Grammar of the Kurmanji or Kurdish Language E. B. Soane Author of ' To Kurdistan and Mesopotamia in Disguise , etc. LONDON LUZAC & CO. PUBLISHERS TO THE INDIA OFFICE 46 GREAT RUSSELL STREET INTRODUCTORY NOTICE IT is not so long ago that Kurdish was described by travellers as a harsh jargon, a very corrupt dialect of Persian, unintelligible to any but the folk who spoke it naturally; or again by others as an artificial language composed of Persian, Armenian, and Turltish ~zo~ds.It is neither of these. A little research proves it to be as worthy of the name of a separate and developed language as Turkish or Persian themselves. The early Medes and Persians spoke two different languages,Medic or Avestic and STEPHEN AUSTIN SONS, L1.1). Old Persian (that of the inscriptions), but the two tongues PI?INTEl?S,HERTFORD llave grown further apart than was originally the case; and while Persian has adopted almost as great a proportion of Arabic words as our own Anglo-Saxon did of Latin and Greek words to form modern English, Kurdish, eschewing importations, has kept parallel, but on different lines of grammar; and while frequently adopting a phrase or turn of expression from its sister language, has retained an independence of form and style that marks it as a tongue as different from the artificial Persian as the rough Kurd himself is from the polished Persian. The seclusion and exclusiveness which have been its preservation have also been the means of allowing a certain development into dialects in the almost inaccessible mountains which are the home of the Kurdish nation. As little literature arose to exercise its fixing influence upon the language, there has been no impediment to the glowth-each along its own lines-of the dialects, which are now very numerous. A 2 iv KURDISH GRAMMAR INTRODUCTORY NOTICE Some years of study and residence among the Kurds terror of the surrounding peoples, and are ready for of various parts of ICurdistan have enabled the author to guerrilla warfare at any time. ascertain that there is a main Kurdish tongue, purest in In stating the fact that these tribes all speak the the most central districts of_Kurdistan and giving the Kurminji language, which is the Kurdish language, mention foundation for all the various dialects. must be made of the tribes which, living among the Kurds, From the changes which have taken place in the last two have received the name Kurd, and whose language- thousand years in the lands where Kurds are either a large among Europeans and Turks-has been called a Kurdish proportion or the whole of the population, it appears dialect. Chief of these is the ZgzZ, a tribe with many probable that the Kurds inhabited the regions between ramifications in Middle and Western Kurdistan.' The Uriimia and V311 Lakes and the mountains of the head- language of the ZZzz, while a pure Iranian tongue, has waters of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia, and also little in cotnmon with Kurdish in grammatical constructioll the Zagros mountain system to the south of that line, as and choice of words, and shows a few common features far as the Northern Lurish tribes or the ancient tribes of with the GiirZn and Lurish. Theorists have surtnised the Giirin and ArdalZn, now termed Kurds. Within these that ZZzZ may be an offshoot of the later Zoroastrian bounds was spoken the language of the Kurli?pzEh or population of Persia. Ku~dvzZnj;but when the power of the surrounding States In the Darsim Province of Asiatic Turltey, among waned, these warlike people pushed north and west till Kurd and Ziza, is found the Balaki tribe, which uses as now they have established themselves as far as BZyazid a vehicle of thought a mixture of Arabic, Armenian, and (long in the hands of Kurdish Beys, and a purely Kurdish Kurdish. city), Erzeriim, Erzinjin, and to the mountains north of The purest Kurdish races are probably the HakkZri Aleppo.' and Mukri. In these northern bounds they live to some extent as That the Kurds had in and about what we now know as strangers and nomads, though there has been a tendency Central Kurdistan been settled, and gained power and to settlement within the last two centuries; but while in security, finds a proof in the fact that a number of quite the nomadic and semi-settled state they are ever the brilliant poets existed in the HakkZri do:nains in the 'Leurs Bmigrations vers la Perse et la Susiane sont plus anciennes, Middle Ages, beginning with 'Ali Hariri, whose works are les 6crivains orientaux du moyen-8ge les y ~onnaissentd6jA. Mais still known, and who wrote in the eleventh century of our c'est vers I'Occident que ses colonies se sont dirigCes de prkfkrence. era in the ShamisclinZn district of the HakkZri (on the LA ils habitent la plaine de Nisibe, Mardin, et Urfa jusqu'A Alep, et Persian frontier, one of the wildest and most inaccessible en ArmBnie jusqu'd Erzerourn, Ani, et Alagoz, on trouve m&me des Kurdes jusque aans la province gkorgienne da ~omche'thi. Dans parts of the country). llAsie-Mineure on les rencontre dans I'Albistan sur le Dscheihan supCrieur, et ils s'dtendent de la jusqu'h CCsar6e et plus loin For some specimens of ZgzH the reader is referred to Forschungen encore' (Eugene Wilhelm, pamphlet entitled La La~guedes Kzlrdes, dberdie Kurden unddie iranischen Nordckaldaer, Lerch, St. Petersburg, Paris, 188j), 1858. v i ICURDISH GRAMMAR INTRODUCTORY NOTICE vii After him we know of Shaiith Ahtnad Jezri of the great account and died in the year 1784. In the south Halrkari, who wrote in the twelfth century, and whose there were a large number of poets at the court of the entire Dfvin has been discovered and reproduced by the Gfir2n Khans of Ardalgn at Sina, but these wrote for photolithograph process in Germany recently.' the greater part in the idiom of the Giiran, and no No other poet of note is lrnown till Muhammad Feqi great poets arose in Southern ICurdistan until the end Tairan of Miltis of the Hakkari, whose worlts are known of the eighteenth century at Sulaimania, since when that and who wrote in the fourteenth century. Following him place and Kirkiik have been the home of many poets is Mulla Ahmad of Bata of the Hakkari, whose MewlGd, and writers, both great and small, too numerous to a work on the birth of the Prophet, is still renowned. mention here. Between this poet and the next the HalzIzEiri had spread to The main tribal groups of the Kurdish nation are to-day Bayazid, whe~ethey became firmly established, and here the Milli Kurds of Western Kurdistan, the Hasananlu of one of the most farnous of all the Kurdish poets and the Armenian Plateau, the Hakkari of the lands including authors lived in the sixteenth century, Ahmadi Khani of Van, Bitlis, and east to the Persian frontier, the Upper Zab the HakkBri, whose many worlts, both educational and Valley, Jazira ibn 'Umar, and as far south as near Erbil ; otherwise, are perhaps the best known of all. He the Rawzndiiz tribes south of these, as well as the tribes established in Bayazid a school, and built also a mosque. west and north of Sulaimania, are of the Kurrnanj and A manuscript of his No bahiv, a metrical Arabic- Hakkari stock, and further south yet, their lands extending Kurdish dictionary for children, is preserved in the British to Qizil Iiubat and the Baghdad-Kermanshiih road, are Museum. the JBf, a Kurdish nomad tribe of great strength, speaking A pupil of his, but of little farne, one Ismail, followed an original Kurdish language much corrupted and mingled him in the next century at Bayazid. with Lurish forms. The end of the sarne century saw the birth of probably On the Persian side south of Uriimia are the Mukri race, the most famous of all the writers of the Kurds, Sharif whose language is probably the purest Kurdish to-day Khan of the Haltkiiri, who wrote in Persian the history of existing,' though each of these tribes has a large number the ICurds, the Shnl'rtf Nima, which is still the only of subsections, that of the Easananlii including such authoritative record that exists of the hi/story of the famous robber tribes as the Sibki, HaidarHnlC, and nation. Besides this he wrote innurnerable Kurdish books AdamPnlfi, while the Shekak, the noted fightin,a frontier and poems. tribe, are an offshoot of the Hakkiiri. The Bilbas are Murad Khan of Bgyazid of the Hakkari is the next probably a branch of the Haltkari, and were once a famous poet of whom there is definite record, but he was of no and powerful race, like that of Kawandiiz, whose Pasha in 1 Der Kurdiscp Dizwan des ShZcA AAmed won Geziret ibn 'Otnar Though differing considerably from the great bulk of the Kurdish genannt MaZa'i Gizri, with a notice by Martin Hartmann (S. Calvary tongues, and classed here as of the Southern Group, which is vastly and Co., Berlin, 1904). inferior, numer~cally,to tlie Northern Group. a.. Vlll ICURDISH GRAMMAR INTRODUCTORY NOTICE ix the early part of last century was independent and ruled tlnd die iranischen Nordchald2er in :857, a comprehensive with an iron hand over wide lands. work treating of the Kurmanji and Zaza languages with It must be confessed that very little attention has been a long review of worlzs on Persian and Icurdish dialects, paid to the Kurdish language by English students; in and comparative notes and a glossary of Kurmiinji and fact, I think it may not be a misstatement when I say Ziizii, the main portion of the work being devoted to that so far none in this country have directed their a number of stories with translations.