre of literature from a certain part of Kurdistan.
There is of course also a whole set of external social and political reasons for this situation; negative conditions which impede the development of the Kurdish society and culture -, today may be more than ever.
The most important works of Kurdish literary history are, as follows:
- The literary data given to the Russian consul August Jaba by the learned.
Malā Mahnūd Bayazīdī in Erzurūm at the end of the 1850s. The data was recorded and published as a book by Jaba in 1860.
- Amīn Fayzī: Anjuman-ī Adībān (Assembly of Writers), Istanbūl 1920. This book describes in 147 pages the lives of some Kurdish poets with quotations from their poetry.
- Rafīq Hilmī: Shi'r ū adabiāt-ī Kurdī (Kurdish poetry and literature), Baghdad, (Vol. 1 - 1941) and Vol. 2 -1956. This work is normally classified as literary criticism, but it also includes historical material, like biographical data and description of different periods in Kurdish literature.
- Alauddīn Sajjādī: mźzhū-y Adab-ī Kurdī (Kurdish literary history), Baghdad, 1st ed. 1952, 2nd ed. 1973: This has been one of the most important sources of Kurdish literary history to the present day. Apart from studies on 24 Kurdish poets it also includes studies on Kurdish history, the tradition of the Kurdish epic, Kurdish mythology, Kurdish journalism and a series of comparative literary studies of old Egyptian, Persian, Chinese, Indian and Hebrew literature.
- Dr. Izzuddīn Mustafā Rasūl: Realism in Kurdish literature. Beirut 1968: This is an Arabic translation of Dr. Rasūl's Russian doctoral thesis, describing Kurdish literature from a Marxist point of view.
- Sādiq Bahā' ud-dīn Amedī: Hozānvanet Kurd (Kurdish poets), Bagdad 1980. This book contains biography and poems by 19 Kurdish poets who wrote in the North Kurmanjī dialect.
- Prof. Qenate Kurdoev: Tarix-a Edebiyet-a Kurdī (Kurdish literary history), Stockholm 1983 (2 Vol.). This is similar in many ways to Sajjādī's Kurdish literary history.
The beginning of Kurdish Art Poetry: a scientific controversy
Apart from the lack of source material there are also other circumstances which limit scientific literary work and make it difficult. Many of the difficulties derive from the fact that Kurdistan is divided up between several countries where the conditions are different and where the political, social and cultural development has reached different levels.
A direct result of this division is the lack of common standard for the written language. Kurdish is therefore written in two main dialects, and in no less than three different alphabets: modified Arabic characters are used in Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan, the Latin-Turkish alphabet in Turkish and Syrian Kurdistan and the Cyrillic alphabet in the Soviet part. In addition there is also some Kurdish literature written in Hebrew and Armenian characters. The culture of the dominating peoples in the region has of course influences Kurdish culture and language in many ways.
From a Kurdish point of view this influence has been negative and complicates the language situation to an even greater extent. This complicated situation is still the cause of numerous linguistic controversies concerning the origin and classification of the Kurdish language and its dialects. One of the dialects which is causing dispute is the Luri (or Lori) dialect. Most Kurdish literary critics and historians consider Kurdish art poetry to have started with the poet Bābā Tāhir Hamadānī (935-1010) who wrote in this dialect. Many European Orientalists, however, classify Lurī as southwest Iranian language, unlike Kurdish, which belongs to the north-western group of Iranian languages. Due to the complicity of this situation, the classification of the Iranian languages and dialects cannot yet be regarded as completed.