Abstract:

The term mawlid, or mawlūd (< mawlūdun fīhi) refers to the verse and sometimes panegyric prose texts written in honor of the Prophet, his birth, and his life. Laylat al-mawlid, mawlid al-nabī, and mawlid al-nabawī were the cover names for the general celebrations on the occasion of the prophet’s birthday (generally accepted as Monday, 12 Rabī‘ I). While authors of mawlid deal with diverse aspects of the historical life of Prophet, however, this textual tradition normally suffers from simplistic rendering of the realities of Prophet’s life. A notable addition to the mawlids, for example, includes the mythological trends which heavily have focused on the superiority of Prophet over the human. The mawlids sometime include a number of mystical or non-Orthodox terms as well as a type of Shiite superiority over other Islamic sects1 . Despite the serious limitations of the genre, the mawlids are useful introductions to some religious, mythological, and even musical aspects of Islam2 . What is given here for the first time is merely a very brief introductory note on a newly-found Gūrānī 3 manuscript in which the Muslim Kurds’ interest in the genre is visible. Although since the last decade Kurds devoted most of their energy to national studies, they also offered important contributions to mawlid scholarship, particularly textual studies, such as their editions, rarely accompanied by translations. The rise of attention to the mawlid religious texts perhaps is due to the same rise in national identity as mawlids (written in various Kurdish dialects) encourage a popular conception that it is a sign of Kurdish ethnic and cultural boom in the Islamic area. Whatever mawlid’s influence may have been, the present Gūrānī manuscript is a respected resource in the tradition and may prove helpful in providing some new aspects of this large body of Kurdish literature

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