Kurdish Karbala poet Sheikh Murad Zengi remembered on death anniversary

KIRKUK, Iraq — Cultural figures in northern Iraq are marking the death anniversary of Sheikh Murad Zengi, a Kurdish religious scholar and poet regarded as a pioneer of Kurdish-language Karbala literature, who died in 1975. Born in 1870 in Khanaqin, near Kirkuk, Zengi studied at the religious seminary in Najaf before returning to his hometown, where he established a Husayniyya and delivered sermons in Kurdish to communities across the region. He was later imprisoned for a year in Kirkuk and sent into exile, according to his biographical account. His collected poems, or divan, titled "Gülzar-ı Kerbela-i Aşk," were published in two volumes in Kirkuk in 1972 and officially registered with the Baghdad National Library. The work recounts the events of Karbala in verse dedicated to Imam Husayn and the Ahl al-Bayt, written in the Khanaqin dialect of Kurdish. Four additional manuscripts by the poet remain unpublished. Cultural institutions and local figures have called for the manuscripts to be digitized and released to preserve the literary heritage for future generations.