Hecîyê Cindî

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Hecîyê Cindî, or Hajiye Jndi (1908-1990), was a Kurdish writer, linguist and researcher. He was born into a Yezidi family in the village of Emençayîr near Kars. During World War I and Ottoman-Armenian conflict, his family fled to Armenia and settled in the village of Elegez. Later on he lost all his family (except for one brother) to disease and massacre. In 1919, he was staying in the American orphanage in Alexandropol, and in 1926 was transferred to the orphanage in Leninakan, Armenia. During 1929-30, he was teaching in the villages of Qundexsaz and Elegez, and became head of the cultural section of the Kurdish newspaper Riya Teze in 1930. He also worked as a news anchor in the Kurdish section of Radio Yerevan. In 1933, he became a member of Writers Union of Armenia and attended the meeting of Soviet Writers Congress in the following year. In 1937, during Stalin purges, he was imprisoned on March 18, 1937 on charges of spying, nationalism, being a Yezidi and helping counter revolutionaries. After one year, several Armenian intellectuals campaigned for his release and finally he was pardoned, although was not allowed to work. By Alexander Fadeyev' help and support, he was able to get back to his job. In 1940, he received his PhD in Kurdish folklore, and in 1941 the Armenian government, put him in charge of changing Kurdish alphabet from Latin to Cyrilic. The new alphabet was approved and published in 1946, and it was used in Kurdish education in Armenia, Georgia and several Central Asian republics. In 1959, he was employed in the Oriental department of Armenian Academy of Sciences, where he headed the Kurdology section for the next 8 years. From 1968 to 1974, he taught Kurdish literature and language in the Oriental Faculty of University of Yerevan. He wrote and translated many books, among them 15 books on folklore and literature, 33 textbooks for schools, 19 translations and 7 books in Pedagogy.

[edit] Books

Kurmanji Folklore, with Emînê Evdal, 1936.
Hikayetên Civata Kurdan (Kurdish Social Stories), Yerevan, 1959. (Re-published by Apec, 112 pp., Sweden, 1996. ISBN 91-87730-94-4 [1])
Mesele û Xeberokên Cimeta Kurda (Proverbs of the Kurdish Society), 800 pp., 1985.
Hewarî, Novel, 422 pp., Roja Nû Publishers, Stockholm, 1999. ISBN 9176720454