Biography, Works and Literary Personality of Mele Telheyê Şerefkî

Abstract

Mele Telheyê Şerefkî, one of the literary scholars of Kurmanji literature, has not been the subject of an academic research so far with his biography, works and literary personality. Only a few of his poems were in the possession of a few local madrasah teachers. Apart from this, there was no information about him in the literature. Therefore, we identified this situation as a research problem and in order to introduce him with his biography, works and literary personality, we prepared our questions and entered the field of study. During the research process, we saw Şerefki and met him face to face. We asked him our questions and recorded his voice. We collected information several times through interviews, one of the qualitative research techniques. Later, we obtained his manuscript works and studied them. As a result of the research, we found out that this scholar studied in the madrasa environment of Diyarbakır and Batman region since the 1960s under the famous mudarrises of the region and received his madrasa icazet from Mele Mûsa, the scholar of Diyarbakır Cimikan Madrasa. He started to write poems in Turkish, Arabic and Kurmanji from his early youth. Since he was the son-in-law of Şêx Xalidê Zengokî and his family benefited from his religious works in Kurmanji, he was influenced by him in terms of religious literature. However, since he studied in various madrasas in Diyarbakır and Batman, he started to write Kurmanji poetry with the reflex and attitude of Mele Şêxmus (Cegexwîn) and Mele Ebdurrehmanê Muşî (Durre). Şerefkî wrote a poetic mawlid, two divans, a poetic autobiography and a prose biography in Kurmanji, as well as several poems in Arabic and Turkish. Until now, none of these works have been published and researchers of Kurmanji literature have not been aware of him. The theme of his poetry is usually national sentiments, but there are also many poems that deal with the values of Islam.