Arab Shamilov

Arab Shamilov (Kurdish: Erebê Şemo), (1897-1978), was a Kurdish novelist. He was born in the city of Kars in a Yazidi family in present-day north-eastern Turkey. During the World War I, from 1914 to 1917, he served as an interpreter for the Russian army. Later on, he became a member of the central committee of the Armenia's communist party. In 1931, he began working on the Kurdish literature at the Oriental Institute of Leningrad. He assisted in developing a Latin alphabet for the Kurdish language and became a member of the editorial board of the Kurdish newspaper Riya Teze(The New Path), published in Yerevan from 1930 to 1937. In Lenningrad, he also met Qenatê Kurdo and published his work as a document about Kurdish language in Armenia. His first and most celebrated novel, Kurdish Shepherd (Şivanê Kurd), was published in 1935 (in Russian only after serious censorial edits). In 1937, he was exiled by Joseph Stalin and was allowed to return to Armenia only after 19 years in 1956 following Stalin's death. In 1959, he published his first Kurdish novel titled Jiyana Bextewer. In 1966, he published a historical novel called "Dimdim" inspired by the old Kurdish folk tale of Kela Dimdimê (Dimdim Castle) which has been translated into Italian as well. Two operas have been written in Italian based on his novels, Il pastore curdo and Il castello di Dimdim. In 1967, he published a collection of Kurdish folk stories in Moscow.

Books

1. Şivanê Kurmanca
2. Barbang (1958) (Haypetrat, Yerevan)
3. Jiyana Bextewar (1959) (New edition, Roja Nû Publishers, 1990, 253 p.)
4. Dimdim (1966) (New edition, Roja Nû Publishers, 1983, 205 p.)
5. Hopo (1969) (New edition, Roja Nû Publishers, 1990, 208 p.)

References

1. Avesta Cultural Magazine (in Kurdish)
2. Kurdish Literature
3. Malpera Mehname
4. A Glimpse on the Kurdish Literature in the former Soviet Union
5. Il Castello Di Dimdim, epopea kurda, Autore: Shamilov, Ereb ; traduzione di Shorsh A. Surme, ISBN 88-86051-68-9, 1999
6. Shamilov, Arab, "Dastanî Qelay Dimdim", Kurdish Academy of Baghdad, 1975.