3.3. The Iranian languages of northern Iraq

The Iranian languages currently spoken in northern Iraq can be assigned to three main groups: Behdinī, the local name for the varieties of Northern Kurdish (or Kurmanjî) spoken in Iraq; Sorani Kurdish (used here synonymously with Central Kurdish), and Gorani.1 The latter subsumes Hawrāmī of the Halabja region, together with a cluster of other dialects that go under various names. All three groups are traditionally classified as belonging to the northwestern branch of Iranian. The approximate locations of Northern and Central Kurdish are provided in Fig. 1, while Gorani varieties are shown in Fig. 4 below. Both Behdinī and Sorani are unanimously considered varieties of Kurdish, while the nature of the relationship between Kurdish and Gorani remains a matter of controversy. As will become apparent, at least in terms of morphology, the various varieties of Gorani diverge from Sorani and Behdinī rather systematically, implying a historically more distant relationship. From the perspective of comparative Iranian philology, then, a distinction is justified. Culturally and in terms of subjective identity perceptions among the speech communities, on the other hand, there are reasons for including Gorani within a broader socio-cultural notion of “Kurdish” (see Haig and Öpengin 2014 on the concept of “Kurdish”). Among the three groups, the most important in terms of prestige, degree of standardization, media representation, and number of speakers, is Sorani (MacKenzie 1961, 1962), spoken by around three million speakers in Iraq, with a further three million in neighbouring regions of Iran, and further north to the shores of Lake Urmi (also spelled Urmiye). The least-well documented languages are the various varieties of Gorani. In particular, very little reliable information is available on the fragmented groups of dialects spoken westward of the Hawrāmī region, variously referred to as Kakaʼī, Šabak, Sarlī, or Bāĵaɫānī (see §5). The majority of Sorani and Behdinī speakers are Sunnite Muslims, with the exception of the Ezidi communities among the Behdinī speakers, while Gorani speakers are generally affiliated with heterodox, or non-Islamic, religious beliefs.