“‘Man’ and ‘woman’ of the Arabs, we call mīr and zhin.
‘Father,’ bāb; and ‘mother,’ dā; ‘brother’ we call brā.
‘Son,’ say we kurra; ‘daughter,’ kich; and ‘uncle,’ mām.
‘Aunt’ is mata; ‘turban,’ shāsh; ‘grandfather’ goes like pīra-dā.
‘Rent’ is kirā; ‘a pledge,’ kīrū; ‘loss,’ ziān; and durū, ‘lie.’
‘Selling’ we say firūhtin; ‘giving,’ dān; and ‘buying,’ kirrin.
‘Neck’ is mil or ustū; ‘heart’ is dul; shāhīna is ‘gay.’”
In this manner some two thousand words are taught to the child, and, with the excellent memory of the Aryan, this style of teaching (a popular one throughout the East) is less automatic and “parrot-like” than might be imagined.
From Ahmadi Khani we may turn to the Sharaf Nama, a famous history of the Kurds written by Sharaf ud Din Bey Hakkari of Bitlis, a rare and eagerly sought after volume, of which there is a copy in the British Museum. This is the best known of the literary works of Kurds, the fact, however, of its not being written in Kurdish denying it a place in Kurdish literature.
Sulaimania, during its short life of two centuries, has produced a great number of poets, who have contributed in verse to the literature of Kurdistan, generally in Kurdish, and some have progressed so far as to have written very bulky volumes.