All figures
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Poet
Melayê Cizîrî
Life · 1570 – 1640
3Biography
Melayê Cizîrî (1570–1640), the greatest of Kurdish classical poets before Ahmedê Xanî. Born in Cizîrê (Cizre) in Bohtan to a religious family, he studied in the madrasas of Amed, Amadiya and Damascus, mastered Arabic and Persian and became one of the great scholars of his age. He composed the Dîwana Melayê Cizîrî in classical Kurmanji, a Sufi work joining divine and human love in the manner of Ibn Arabi and Hafez. He lived an ascetic life and taught the young Ahmedê Xanî. He died and was buried in Cizîrê. His Dîwan has been translated into many languages and is still read in every Kurdish madrasa as the model of classical Kurdish literature.
Poet
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Ahmedê Xanî
1651 – 1707
Ahmedê Xanî was born in 1651 in Bohtan, east of Amed, into a religious family from a Kurdish mountain region then contested between the Otto...
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Cegerxwîn
1903 – 1984
Cegerxwîn — 'the broken-hearted' — was the pen name of the poet Şêxmûs Hesen (1903–1984), the greatest Kurdish nationalist poet of the twent...
S
Sherko Bêkes
1940 – 2013
Sherko Bêkes (1940–2013), the greatest of contemporary Kurdish poets and pioneer of the new Kurdish 'image poetry'. He was born in Sulaymani...