The event is set to be held annually according to the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) where it is hosted. The forum is organized by Kashkul, the university’s arts and culture center.
“There is too much good work to do in Kurdish studies, way too much,” Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse, Kashkul’s founding director, told Rudaw English on the sidelines of the forum.
They put a lot of thought into the name, Kashkul.
A kashkul is a traditional bowl carried by Sufi dervishes to collect food or offerings after reciting poetry or leading religious gatherings. It came to symbolize spiritual humility and renunciation of worldly desires in the Sufi path. Over time, the word has also taken on a broader meaning, referring to any collection or miscellany, much like the bowl that once gathered whatever was given.
Levinson-LaBrosse explained that as dervishes traveled, “they would gather different notes,” which became books that “took on the metaphorical name of kashkul. Like the Sufi begging bowl, they served as a collection point for whatever knowledge the seeker could receive.”
“When we thought about our organization, what we wanted to say is that people are our kashkul,” she said.
AUIS President Bilal Wahab described the forum as “a multidisciplinary hub, dedicated to Kurdish culture, literature, history, and society” with the mission “to serve as a global resource for scholars and researchers and to place AUIS at the forefront of Kurdish studies, not just in the region but worldwide.”
Wahab delivered a welcome address at the ceremony, reciting in both Kurdish and English, ‘I bear sugar,’ a famous poem by renowned Kurdish poet Nali, defending the use of the Kurdish language: “No one yell at my words, ‘This is Kurdish! Claptrap’ Anyone smart makes himself a student of meaning.”
The poem was translated by Levinson-LaBrosse and Shene Mohammed, director of the forum.
“The Kurdish dream of statehood has always had limits… limits that are beyond our control,” Wahab said.
The president of the host university also recited a poem by another renowned Kurdish poet, Abdulla Pashew, expressing the Kurdish people’s relentless desire for an independent state.
“We may not be able to overpower statecraft… but we have power in other areas: protecting our history, enriching our language, translating and introducing our literature, archiving our history,” Wahab said.
Sulaimani Governor Haval Abubakir also addressed the event, stressing the significance of Kurdish literature in documenting history: “Our history, our documents, our existence, if you remove it from literature, not much will remain.”
Dutch anthropologist Martin van Bruinessen, a leading scholar on Kurdish society, joined remotely in a keynote conversation. He traced the origins of Kurdish studies to Ottoman-era madrasas, where Islamic scholars fostered a local scholarly tradition that preserved and spread Kurdish intellectual life.
He added that in recent years, the rate of Kurdish contributors to academic journals in Kurdish studies in Europe “has gradually been increased.”
“In the beginning, Kurdish studies was a monopoly of people educated in Europe, and most of them were not Kurdish,” he stressed, adding that “at present it is more than half.”
In the following panel, Kurdish writer, translator, and journalist Xosman Qado from Amuda in northeast Syria (Rojava) said, “We embrace anyone who is interested in our history and our culture.”
Qado, a member of Hunergeha Welat - the art atelier of the country which is a prominent cultural collective based in Rojava’s Qamishli - stressed the group’s inclusiveness: “We cooperate with other minorities, we work with Arab members, we work with Assyrians.”
Principles of inclusivity and coexistence are fundamental pillars of Rojava, where the governance system is designed to be multi-ethnic, multi-religious and gender-equal.
He recalled Rojava’s resilience during times of conflict: “We had many friends making songs and melodies while they were being bombarded.”
Rojava has suffered repeated bombardments since 2016 which intensified after 2019 in the context of Turkish military operations against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - Rojava’s de facto army - which Turkey views as linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an Ankara-designated terrorist group.
“Kurdish existence was always in danger. Our art was supposed to become the voice of the Kurdish people. We had to renew our art annually and to deliver Kurdish art to an elevated level,” Mehmud Berazi, a popular contemporary musician whose songs usually attract millions of views on social media, said in the discussion.
“We lost many of our colleagues and many of our friends. Many times we couldn't go to the center [Hunergeha Welat] because of the bombardments, because many of our colleagues were wounded. Still they returned to the center,” Berazi added.
“We can change the world if we know about our culture and history,” said Natalia Gonsales De Oliveira, a Brazilian actress who has focused her creative work on the Kurdish struggle in Rojava.
De Oliveira developed a passion for Kurdistan and its people after researching the nation’s history and culture, leading her to uproot her life and move to Rojava, where she learned both English and the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish in a short period of time.
“I started doing research about [Kurdish] women who were fighting for freedom,” she told Rudaw English, noting how the struggle of female Kurdish fighters against the Islamic State (ISIS) inspired her to create art about Rojava.