Tawfiq Wahbi and the Reform of the Kurdish Language in Contact Zones

Abstract

This study explores the life story and works of Tawfiq Wahbi, an Ottoman-Kurdish military, political, and intellectual figure. Born in Sulaimaniya in 1891, Wahbi received his education in Sulaimaniya, Baghdad, and İstanbul. He became a captain in the Ottoman army. He served as a minister and senator in Iraq. Following the 1958 Revolution, he settled in Great Britain, where he died in 1984. Wahbi is mostly known for his studies onthe Kurdish language. He contributed to Kurdish, Arabic, and English literary, cultural, and academic journals. The first study devoted to Wahbi’s intellectual biography in English, this article suggests that his scholarly interest was mainly shaped through his knowledge of and active engagement with European Orientalist scholarship. This paper suggests that Wahbi’s intellectual journey can be fittingly analyzed with reference toArif Dirlik’s use of the concept of “contact zone,” developed in the context of the relationship between Euro-American Orientalists and Bengali and Chinese intellectuals. In other words, Wahbi’s access to European languages and the scholarship produced in these languages in general, and his collaboration with British Orientalists in particular, seem to have been crucial in his endeavor of reforming Kurdish.