Hemin Mukriyani

Who was Hemin Mukriyani?

Hemin Mukriyani was the pen name for Seyed Mohammad Amin Shaikholislami Mukri, Kurdish poet, journalist, translator, and literary critic.

He was born in the village of Lachin, near Mahabad in 1945. After going through the elementary school of Saadat in Mahabad and completing his religious training at the Shaikh Borhan's Khanaqah in the village of Sharafkand, Hemin joined the Kurdish Resurrection Party, founded in 1942. This was the first Kurdish political organization with a clear ambition for the establishment of an independent Greater Kurdistan. During the WWII when the Red Army invaded parts of northern Iran, including most of Azarbaijan and parts of Kurdistan, KJK changed its name to Kurdish Democratic Party and declared the first Kurdish republic with Mahabad as its capital. Mukriyani, along with his best friend Abd-al-Rahman Sharafkandi, was named the Kurdish national poet of the Republic of Mahabad, and became the secretary of Haji Baba Shaikh, the prime minister and head of the self-proclaimed Republic. He fled the oppression that followed the downfall of the Republic in December 1946 and he took refuge in Slêmanî in Southern Kurdistan, where he was arrested.