"Ahmad Bag", son of "Fattah Bag" Arazi, known as "Hamdi" is one of the great poets of Kurdish classical literature who was born in 1876 and died in 1936. Hamdi is from the well-known Saheb Qaran family. He is the nephew of the great Kurdish poet, "Mustafa Bag Kurdi" and the cousin of "Salm" another Kurdish poet. He was born in Suleimani city and died there. He began his education with his father, Fattah Bag, as his first tutor. Later, he continued his education in Suleimani's mosques and finally, he went to Rashidiyeh school to finish his education. He also spent some time in Mahwi's Khanaqah, a centre for learning and studying the Tariqat subjects.
After finishing his primary education, the desire to travel and see other parts of Kurdistan motivated him to go to the surrounding regions. Thus, he travelled to Iran and visited several great cities in this country such as Tabriz, and some other cities in the west of Iran. Later, he went to Baghdad and began to know this metropole and big city.
Due to his high levels of education and his family's literacy, Hamdi was very interested in the Kurdish language, literature, history and society. That is why he felt the sufferings that the Kurdish society had faced and after "Sheikh Mahmoud's" revolution against the occupiers of Kurdistan land, he joined Sheikh Mahmoud's followers. He took part in the battles and struggles that Sheikh Mahmoud had with Kurdistan's enemies such as Britain and the Turks, until Sheikh Mahmoud was arrested by the British and exiled to India. However, he kept on his thoughts and ideas even after Sheikh Mahmoud was exiled which was the efforts done by Sheikh Mahmoud and many others to achieve human rights for Kurdish people who had sacrificed their lives in this way. Thus, after Sheikh Mahmoud came back in 1922 and after establishing the temporary state of Kurdistan, Hamdi became the head of the Customs Department. The relationship between Hamdi, a poet, and Sheikh Mahmoud, a politician and a leader, did not last long and due to some problems, Hamdi abandoned Sheikh Mahmoud in 1923.
After the Iraqi government occupied Kurdistan land in 1924 and Sheikh's state collapsed, Hamdi, the elite, well-educated poet, due to his education and his social status became the head of city hall in Suleimani and the supervisor of Surdash region. However, he did not keep this post for too long and in 1926 he abandoned governmental jobs forever. Finally, in 1936 at the age of 60, he died in Suleimani and was buried in Seywan Hill Cemetery.
In addition to the social and political status Hamdi had in Suleimani and Kurdistan, he also had a high status as a poet and elite in Kurdish classical literature. He was one of the most capable Kurdish literary figures who received Mustafa Bag Kurdi, and Salm's school who were followers of Nali and Mahwi themselves. Thus, he was a good representative of the Baban literary school at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Although, his poetry is more or less in debt of the mentioned poets' works, however, Hamdi is generally a poet who wanted to reinforce his work via these sources which he intended to mix with a social and political aspect that was derived from the work of earlier poets' works such as Nali, Mahwi, and Salm.
Suppose some aspects of Kurdish symbolism or nationalism can be seen in the works of Kurdi or Mahwi. In that case, these aspects get stronger in Hamdi's works due to his activities in the political and revolution fields both in the linguistic form and the discourse of his works which can be said is a new discourse in Kurdish classical poetry. A discourse that can be seen as symbols in the poems written before him such as in mahwi or haji Qader's works. However, the nationalism discourse in Hamdi's poetry plays the main role and poetry becomes a framework for expressing his nationalism. This man was an open-minded, literate, Kurdish poet who lived at the end of the nineteenth century in Suleimani.
Hamdi's knowledge about various parts of Kurdistan and generally the cultural, political, natural and economic geography of Kurdistan made his ideology exceed regional ideologies and change into a common, national ideology. That is, the request and the will Hamdi discusses in his poetry is not just the will of one particular region of Kurdistan but rather the will of all parts of Kurdistan. Thus, we can draw the great Kurdistan based on the geographical symbols and signs he has applied in his poems.
If we only use one of his poems as our criterion and discuss it, we can choose his poem called "Hey! Motherland". This poem is a kind of poem that contains all the symbols that show how well-informed the poet was about the historical, and political geography of a land that is occupied by superpowers and has been divided into various parts. In the poem of "Hey! Motherland", Hamdi discusses how his land has been occupied by the Western and Eastern powers such as the Western Empires or Rome and the Eastern Empires that are the Ottomans and the Qajar. However, he always protects a land in his works that is occupied. He discusses the existence of a powerful human geography, a rich economic geography and a beautiful natural geography in his works. We can find each of these elements in his poems especially in "Hey! Motherland" by Hamdi. He expands his image so much that he ties the various regions of various parts of Kurdistan to each other in his poems. He talks about Kajaw, Shamzinan, Badinan, Barzan, Hawraman, Wan, Qasr Shirin, Paykouli, Qandil, Piramagroun, etc. in one poem, in fact, he ties this occupied geography of Kurdistan that has been divided and torn apart.
Thus, from these regions that he has mentioned, he hears a voice that is the voice of liberation and the voice of a nation that has been dominated by others. So, Hamdi is a poet who has drawn the cultural, political, and historical geography of his nation.
