Taufiq Wahby was a prominent Kurdish

Kurdish people

The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...

 writer, linguist and politician. He first served in the Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 army as a colonel

Colonel

Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

, but after the creation of Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 by the British in 1920, he became an influential officer in the new Iraqi army. He also served eight terms in ministerial posts in the Iraqi government. He was instrumental in the design of a new Kurdish alphabet based on modified Arabic letters. Taufiq Wahbi also engaged in research concerning Yazidis and their religion.

Books

• Destûrî Zimanî Kurdî (Grammar of Kurdish Language), al-Haditha Publishers, Baghdad, 1929.
• Xwêndewarî Baw (Contemporary Literacy), al-Haditha Publishers, Baghdad, 1933.
• The remnants of Mithraism in Hatra and Iraqi Kurdistan, and its traces in Yazidism: The Yazidis are not devil-worshippers, 1962.
• A Kurdish-English Dictionary, with C.J. Edmonds, 179 pp., Oxford Press, 1966.
• Kurdish Studies, Kurdica Publishers, 1968.

External links

• Tawfiq Wahby, By Dilan Roshani, Kurdish Academy of Language.
• A Kurdish-English Dictionary By Taufiq Wahby and Cecil John Edmonds.