Kurdish Literature - Kurmanji Literature

Kurmanji Literature

A Yezidi religious work, the Meshefa Reş, is in a classic form of Kurmanji, and could well have been written sometime in the 13th century. It is held to have been written by Sheikh Hasan (born 1195 CE), a nephew of Sheikh Adi Ibn Musafir, the prophet of the Yezidis. Based on this date, Meshef can be considered as the oldest piece of prose in Kurmanji.

The Kurdish poet Muhammad Faqi Tayran (1590–1660) collected many folk stories in his book In the Words of the Black Horse. He also wrote a book of Sufi verse, The Story of Shaykh of San’ân. Faqi-Tayran also had versified correspondence with the poet Malaye Jaziri. Some of the well-known Kurmanji poets and writers are listed below.

1. Ali Hariri (1425–1495).
2. Mullah Ahmad (1417–1494) from Hakkari region, who wrote the author of Mawlud, a collection of verse and an anthology;
3. Salim Salman, author of Yûsif û Zuleyxa in 1586;
4. Malaye Jaziri (1570–1640) from Buhtan region, the famous sufi poet. His collection of poems contains more than 2,000 verses
5. Ahmad Khani (1651–1707), the author of Mam and Zin, a long poem of 2,650 distichs,is probably the best known and most popular of the classical Kurdish poets.
6. Ismail Bayazidi (1654–1710), author of a Kurmanji-Arabic-Persian dictionary for children, entitled Guljen.