Brill Kurdish Studies – serie

In Endurance, Alex Pillen portrays a sense of being unique within Kurdish cultural spheres. How to feel unique despite devastating violence, cultural oppression and assimilation is a question faced by many communities globally. Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) is a focal point for such uniqueness.When a culture is under siege and many have lost a former way of life it may not be clear how a society looks itself in the mirror, finds its reflection. Alex Pillen’s portrayal of Speaking Kurdish in a Warped World locates such lines of reflection within everyday language. The fear of a random geopolitical pair of dice is global, a fear to be honed when reading this account of uniqueness in the face of totalising loss.

Winner of the Serbest Best Book Award in Humanities in Kurdish Studies 2026The present work uncovers the pivotal role translations in the periodical Hawar played in the formation of a Kurdish cultural identity. In this light, it foregrounds translators' agency and their contributions in novel contexts and thus fills a crucial gap in this area.This work provides new insights into identity formation, focusing on translations in a key magazine published in a minoritized language in the 1930s and 1940s. In this context, it particularly underscores the agency of Celadet Alî Bedirxan as the leading translator and writer as well as the founder and chief editor of the magazine. His vision of Kurdish cultural identity in Hawar had a multilayered characteristic: It was oriented toward a dialogic relationship between Kurdish and western cultures. It proposed the Roman script for Kurdish language dialects and introduced a simple prose style. It also embraced a plural Kurdish religious aspect and led the way to the development of modern Kurdish literature.

تصوّر ألكس بيلن، في كتابها "الصمود"، رؤية عميقة للشعور بالتميّز الذاتي داخل المجالات الثقافية الكردية. إن هذا الشعور بالتميز، في ظل العنف المدمِّر والقمع الثقافي وسياسة الاستيعاب، يمثّل التحدي الحقيقي الذي تواجهه العديد من المجتمعات حول العالم. وتُعدّ اللغة الكردية الشمالية – المعروفة بالكرمانجية – محورًا أساسيًّا لتجسيد هذا التميّز.وحينما ترزح ثقافةٌ ما تحت الحصار، ويجد أبناؤها أنفسهم قد فقدوا نمط حياتهم السابق، يصبح من الصعب على المجتمع أن ينظر إلى نفسه في المرآة ويحدّد هويته بوضوح. وهنا، تبحث المؤلفة في عبارة "التحدث بالكردية في عالم مشوّه" عن ملامح هذه الهوية داخل اللغة اليومية. إن الخوف من التقلبات الجيوسياسية العشوائية ليس محصورًا بمجتمع بعينه، وتتضح معالمه أكثر مع قراءة هذا التحليل الدقيق عن محاولة التشبّث بالهوية والخصوصية على الرغم من فقدان كل شيء.

During the First World War, the Russian consul Basile Nikitine recruited the Kurdish Mullah Sa’id of Shamdinan to assist him in the study of the Kurdish language and history in the city of Urmia in northwest Iran. Their collaboration resulted in a rich corpus of cultural and historical texts, which Nikitine subsequently intended to publish in cooperation with the British scholar David N. MacKenzie. The plan, however, was never brought to fruition, and MacKenzie’s copious unpublished material remained undiscovered until after his death. This volume presents facsimiles of the original Kurdish texts, a normalized transliteration with parallel English translations, an introduction sketching the life of Mullah Sa’id Shamdinani and the historical and literary context, as well as a Kurdish-English glossary and a map of locations. The result is a unique compilation of primary sources in Kurdish that document the cultural and political life of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Kurdistan, and significantly contribute to the study of the Kurdish language and history. Funded by the European Union (ERC, ALHOME, 101021183).