A poem written by a twenty year old prisoner in 1938 became the anthem of a republic in 1946, the official anthem of the Kurdistan Region in 1991, and the song with which Kurds everywhere answer the question whether they still exist.
This page tells that story with its uncertainties left visible: where sources disagree, we say so.
Yûnis Reûf, who will write under the name Dildar, is born on 20 February 1918 in Koye (Başûr). Some sources give 1917.
At seventeen, Dildar publishes his first poem in the journal Ronakî in Hewlêr; later work appears in Gelawêj.
Imprisoned for his political convictions, the twenty year old law student writes Ey Reqîb in Soranî. Sources disagree on where he was held: a cell in Rojhilat or a government prison in Başûr.
The short lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad (Rojhilat) adopts Ey Reqîb as its national anthem. The republic falls within the year; the anthem remains.
Dildar dies of a heart condition in Hewlêr, aged thirty, in the autumn of 1948. His collected poems appear posthumously the same year. He never hears his poem as the anthem of the Kurdistan Region.
With the autonomy of the Kurdistan Region (Başûr), Ey Reqîb becomes its official anthem, sung in the original Soranî.
More than eighty years after the poem was written, conductor Dilshad Said produces the first official notated arrangements, for military band and symphony orchestra.
The history of Ey Reqîb has gaps that honest documentation must name: where exactly the poem was written, when it first appeared in print, who composed the melody, and the formal legal instrument behind its official status. These open questions are tracked in the claim register on the sources page.