Hajji Qadiri Koyi

Bust of Hajji Kadiri Koyî

Hajji Kadiri Koyi (in Kurdish Hecî Qadirê Koyî ) (* 1817 ; † 1897 in Istanbul ) was a Kurdish poet. In his poems he advocated national recognition of the Kurds and their education. He lamented the backwardness, religious fanaticism and illiteracy among the Kurds. Koyi encouraged people to face science and the challenges of modern society. After Koyi, the one who spoke Kurdish was Kurd. The two most common words in his works are book and writing . He advocated the creation of an independent Kurdistan . At the time of Koyi in the late 19th century, the Kurdish principalities were gradually dissolved by the Ottomans and the Safavids .

Koyi criticized the sheikhs and Mollas very much for not doing anything for the Kurdish language and the fate of the Kurds. He spent his last years in Istanbul, where he became familiar with the nationalisms of other peoples. Although he mostly wrote poetry, he encouraged the Kurds to publish Kurdish-language magazines and newspapers. In Constantinople he was the teacher of the family of Bedirxan Beg , who himself was in exile in Damascus in 1847 after an uprising .

Reading sample

Kurdi axir bilê çi ye eybi?
Her kelam heq e, niye eybi
Ya legel Farsi çi ferqi heye?
Bo çi ew rast e, bo çi em kemiye?

German translation:
Say, what's so shameful about Kurdish?
Only the holy words [of the Koran] are precious,
but what then is the difference to the Persian?
Why is that expensive and this unworthy?

Works

• Dîwanî Hacî Qadirî Koyî , edited by Sardar Hamid Miran and Karim Mistafa Sharaza, 1986, Baghdad.

swell

• Farhad Shakely, Classical and Modern Kurdish Poetics , Uppsala University, Sweden.
• Amir Hassanpour , The Kurdish Experience ( November 13, 1999 memento on the Internet Archive ), University of Toronto, Canada.
• Amir Hassanpour, A Stateless Nation's Quest for Sovereignty in the Sky , Freie Universität Berlin, Nov. 1995.