1690s

Ahmad Khani writes Mem û Zîn

The poet Ahmad Khani turns a Kurdish folk love story into an epic in Kurmanji, with a famous lament for Kurdish disunity.

A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)
The Cambridge History of the Kurds — Hamit Bozarslan, Cengiz Gunes and Veli Yadirgi (eds), Cambridge University Press (2021)
Historical Dictionary of the Kurds — Michael M. Gunter, Scarecrow Press (2011)

Well established cultureidentity

Ahmad Khani (1650–1707) was a scholar and poet from the Hakkari region. Writing in Kurmanji rather than the prestige languages of Persian or Arabic, he retold the folk tale of Mem and Zîn, lovers kept apart by court intrigue in the emirate of Botan, as a long verse epic in the 1690s.

A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)
The Cambridge History of the Kurds — Hamit Bozarslan, Cengiz Gunes and Veli Yadirgi (eds), Cambridge University Press (2021)

In its introduction Khani laments that the Kurds, brave but divided, have no ruler of their own and so live under the Ottomans and Persians. Modern nationalists, from the nineteenth century onwards, read this as the first statement of Kurdish national feeling. Historians caution that Khani lived in a very different world, but the poem’s place in Kurdish culture is secure.

A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)
Historical Dictionary of the Kurds — Michael M. Gunter, Scarecrow Press (2011)

Why it matters today

Kurds

Mem û Zîn is the Kurdish national epic. Its tragic lovers, and Khani's question of why the Kurds have no king of their own, are still quoted by Kurds of every political stripe.