Osman Efendîyo Babij or Osman Esad (born 1852 in

Siverek Siverek (; ; ) is a municipality and district of Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Its area is 3,936 km2, and its population is 267,942 (2022). Siverek is in the Şanlıurfa province but is geographically closer to the large city of Diyarbakır (a ...

– died in 1929 in Siverek) was a

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish language ** Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) **Central Kurdish (Sorani) **Southern Kurdish ** Laki Kurdish *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern ...

religious figure and

Mufti A mufti (; , ) is an Islamic jurist qualified to issue a nonbinding opinion ('' fatwa'') on a point of Islamic law (''sharia''). The act of issuing fatwas is called ''iftāʾ''. Muftis and their ''fatāwa'' have played an important role thro ...

of Siverek whose 1903 book ''Mawlûd'' is known to be the second published book in

Zaza Zaza may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Zaza (play), ''Zaza'' (play), written by French playwrights Pierre Berton and Charles Simon * Zaza (1915 film), ''Zaza'' (1915 film), a film directed by Edwin S. Porter * Zaza (1923 film), ''Zaza'' (1 ...

Biography

Babij was born in the village of Bab (Kapıkaya) in Siverek,

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

. His father Hacı Eyüp Efendi was Mufti of Siverek and Babij spoke

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Kurmanji Kurdish Kurmanji (, ), also termed Northern Kurdish, is the northernmost of the Kurdish languages, spoken predominantly in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq, northern Syria and the Caucasus and Khorasan regions. It is the ...

and

Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish (, ; ) was the standardized register of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. ...

beside Zaza. Babij followed his father and was the Mufti of Siverek for 24 years from 1904 to 1929. He died 82 years old in Siverek and is buried in the town. His main work ''Mawlûd'' was written in 1903 but only published in 1933 by

Celadet Alî Bedirxan Celadet Alî Bedirxan (; 26 April 1893 – 15 July 1951), also known as Mîr Celadet, was a Kurdish diplomat, writer, linguist, journalist and political activist. He held a master's degree in law from Istanbul University, completed his stud ...

. The original text was in Zaza in

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

but

Mehemed Malmîsanij Mehmet Tayfun ''alias'' Malmîsanij (born 1952 in Diyarbakır) is a Kurdish author and linguist. He mostly writes in Zazaki. He often writes under the pseudonym Malmîsanij. He studied at the University of Ankara, and was under arrest three times b ...

transcribed the text into

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

in 1985. ''Mawlûd'' is sectioned into eight parts and has 196

couplets In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there ...

Notes

Bibliography

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Babij, Osman Efendiyo 1852 births 1929 deaths Zaza language 19th-century Kurdish people Kurdish people from the Ottoman Empire People from Siverek 20th-century Kurdish writers