Ahmad Khani, also spelled Ahmad-i Khani, was a Kurdish writer, poet, astronomer and philosopher. He was born amongst the Khani's tribe in Hakkari province in present-day Turkey. He moved to Bayezid in Ritkan province and settled there. Later he started with teaching Kurdish (Kurmanji) at basic level. Khani was fluent in Kurdish, Arabic and Persian. He wrote his Arabic-Kurdish dictionary "Nûbihara Biçûkan" in 1683 to help children with their learning process.
Sherko Bekas, was a Kurdish poet. He was born on 2 May 1940 in Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan as a son of the Kurdish poet Fayak Bekas.
Abdurrahman Sharafkandi or Hazhar or Hajar,, was a renowned Kurdish writer, poet, lexicographer, linguist, and translator, from Iran. Some sources of Sharafkandi birthplace have been mentioned in the village of Sharafkand, which is Bukan functions.
Mahmud Bayazidi, was a Kurdish philosopher, polymath from Bayazid in the Ottoman Empire.
Ferhad Shakely is a prominent Kurdish writer, poet and researcher. He is one of the founders of modern Kurdish poetry in the post-Goran period. He was born in 1951 in the province of Kirkuk in Iraq. He began publishing poetry in 1968. In the early 1970s he studied in the Kurdish department of the Baghdad University. He joined the Kurdish national movement under the leadership of Mustafa Barzany in 1974 and went to Syria in 1975. He lived in Germany from Autumn 1977 to Summer 1978. Finally he settled in Sweden in the same year. In 1981, after studying for one year at the University of Stockholm, he went to Uppsala University where he studied Iranian languages. He is now teaching in the same university. He published a Swedish-Kurdish Journal between 1985 and 1989 called Svensk-Kurdisk Journal. Moreover, he published a literary Kurdish magazine, Mamosta-y Kurd between 1985 and 1996. In 1992, he published Kurdish nationalism in Mam and Zin of Ahmad Khani, a literary history that was translated into Swedish, Turkish and Arabic. Many of his poems have been translated into Persian, Arabic, Norwegian, Swedish, English, French, Italian, Icelandic and Danish.
Tawfeq Mahmoud Hamza or Piramerd was a Kurdish poet, writer, novelist and journalist. He was born in the Gwêje neighborhood of Sulaimaniya city in Iraq. In 1926, he became the editor of the Kurdish newspaper Jîyan. He is also credited for the establishment of the first private Kurdish school in Kurdistan called Partukxane i Zanistî.
Firat Cewerî is a Kurdish writer, translator and journalist. He was born in the town of Derik near Mardin in south-eastern Turkey. In the 1980s, he emigrated to Sweden, where he lives now.
Mehmed Emîn Bozarslan, is a Kurdish writer. He was born in Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey. He moved to Sweden as political asylum seeker in 1978, and he has been living in Uppsala Sweden since then. The most famous of his early works was Alfabê which was the first ABC-Book for Kurdish learning that was published in Turkey in 1968. The books were impounded immediately by a Turkish court. Emin was arrested and jailed under separatism charges. He was released after a while but jailed again in another occasion under military regime from spring 1971 to summer of 1974. He moved to Sweden as political asylum seeker in 1978, and he has been living in Uppsala, Sweden since then.
Mam and Zin is a Kurdish classic love story written down 1692 and is considered to be the épopée of Kurdish literature. It is the most important work of Kurdish writer and poet Ahmad Khani (1651-1707). Mam and Zin is based on a true story, laid down from generation to generation through oral tradition. The content is similar to a Romeo and Juliet story. For Kurds, Mam and Zin are symbols of the Kurdish people and Kurdistan, which are separated and cannot come together. The Mem-u Zin Mausoleum in Cizre province has become a tourist attraction.
Lokman Polat is a Swedish writer of Kurdish origin. Before 1980, he was involved in publishing political commentaries and news. He has been arrested several times due to his activities in the field of Kurdish literature, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in absentia. He moved to Sweden in 1984 and began writing short stories in Kurdish. Lokam Polat is a founding member of the Kurdish Writers Association, a member of the international PEN and a member of the Writers' Union of Sweden.
Mahabad Qaradaghi or Mehabad Qeredaxî is a Kurdish writer, poet and translator. She was born in Kifri, a town near Kirkuk. Her first collections of poems were published in 1980, and was imprisoned by the Ba'athist regime from 1980 to 1981. In 1993, she emigrated to Sweden. She is currently the adviser of Prime Minister in Women Issues, in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Kurdish literature is literature written in the Kurdish language. Literary Kurdish works have been written in each of the four main dialects: Zazaki, Gorani, Kurmanji and Sorani. Ali Hariri (1009-1079) is one of the first well-known poets who wrote in Kurdish. He was from the Hakkari region.
Kurdistan was the first Kurdish newspaper. It was first published in April 22, 1898 in Cairo, Egypt by Mikdad Midhad Badirhan, a member of the Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti. In four years, 31 issues were printed in cities as Cairo, Geneva, London and Folkestone. It was an opposition newspaper published in exile and supported by the Committee of Union and Progress. The newspaper got banned in the Ottoman Empire and had to be smuggled in. According to the letters to the editor it had readers in cities as Adana, Damascus, Mardin and Diyarbakir. It published articles concerning the opposition to Sultan Abdul Hamid II and Kurdish history and literature. The In 1991 scholar Emin Bozarslan republished and translated into Modern Turkish a collection of its issues.
Khalil Duhoki or Xelîl Duhokî is a Kurdish writer, poet. He was born in Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan. He began writing poems in 1970. He has been active in several Kurdish journals, such as Berbang published in Sweden. He is a member of the Swedish Writers Union.
Suwara Ilkhanizada (1937–1976) was a Kurdish poet and writer. He was born in the village of Turjan near Bukan in the north-west of Iran. His family relocated to Bukan in the summer of 1954. He went to school in Bukan and continued his studies in Tabriz.
Eskerê Boyîk, (*1941), is a Yazidi poet and writer. He was born into a Yazidi family at the village of Qundexsaz in Armenia. He went to school in his village and later in the village of Elegez. He continued his studies in economics in Yerevan, and graduated in 1966. He has written many articles in Armenian and Russian. He is noted for his review of Soviet Kurdish literature. In the 1960s, he began writing poetry and articles in Kurdish. He is now living in Germany.
Tosinê Reşîd , , is a contemporary Yazidi writer, poet and playwright. He was born in the village of Koorakand (Kûrekend) in Armenia. He studied physics and chemistry at the Pedagogical Institute and graduated in 1964. After a few years of working as a teacher, he continued his studies in 1970 and received his PhD in chemistry in 1975. In the same year, he published his first book entitled Kilamê Rê. During the 1970s, around 200 of his articles were used under the name of Kurdish Encyclopaedia in cultural programs of Radio Yerevan. He published his first play based on the well known Kurdish folkloric epic Siyabend û Xecê in 1984. In 1993, he left Armenia and settled in Melbourne, Australia.
Fawaz Hussain or Fawaz Husên, is a contemporary Kurdish writer and translator. He was born in northeastern Syria. He pursued his studies in Sorbonne from 1978 to 1992, and received PhD in French language and literature in 1988. He is a member of Swedish Writers' Union and French Writers' Syndicate. In addition to Kurdish, he has written several books in French and has translated works of Albert Camus and Saint–Exupéry into Kurdish.
Serdar Roşan, is a contemporary Kurdish writer, poet and translator. He was born in Diyarbakir and after the 1980 coup emigrated to Sweden. He has published two books of poetry and three collections of short stories and Kurdish legends. He has also translated nine books from foreign languages into Kurdish including classic works by Cervantes, Guy de Maupassant, Ernest Hemingway and Jack London. He is a member of the Association of Kurdish Writers in Sweden.
Ordîxanê Celîl (1932–2007) was a Yazidi writer and academic. Born in Yerevan, he entered the philology department of the University of Yerevan in 1951 and graduated in 1956. He was appointed as the Kurdish studies chair of the University of Leningrad in 1957. He worked for three years at the Radio of Yerevan as its first Kurdish anchor. He visited Iraqi Kurdistan in 1958, where he conducted research on the Kurdish language. For many years, he worked on collecting Kurdish folk stories and poetry alongside his brother Jalile Jalil and sister Cemîle Celîl. His archive contains more than 100,000 Kurdish proverbs many of which are still unpublished.
