In the mountains of the Sulaymaniyah highlands, in the district of Penjwen near the Iranian border, a tradition of poetry stretching back centuries produced, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a generation of Kurdish poets who understood something that soldiers and politicians often do not: that the deepest revolutions happen in the mind. Mufti Penjweni — born Mala Abdullah Tutonji in the village of Bestana near Penjwen in 1881 — was one of the most significant voices of this generation. A classically trained religious scholar who carried the title of Mufti, he turned the full weight of his theological and literary learning toward the awakening of Kurdish society. He wrote about education for women when women's education was considered subversive. He wrote about the homeland and the nation when these were dangerous subjects. He stayed in Penjwen and produced a body of poetry that earned him a place among the great Kurdish voices of the age of awakening.
Table of Contents
1. Part 1: Penjwen — The Mountain District That Shaped a Poet
2. Part 2: The Mullah-Poet — Classical Training and the Kurdish Literary Tradition
3. Part 3: The Age of Awakening — Kurdish Literature in the Late Ottoman World
4. Part 4: The Poetry of Social Reform — Education, Women, and the Nation
5. Part 5: Homeland and Nation — The Political Dimensions of a Lyric Voice
6. Part 6: The Religious Scholar as Social Critic
7. Part 7: Penjweni and His Contemporaries
8. Part 8: The Diwan — A Life's Work in Verse
9. Part 9: Legacy — The Statue in the Square and the Voice in the Mountains
Part 1: Penjwen — The Mountain District That Shaped a Poet
Penjwen sits in the mountains of what is now the Sulaymaniyah Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, close to the Iranian border. It is a landscape shaped by the rhythms of mountain agriculture and the passage of trade and pilgrimage routes between the Persian and Ottoman worlds — a cultural geography in which learning and poetry have long been valued, in which the figure of the scholar-poet is a recognisable and respected presence. Mufti Penjweni was born into this world in 1881. He would spend most of his life in Penjwen, and Penjwen would spend the rest of history being partially defined by him.
Part 2: The Mullah-Poet — Classical Training and the Kurdish Literary Tradition
The figure of the mullah-poet is central to the Kurdish literary tradition. In the Kurdish world, the madrasa-educated scholar was often also the community's most accomplished writer of verse. To be educated in the madrasa tradition was to be educated in poetry. Penjweni was trained in this tradition, absorbing the work of the great Kurdish poets: Nali (d. 1856), Sheikh Rezza Talabani (1835–1910), Mahwi (1830–1906), Mawlawi Tawagozi (1806–1882). What he brought to this tradition was the sensibility of a new era — using classical forms for new purposes: social awakening, women's education, national identity.
Part 3: The Age of Awakening — Kurdish Literature in the Late Ottoman World
The movement Penjweni was part of is known as the age of awakening — a period from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth in which Kurdish poets and intellectuals began to use literature explicitly in service of social reform, national consciousness, and modernisation. The great predecessor figure was Haji Qadir Koyi (1817–1897), the poet from the Koyi district whose verse was among the first in Kurdish literary history to address Kurdish national consciousness directly — calling on the Kurdish people to educate themselves, to unite, to recognise the gap between their condition and that of peoples who had achieved national self-determination. Penjweni, working in the same Sorani tradition from the mountains of Sulaymaniyah province, was among those who carried this legacy forward.
Part 4: The Poetry of Social Reform — Education, Women, and the Nation
The central preoccupations of Mufti Penjweni's poetry form a coherent programme of social reform: the necessity of education, the rights and status of women, the meaning of homeland and national identity, and the critique of social practices that kept Kurdish society in poverty and backwardness. His insistence on the education of girls placed him at the progressive edge of his society's debates. In the Kurdish highlands of his era, formal education for girls was virtually unknown. Penjweni argued in verse that a community that left half its population uneducated was a community that had amputated its own future — a remarkable position for a classically trained mufti to take, and one whose authority derived precisely from his training, not despite it.
Part 5: Homeland and Nation — The Political Dimensions of a Lyric Voice
Alongside his social themes, Penjweni was a poet of homeland and nation. He lived through the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the brief hopes of Sèvres and the immediate disappointment of Lausanne, the incorporation of southern Kurdistan into the British mandate of Iraq. The homeland he addresses in his verse is not merely a geographical space but a moral community: a people with a distinct language, a distinct culture, a distinct history, who deserve the recognition and rights that history has consistently denied them. The University of Sulaymaniyah's 2018 conference on his work identified homeland and nation as one of the major thematic pillars of his poetry.
Part 6: The Religious Scholar as Social Critic
There is something paradoxical, at first glance, about a Mufti using his position to advocate for the kinds of social reforms that the traditional religious establishment often resisted. But the paradox dissolves on closer examination. In the Kurdish world of Penjweni's era, the mullah-poet occupied a unique critical position precisely because of his classical training: he had the authority of the tradition, the linguistic mastery of its highest forms, and the standing within the community to be heard. Penjweni's advocacy for women's education was not the advocacy of an outsider attacking Islamic society; it was the advocacy of a learned mufti arguing that the society's own best values demanded practices that the society had not yet achieved.
Part 7: Penjweni and His Contemporaries
Mufti Penjweni was not alone in his enterprise. The early twentieth century produced, in the Sulaymaniyah region, a remarkable concentration of Kurdish intellectual and poetic talent. Among his contemporaries, Piramerd (1867–1950) was perhaps the most celebrated — a poet, novelist, and journalist from Sulaymaniyah who was a central figure in the development of modern Kurdish prose. Muhammad Amin Zaki, the historian who wrote the first systematic Kurdish history in the Kurdish language, was a near-exact contemporary. Both were engaged in the same fundamental project of documenting, celebrating, and asserting the reality of Kurdish cultural existence.
Part 8: The Diwan — A Life's Work in Verse
Penjweni's collected poems — his diwan — were compiled and published posthumously by Dazgay Andisha in Sulaymaniyah in 2016, more than six decades after his death. The long delay between the poet's life and the formal publication of his collected works is itself a commentary on the conditions of Kurdish cultural life in the twentieth century: the political disruptions, the wars, the suppression of Kurdish cultural institutions under successive Iraqi regimes. The existence of the diwan represents the survival of a body of work through decades of upheaval — the preservation, through the care of communities and individual scholars, of verse that the political authorities might have had reason to suppress.
Part 9: Legacy — The Statue in the Square and the Voice in the Mountains
In 2025, a statue of Mufti Penjweni was unveiled in the centre of Penjwen district, with the late poet's daughter in attendance. The sculptor described the project as a duty: 'Mufti Penjweni is one of the most prominent figures of this city and among Kurdistan's progressive poets. Creating this statue wasn't just important — it was a duty. In fact, it should have been done earlier.' Penjweni's legacy is the poet as the conscience of his community: a figure who used the full power of the classical Kurdish verse tradition to tell his people what they needed to hear. He told them to educate their daughters. He told them that the homeland had claims on their loyalty. He stayed in Penjwen through seventy-one years of imperial collapse, broken promises, and political violence — and wrote.
Chronology of Mufti Penjweni
1881 — Born as Mala Abdullah Tutonji in Bestana village near Penjwen, Sulaymaniyah Province, Ottoman Empire.
Late 1890s–1900s — Classical Islamic education in local madrasas; earns the title of Mufti.
Early 1900s — Begins composing poetry combining classical Kurdish meters with social commentary.
1920–1923 — Treaty of Sèvres promises Kurdish autonomy; superseded by Treaty of Lausanne which omits Kurdish rights.
1920s–1940s — Continues writing prolifically; produces over 200 poems on social phenomena, women's rights, and Kurdish suffering.
1952 — Dies in Penjwen at age 71, leaving behind a significant unpublished body of work.
2016 — Complete Diwan published posthumously by Dazgay Andisha in Sulaymaniyah.
2018 — University of Sulaymaniyah hosts major conference on his life and poetry.
2025 — Statue unveiled in the centre of Penjwen district.
References
1. Hassanpour, Amir. Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan, 1918–1985. Mellen Research University Press, 1992.
2. Kreyenbroek, Philip G. & Sperl, Stefan (eds.). The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview. Routledge, 1992.
3. McDowall, David. A Modern History of the Kurds. I.B. Tauris, 1996.
4. Jwaideh, Wadie. The Kurdish National Movement. Syracuse University Press, 2006.
5. Bruinessen, Martin van. Agha, Shaikh and State. Zed Books, 1992.
6. Penjweni, Mufti (Mala Abdullah Tutonji). Diwan. Compiled by Omed Ashna and Kamel Abdullah. Dazgay Andisha, Sulaymaniyah, 2016.
7. University of Sulaymaniyah. Conference proceedings: Mufti Penjweni, The Awakening And Righteousness Poet. August 2018.
8. Edmonds, C.J. Kurds, Turks and Arabs. Oxford University Press, 1957.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Mufti Penjweni?
Mufti Penjweni (1881–1952), born Mala Abdullah Tutonji, was a Kurdish poet and Islamic scholar from Penjwen in the Sulaymaniyah region. He was classically trained as a Mufti (Islamic legal expert) and used the authority of his tradition to advocate for women's education, social reform, and Kurdish national consciousness. He produced over 200 poems and is considered one of the major voices of the Kurdish literary awakening of the early twentieth century.
What are the main themes of Mufti Penjweni's poetry?
Scholars identify three main pillars: social reform (especially the education of women), homeland and national identity, and social critique. He wrote about women's oppression, the necessity of education, the Kurdish homeland's claims on its people, and the failures of Kurdish society to live up to its own best values. His advocacy came from within the Islamic scholarly tradition — using the authority of his religious learning to argue for progressive reform.
Why is the Diwan significant?
Published in 2016 by Dazgay Andisha — more than 60 years after Penjweni's death — the Diwan represents the survival of his work through decades of Ba'athist repression, Anfal, and political disruption. Its publication reflects the ongoing process of cultural recovery in the Kurdistan Region, giving Penjweni's poetry the academic and popular attention it deserves.