Jaladat Ali Badirkhan

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Jaladat Ali Badirkhan (or Celadet Alî Bedirxan in Kurdish) (April 26, 1893 - 1951), was a Kurdish writer, linguist, journalist and political activist. According to Kurdish sources he was born in a suburb of Istanbul, Turkey, however according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, he was born in Maktala in Syria. He held a master's degree in law from Istanbul University, completed his studies in Munich, and spoke several foreign languages including Arabic, Turkish, Russian, German and French.

Ali Badirkhan left Turkey for Egypt in 1923 when the Kemalists declared the new republic. In 1927, at a conference of Kurdish nationalists held in Beirut, a committee was formed, called the Xoybûn, to coordinate the movement. Jaladat Ali Badirkhan was elected as the first president of this committee. Three years later, he became involved in the Kurdish independence movement in Ağrı Province, called Republic of Ararat. After the defeat of the Ararat movement, he moved to Iran. Reza Shah Pahlavi, King of Iran, tried to persuade him to stay away from Kurdish nationalist movement, and offered him a consulate job, but had him expelled from the country when he did not agree. Then he moved to Iraq, but the British did not want him to stay, and he finally moved to Syria in 1931, where he lived his remaining two decades in exile.

After the defeat of Kurdish nationalist movements in Turkey, Iraq and Iran, he devoted himself to the Kurdish cultural issues. In 1935 he married his cousin Rewşen Xanim. He had two children from this marriage, Cemşîd and Sînemxan. During his last years, he faced severe economic problems, and he had to work as a farmer. In July 1951, he fell into a well during an incident and died.

His daughter Sînemxan, lives as of 2005 in Baghdad; she has written several books on Kurdistan's history.

[edit] Works

His work in exile concentrated on a Latin alphabet for the Kurdish. In 1931, he published the Kurdish grammar book Bingehên rêzimana Kurdî (or Bingehên gramera kurdmancî). The French authorities in Syria permitted his publishing of a Kurdish-oriented cultural magazine, Hawar, beginning on May 5, 1932. It was initially bi-monthly, and primarily in Kurdish, with 3 or 4 pages per issue in French. Although the first 23 issues, from 1932 to 1935, were published using the Arabic alphabet, his principal purpose was the further development and spread of the Latin-based alphabet he had developed for northern Kurdish (i.e., Kurmanji), and issues 24 to 57, from 1941 to 1943 (monthly), were published in the standard Latin-based Kurdish alphabet, also known as the "Bedirxan script". It is still used by Kurds in Turkey and Syria. From 1942 until 1945, he published a separate monthly journal named Ronahî, comprising 28 issues. In 1970, the French translation of his book on Kurdish grammar was published in France.

[edit] Books

Nivêjên Êzidiyan (The prayers of Yazidis)
Ji Mesela Kurdistanê (About the Kurdistan Problem), in Hawar journal, vol.45
Elfabêya Kurdî û Bingehên gramera kurdmancî (Kurdish Alphabet and The Basics of Kurmanji Grammar)
Bedir Khan, Djeladet Ali & Lescot, Roger, Grammaire kurde : (dialect kurmandji), Paris : J. Maisonneuve, (Librairie d'Amerique et d'Orient), 1991.(also Paris : Maisonneuve, 1970. - x, 372 p. - x-19-234839-5)