53
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, Vol. 17.1, 53-79
© 2014 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute and Gorgias Press
A KURDISH GARSHUNI POEM BY
DAVID OF BARAZNE
(19TH CENTURY)
1
M
USTAFA
D
EHQAN
I
NDEPENDENT SCHOLAR
,
I
RAN
AND
A
LESSANDRO
M
ENGOZZI
U
NIVERSITY OF
T
URIN
,
I
TALY
A
BSTRACT
This publication of a Kurdish lament by the Chaldean priest David
of Barazne (d. 1880) is based on the autograph manuscript that con-
tains his poems in Syriac, Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish. The poem is
presented in the context of the traditional openness of the Church of
the East towards multilingualism and the sociolinguistic profile of
East Syrians living in Kurdistan. The sophisticated, yet inadequate,
system of writing Kurdish phonemes in Syriac script combines Classi-
cal Syriac conventions with conventions and diacritics which are used
1
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Mirella Galletti, who de-
voted her life to the study of Kurdish history and culture. Mustafa
Dehqan is the author of the section entitled Text and Translation and ex-
presses his warm thanks to Newzad Hirori and Michael L. Chyet who im-
proved the reading of the text. Alessandro Mengozzi prepared the text in
Syriac script for the edition and is the author of the introduction and the
sections entitled East-Syriac Garshuni and Kurdistani multilingualism, David of
Barazne, and
Kurdish in East-Syriac script.
54
Dehqan and Mengozzi
for other languages, especially Arabic and Neo-Aramaic. The text
edition is accompanied by a transcription in modern Kurdish orthog-
raphy and English translation.
Since the 19th century, Bible translations into varieties of Kurdish,
often limited to single books, have been sponsored by western mis-
sionaries or Chaldean prelates and prepared or revised by Kurdish
scholars.
2
They were printed in various alphabets: Roman, Arabic
and Armenian. Much less is known about Christian Kurdish texts
preserved in manuscripts and, among them, about those written in
Syriac script. Both West- and East-Syriac authors appear to have
written in Kurdish Garshuni and the very few texts which are
known or published may in fact bear witness to a wider phenome-
non and a more consolidated and wide-spread literary tradition. To
say the least, these texts confirm the cultural and pastoral appeal of
Kurdish dialects for Syrian Orthodox and Chaldean clergymen.
Pennacchietti describes a grammar in Classical Syriac verses of
the Kurdish dialect of the Badinān district (Zakho-Dehok-Amadiya
in northern Iraq), the south-eastern fringe of the vast Kurmanji ter-
ritory. The text was composed by the Chaldean monk Ablaḥad
‛Odisho‛ of the Rabban Hormizd monastery near Alqosh and is
preserved in a manuscript of the Iraqi Museum.
3
Harrak gives a full
description of the manuscript, that besides Ablaḥad’s grammar in
verse contains Kurdish sayings and proverbs, the Kurdish transla-
tion of a number of chapters of New Testament books and two
hymns On Resurrection written in Kurdish by Father Ablaḥad in
1888.
4
2
M. Dehqan, “A Kirma
ș
anî Translation of the Gospel of John,” Jour-
nal of Eastern Christian Studies 61:1&2 (2009), 208-9.
3
F. A. Pennacchietti, “Un manoscritto curdo in karshuni da Aradin
(Iraq),”
Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 36 (1976), 548-52.
4
Ms. 18078 in A. Harrak, Catalogue of Syriac and Garshuni Manuscripts.
Manuscripts Owned by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage, CSCO
639, Subsidia 126 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 28-34. Harrak mentions other
Kurdish translations of chapters of the Gospels and other Christian
sources, made by a certain Yūsif of ʻAqrā in 1855. They are preserved in
the manuscript collection of durekyaṯa (Neo-Aramaic hymns) and mêmrē (a
term generally used for poems and non-stanzaic hymns in the late East-
Syriac tradition), listed as ms. 96 of the Diocese of ʻAqra in Y. Ḥabbī,
A Kurdish Garshuni Poem
55
Kreyenbroek publishes a rather long poem composed in Kurd-
ish, written in West Syriac script and attributed to Maphryono
Basilius Simon of Tur ‛Abdin (died 1740). The poem is called lawîj
‘religious chant’ and consists of 51 verses. Each verse begins with
the vocative particle lo ‘oh!’ and consists of four lines. “No uniform
pattern can be detected to suggest a metre based either on the
length or number of syllables.” Prosodic inconsistency, however, is
compatible with a musical performance of the text. The four lines
of each verse are generally linked by end-of-line rhyme. The poem
addresses topics typical of Christian paraenetic discourses: the res-
urrection at the end of time, the final judgment and the necessity of
repentance, death and the vanity of this world, glory of the saints in
paradise, punishment of the sinner in hell.
5
Some of these themes also occur in the Kurdish Garshuni po-
em that comes from the song book of the 19th-century Chaldean
poet David of Barazne and will be published in the present paper.
David’s book will be presented in the framework of the literary ef-
fects of multilingualism, especially in poetry, among East-Syriac au-
thors. A few remarks on the Garshuni transliteration system em-
ployed in the autograph manuscript will precede the text edition, a
transcription according to modern Kurdish orthography, and an
English translation.
E
AST
-S
YRIAC
G
ARSHUNI AND
K
URDISTANI
M
ULTILINGUALISM
East-Syriac script has been used to write a variety of languages oth-
er than Classical Syriac. This is certainly due to the fact that the
Syrian Churches are traditionally well-equipped to face multilin-
gualism and multiculturalism,
6
especially the Church of the East,
“Maḫṭūṭāt abrašiyyat ʻAqrā,” in Fahāris al-maḫṭūṭat al-suryāniyya fī l-ʻIrāq,
(Baghdad: Al-Ma
ǧ
maʻ al-ʻilmī al-ʻirāqī, 1981), 70; presently unavailable.
5
P. G. Kreyenbroek, “The Lawij of Mor Basilios Shimʽun: A Kurd-
ish Christian Text in Syriac Script,” Journal of Kurdish Studies 1 (1995), 29-
35. In G. A. Kiraz, Tūrrāṣ Mamllā. A Grammar of the Syriac Language, vol. 1
Orthography (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2012), 306-9, the paragraph on
“Syro-Kurdish” is a detailed description of the transcription scheme used
in the text published by Kreyenbroek.
6
See the typological survey “Garšūnography I: Syriac as the Target
Script” in G. A. Kiraz,
Tūrrāṣ Mamllā, 291-322, and, on Turkish or Turkic
and Persian Garshuni texts, in West- or East-Syriac script, in the Near