Prof. Ordixanê Calîl (1932-2007)

Ordixanê Calîl (1932-2007) was an outstanding Kurdisch scholar, researcher and a specialist on folklore. He was born in Armenia into a Kurdish Yezidi familly. His parents escaped from the Ottoman Empire after the pogroms of 1914 and 1915. They were brought up in orphanages in Armenia. Ordixan together with his brother and two sisters took up the arduous job of collecting Kurdish folk songs, fairy tales, stories and proverbs in Armenia and Georgia then in Iraq, Syria, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.

Today the Eichgraben Library familly archive consists of more than 50 killometers of tape recorded sessions and a 100 thousand notes, photographs presenting Kurdish daily life as well as the portraits of storytellers. Ordixan published more than 60 books devoted to Kurdish oral tradition. He was a professor of the Leningrad University, a member of the Kurdish Institute in Paris and the Iraqi Academy of Science. He deeply believed in the power of culture which he considered to be the only solid foundation for any dialogue. In 2003 he visited Kraków which he enjoyed very much. That is why we decided to dedicate this seminar to him.