Nihat Öner

An Kurdish publication has now been released titled "Shamdinani Stories I" (Brill, 2026). Shamdinani Stories I is a bilingual Kurdish-English edition of 61 texts written between 1916 and 1917 by Mullah Sa'id Shamdinani, a Kurdish qazi from Shamdinan, for the Russian consul Basile Nikitine in Urmia. The texts are a mix of animal fables, folk anecdotes, and historical accounts of the tribes and notable figures of Central Kurdistan, each given with the original Kurdish facsimile, a transliteration, and an English translation, alongside a full glossary and map. I will be highlighting some culturally significant points among these various stories in future posts. The editor is Ergin Öpengin, who began working on MacKenzie's archive in Göttingen in 2015, drawing on it alongside Nikitine's own letters and papers to reconstruct the full history of the collaboration. The late great scholar David N. MacKenzie is credited as co-editor posthumously (he died in 2001), since his transcriptions and translations form the backbone of the edition. The book also folds in help from a wide circle of many great scholars: Prof. Ludwig Paul granted access to MacKenzie's archive, Dr. Numan Ertaş and Dr. Masoud Mohammadirad helped build the map of locations, Dr. Yaşar Kaplan supplied commentary on tribes and theology, and Alexey Lyavdansky assisted with the Russian sources, among others. Öpengin also interviewed elderly residents of the Shamdinan district and descendants of Mullah Sa'id's own family to fill gaps the written record couldn't. Publication was made possible by a European Research Council grant (ALHOME project), enabled by Prof. Geoffrey Khan, which is also why the whole volume is free and open access. brill.com/edcollbook-oa/titl…