🇬🇧 Preface

There is a Kurdish literature, and much of it is in print. The fight of the Kurdish people for independence is a factor making for instability in one the most delicate areas of the present-day world. At the pivot between Turkey, Iraq and Iran, an area full of temptation for Russia, the Kurdish world must already be reckoned with in world politics. It may well have a fuller part to play in the future. Today, in any case, historians of « clisures », folklore specialists, historians of the epics of peoples and students of comparative culture may look to contemporary Kurdish literature for material which, if not altogether untouched, does retain a freshness which makes it of primordial interest. French and English-speaking scholars need a dictionary for convenient use, easily accessible and, at the same time, reliable, to bring the Kurdish language within their reach. Students of Indo-european languages, too, may be glad to welcome a work of this kind, whose character and method provide a guarantee that the information it contains is beyond question as to quality and reliability.

Miss Blau has carried out this work under the constant supervision of H.E. Emir Kamuran Aali Bedir Khan, Professor of Kurdish at the School of Modern Oriental Languages.

Miss Blau’s dictionary is so simple and straightforward both structurally and in use as to be immediately intuitive in character. A sure value is, moreover, conferred on a work of this kind by the state of Kurdish lexicography in the West. As one who has watched this book grow, I can only be delighted to see the Institution of which I have the honour to be Director patronizing the publication of such a work : it will form a felicitous complement to the introductory work which Miss Blau has already accomplished in her excellent « Kurdish Problem ». A research institute is always proud to see one of its members produce a work of pioneer scholarship. When that work has been carried out with enthusiasm and intelligence, and a genuine desire to be of service, it should be welcomed in the same spirit as it was conceived. We are therefore delighted to publish this little book, realizing how worthwhile it is going to be.

Armand ABEL

Director of the Centre for the Study of the Problems of the Contemporary Moslem World

Brussels