Fayaq Bekas
His name is Fauaq son of Abdullah Bag son of Kaka Hama son of Elias Qoja. His family came to Sulaymaniyah from Qalachualan, and he was born in 1905 in Sitak, a village twenty kilometers northeast of Sulaymaniyah. His father, Abdullah Bag, was a Tabur Aghasi there. His mother belonged to the Aghalar family of Sulaimani.
He spent his first and second years in Sitak, then returned to Sulaymaniyah and was born at the age of three. As a child, his father taught him in the mosque.
In 1911, his father was sent to Khanaqi and from there to Baghdad where he sends for his family to be brought to Baghdad. A year later his father went to Turkey and left them in Baghdad. Fayaq never saw his father again. Meanwhile, his elder brother Hama Saeed drowned in the Tigris River, followed by his mother who passed away a while later. Fayaq and his younger brother were being taken care of by their uncle, who also died a few months later, leaving Fayaq and his younger brother Tahir alone.
When World War I broke out, the road between Baghdad and Sulaymaniyah was blocked, their uncle from Sulaymaniyah arranged for them to be taken care of by a woman known as Habakhan, who was the wife of a Kurdish officer residing in Baghdad.
She takes care of them compassionately and educates them. They live like this for two or three years. In 1918, HabaKhan took them back to Sulaymaniyah to live with their uncle Haji Amin.
Fayaq was enrolled in the third grade of school in Sulaymaniyah and continued his studies where he accomplished first place every year. In 1913, at the request of his uncle, he went to Ilmiyah school in Kirkuk. However, he was not allowed to study there. He went to Baghdad and spent 1924-1925 at Dar al-Ulum. In 1926-1927 he returned to Sulaymaniyah which at the time had only the first grade of secondary school.
During those years, the hardships of life forced him to open a cigarette shop, but this did not succeed, and he started selling cigarettes and matches on the streets.
In 1928 he lived in Erbil for several months. At that time, the late Qalay Aisha Khan was an engineer and supervised the opening of the Erbil-Rawandz-Rayat road. Bekas established a friend in Ashgal. In 1929, Bekas learned that his father had died in Marash, Turkey. In 1930, he went to Turkey in search of his father's inheritance, but comes back with empty hands.
It was in that year that the uprising of 06-09-1930 took place against the fraudulent elections of the monarchy. Bekas was one of the patriots who participated in the uprising and was wounded.
As a result, he was arrested and imprisoned. He was also removed for his participation and leadership at work. He rewrote his famous poem Ay Watan Maftooni Tom in prison.
When he was released from prison, he opened a school to teach and live in. In 1933, he was appointed as a teacher and sent to Mortka in Bazian and then to Tewela. In the summer of 1935, he attended a course for teachers in Baghdad with a group of teachers, including the famous poet Gorani. Bekas was a primary school teacher in Bazian at that time.
He returned to Sulaymaniyah where he opened a school where he taught until 1941. He was appointed as a teacher in public schools and until the end of 1948 he taught in Qaradagh, Sulaymaniyah, Surdash and Halabja.
He passed away on
18-12-194818-12-1948.
In addition to Kurdish, Bekas could also speak Arabic, Persian and some English. He was especially proficient in Arabic. He wore a lot of Arabic poetry. It is also widely known that he wore the seven mu'alluqat completely.
Bekas had two wives: the first in 1935, who died a year later due to an illness.
He had a daughter with this wife and two daughters and a son with his second wife. His son is the famous poet Sherko Bekas.
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