The best known was Nali, who was the author of most of the various styles of poems that go to make up a complete “Divan,” or, as it may be called, “set of Works.”
The subject of the Sulaimania poet is like that of nearly all the poems of townsmen, love; page after page of fanciful allusion and play upon words, quite in the Persian style, which the Kurd always allows to influence the poem when it is of one of the forms used in Persian. The Kurdish poets of Sulaimania have, however, committed to writing some of the peculiar Kurdish chorus poems, which have a grace all their own. To translate such is to lose all the beauty of the original, which depends for its charm upon the language and the turn of the phrases more than upon the idea, for the love poems are much restricted in their simile, using all the stereotyped metaphor that Persian prosody allows, and little else, so close does the Kurdish taste in literature run to the Persian, unconsciously. Still, I only speak of the Sulaimania poets here. Outside, in the plain and upon the mountain-side one hears myriad songs, simple and pretty, for the Kurds are a race naturally gifted with all the kindred abilities to the linguistic sense, and it is extremely infrequent to meet one whose memory (unweakened by the use of memoranda and the art of writing, and unburdened by too many ideas) is not a storehouse of ancient folk-songs.
My bovine Hama was very fond in quiet moments of singing to a curious tune the old Mukri song, that of the fighter leaving his wife to go to the blood-feud:—
“I would across the hills and far away, wife,
Say, shall I go, or shall I stay, wife?
“If you would go, God guard you on the track,
And I will watch you from the pass, till you look back;
I shall stand there in the sun until your clothes are shining white,
Till you overtake the pilgrims that are travelling towards the night.
“What like of wife am I if I should weep or wail for you?