Bibles

Kurdish

Kurdish is spoken mainly in the countries of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. The northern dialect spoken in Turkey and north-western Iraq is called Kurmanji. Kurmaji is written with Roman (Latin) letters in Iraq and Turkey and Iraq, and Cyrillic letters in the former Soviet Union. The southern dialect called Sorani is spoken in north-eastern Iraq and north-western Iran. Sorani is written in Persian script. Christianity has been present amongst the Kurds since the early centuries. Part of the Scriptures was first available in 1856 in the Kurmanji dialect. The Gospels (Încîl) were translated by Stepan, and published in 1857. Isaac Grout Bliss, translated the rest of the New Testament which was published in Istanbul by Bohajian in 1872, in the Armenian script. Ludvig Olsen Fossum translated the Bible into the Mukri dialect of Iran, published in the Persian script as Injil Muqqades in 1919. A part of the Bible was first available in Mukri dialect of Sorani in 1909. Today Bible work is done by the Institute of Bible Translation (IBT), the Turkish Bible Society and the Bible Society in Iraq. The Bible is printed in Cyrillic, Roman and Persian scripts.