Dilan (in Kurdish: محه‌ممه‌د ساڵح دیلان) is regarded as one of the most influential Kurdish Poets and one of the greatest

maqam MAQAM is a US-based production company specializing in Arabic and Middle Eastern media. The company was established by a small group of Arabic music and culture lovers, later becoming a division of 3B Media Inc. "MAQAM" is an Arabic word meaning a ...

singers of his time. He was one of the few early poets that brought a revolution in Kurdish poetry and literature in the 20th century.

Biography

Dilan was born in Goizha, a neighborhood in

Slemani Sulaymaniyah, also spelled as Slemani ( ku, سلێمانی, Silêmanî, ar, السليمانية, as-Sulaymāniyyah), is a city in the east of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, not far from the Iran–Iraq border. It is surrounded by the Azmar, Go ...

. His family's origins were from Qala Chuwalan, along with the Kurdish Principality of

Baban Baban () was a Kurdish principality existing from the 16th century to 1850, centered around Sulaymaniyah. The Baban principality played an active role in the Ottoman- Safavid conflict and gave significant military support to the Ottomans. They wer ...

, they settled in Sulaimaniyah in 1784. His father, Ahmed Dilan was a poetry enthusiast and a

specialist, apart from Kurdish he was fluent in Persian and Arabic, he played a key role in his son's love for poetry and maqam. Dilan went to Xalidiye Primary School, before completing secondary school, his father became ill; family responsibilities fell on his shoulder and he had no choice but to leave school and work. He was offered a job at the local tobacco company as a Clerk.

The poet

The first poem Dilan wrote was in 1948, at a festival, he recited the poem to the famous Kurdish nationalist poet Faiq Bekas. According to Dilan himself, Bekas refused to believe he was the writer which most likely was due to the poem having such depth in meaning and strict lyricality.

Newroz

In 1948, Dilan and his brother, Qadir Dilan, a musician, met with

Piramerd Tawfeq Mahmoud Hamza or Piramerd ( ku, پیرەمێرد) (1867 – 19 June 1950) was a Kurdish poet, writer, novelist and journalist. He was born in the ''Goija'' neighborhood of Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region. In 1926, he became the editor of t ...

in a Mewlewi street, the ageing philosopher took out his cigarette packet and wrote the Newroz poem on it before handing it over to them, he then asked if they could write a melody for the poem and if Dilan himself could sing it when Newroz arrives. It didn't take long before Qadir Dilan wrote the timeless Newroz melody with Dilan being the first artist to sing it on 21 March 1948. Today all over the cities of

Kurdistan Kurdistan ( ku, کوردستان ,Kurdistan ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, Kurdish la ...

the song is played when

Newroz Newroz or Nawroz ( ku, نەورۆز, Newroz) is the Kurdish celebration of Nowruz; the arrival of spring and new year in Kurdish culture. The lighting of the fires at the beginning of the evening of March 21 is the main symbol of Newroz among t ...

arrives.

In prison

From 1947 to 1966 Dilan was arrested, tortured and imprisoned for 13 years for his involvement in Kurdish independence movements and at times for his art, many of his poems were written while he was in prison in 1963 for writing "Rez" (In Kurdish: ڕه‌ز, In English: Vineyard), he served one year in prison. There he recalls various events,

Omar Kayyam Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam ( fa, عمر خیّام), was a polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, ...

's famous poem about the wind breaking his glass of wine and the blaming of God by the poet, the other event being

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

's supposed hiding in the wine vessels before his writings occurred, then Dilan compares them with the burning of the villages and the vineyards in the early 1960s by the Iraqi government. The poem is a comparison between three events yet the only connection between them is grape, Kayyam drinking the wine,

thinking inside the wine vessel and the vineyards burning in

, the poem's deep meaning and contrast shows why it's considered a masterpiece of Kurdish poetry.

Diwan of Dilan

Dilan's colleague Abdulla Agreen took on the task of collecting his poems and publishing a Diwan under the name ''Diwani Dilan''. The book was published in 1987.

Death

On 28 September 1990, Dilan died at the age of 63 and was buried at the Seywan cemetery in his hometown.

References

World Music
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dilan, Muhamad Salih Iraqi Kurdish people Kurdish-language singers 1927 births 1990 deaths 20th-century Iraqi male singers