"Literary Humanism in Kurdish Madrasas: Dialogues across Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish Worlds"
by
Serdar Şengül (Visiting Professor, IIS-McGill)
Morrice Hall, Room 017
October 21, 4 pm
3485 McTavish St, Montreal
McGill University
This talk examines Kurdish madrasa curricula as sites of literary humanism linking the Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish worlds. Texts such as Saʿdī’s Būstān/Gulistān, Ḥāfeẓ’s Dīvān, and Melayê Cizîrî’s poetry were taught not only for style but for ethical reflection, allegorical reasoning, and interpretive practice. Based on interviews with scholars and archival traces, I argue that madrasas functioned as humanistic institutions alongside scholastic sciences, cultivating moral judgment and close reading. Reframing the madrasa through a trilingual canon highlights continuities between classical Islamic pedagogies and later debates over cultural and national identities in the modern Middle East.
