Sorani

Sorani Kurdish or Central Kurdish (کوردیی ناوەندی/Kurdî Nawendî), also called Sorani (سۆرانی/Soranî), is a Kurdish dialect or a language that is spoken in Iraq, mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan in western Iran. Sorani is one of the two official languages of Iraq, along with Arabic, and is in administrative documents simply referred to as "Kurdish". The term Sorani, named after the former Soran Emirate, is used especially to refer to a written, standardized form of Central Kurdish written in the Sorani alphabet developed from the Arabic alphabet in the 1920s by Sa'ed Sidqi Kaban and Taufiq Wahby. Tracing back the historical changes that Sorani has gone through is difficult. No predecessors of Kurdish are yet known from Old and Middle Iranian times. The extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to no earlier than the 16th century CE. Sorani originates from the Silêmanî region. The oldest written literature in Sorani is reported to have been Mehdîname (the book of Mahdi) from 1762 by Mulla Muhammed ibn ul Haj. Sorani thus only emerged as a written language after the decline of the Gorani vernacular, the Erdelan state and the rise of Baban around Silêmanî. During the Baban era, Sorani emerged as an important literary vernacular and many poets such as Nalî wrote in Sorani despite being proficient in Arabic and Persian. Nalî mentioned that he wrote in Sorani knowing his poetry might not receive the same dissemination as it might have done in the more prestigious Arabic or Persian. Contemporaries of Nalî like Salim and Mustefa Bêgî Kurdî also wrote in Sorani and their writings would become the foundation for the standard variety of Sorani. When the Baban dynasty was overthrown in 1850, the golden era of Sorani ended and poets including Nalî left the Silêmanî region. Hacî Qadirî Koyî continued the tradition of writing in Sorani and lamented the lack of promotion of Sorani among the Kurdish clergy and called those who did not do so 'bastards'.