Mohammed Ali Awny (also spelt Awni, Aouni) was born in 1898 in the district of Sivarek near Diyarbakir in the south eastern Anatolian provinces of what is today modern Turkey. He grew up at a time when unrest was mouning among the different nationalities that made up the Ottoman Empire. The multi-ethnic subjects of the Padishah, whose ancestors had ruled for several centuries over three continents, sensed the oppressive regime was coming to an end. It was time to polarize.
In Istanbul nationalist Armenians, Syrians, Arabs, Greeks, Bosnians and Kurds were preparing for the day after. Those caught by the Sultan's secret service were either executed or banished. The lucky ones sought refuge on the perimeters of the tottering empire.
Egypt, which had already gained considerable autonomy for itself, was a safe haven for many of these refugees. It was towards urbane Cairo and cosmopolitan Alexandria that Syrian and Armenian Christians, Sephardi Jews and progressive Moslems, gravitated for a better livelihood and a sense of relative freedom.
Likewise it was to Egypt that Abdelkader Awny Ibn Ali Agha sent his eldest son.
A dissident Kurd constantly at odds with the Turkish authorities, the concerned father sought to give his son Mohammed Ali a progressive education in a liberal Islamic country far away from the reaches of an oppressive Ottoman government. It was after all at Cairo's al-Azhar University that several Awny ancestors received their higher education enabling some of them to occupy the much respected position of Mufti.
For a long time Al-Azhar had attracted Kurdish scholars some of whom benefited from an educational trust (Waqf) set up by Zeinab Khatoun in the previous century.
In the years leading up to WW1 Mufti Abdelkader Awny knew that unlike many unstable regions across the declining empire, Egypt was reasonably secure and considerably tolerant of its minorities. Not only that but Kurds already settled there were publishing a newspaper in Kurdish, a language which the increasingly nationalistic government in Istanbul was trying to wipe out.
The Kurdish-language periodical "Kurdistan" appeared in Egypt as far back as 22 January 1889; its publisher Miqdad Ali Bedir Xan (Midhat Bey Badrakhan) was from the exiled Badir khan (Xan) clan, former chieftains in the mountainous provinces of Ottoman Kurdistan.
Later a Kurdish-language radio program would also make its debut in Cairo.
Upon graduating from al-Azhar young Mohammed Ali entered the Egyptian government service. His mastery of the Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages, aside from his native Kurdish, assured him a respectable position as senior precis translator at the Royal Diwan. Moreover, he was a sometime Persian-language tutor to young Princess Fawzia of Egypt prior to her betrothal to the crown prince of Iran.
Aside from historic Ottoman firmans and other official manuscripts pertaining to Egypt's Mohammed Ali dynasty and it government administration and diplomacy, Mohammed Ali translated international conventions and treaties from French and Turkish into Arabic so that the budding Egyptian monarchy now had an official Arabized archive department.
With time Mohammed Ali would eventually be translating books from Turkish, French and Persian into Arabic and vice versa, thus creating an important bridge among the world's greatest cultures.
Undoubtedly Mohammed Ali's most important translation, which to this day continues to impact on many young Kurdish nationalists, is Sharaf al-Din Khan al-Batlissi's "sharafename" a comprehensive two-part 16th century compilation on the different Kurdish tribes and khanates as well as a study on the Persian and Ottoman nations.
For centuries Kurdish history was written up by non-Kurds in either Turkish, Arabic or Persian and later in European languages. Bona fide Kurdish sources were either scant of forgotten. Hence the need to identify them prior to analyzing, explaining and disseminating these valuable writings into contemporary languages.
Enter Mohammed Ali Awny.
Mohammed Ali knew that a historic work sharafename by Emir Sharaf al-Batlissi dealing with Kurdish and regional history had been translated in St. Petersburg in 1860 by Vladimir V. Zernov from Persian into Russian, and then in 1869, by F. B. Charmoy from Russian into French.
What Mohammed Ali did not know then, was that a Persian handwritten copy of sharafename existed at the Ottoman College in Aleppo, Syria.
To that effect Mohammed Ali traveled to Aleppo in 1922 and copied parts of sharafename dealing with Kurdish history.
Upon returning to Cairo Mohammed Ali shared his discovery with Sheikh Faragallah Zaki al-Kurdi himself a specialist in Islamic history and owner of a small printing press.
Between them, Faragallah and Awny now possessed three versions of the same work: the handwritten copy of the Aleppo manuscript, a manuscript belonging to Thurya Bey Badra-Khan and a French edition printed in Russia itself translated from the original St. Petersburg version of sharafename.
It was up to Mohammed Ali Awny and Sheikh Faragallah, now joined by Persian linguist Sheikh Mohieldin Sabry al-Kordy, to embark on the tedious process of cross-checking and comparing the three different versions before printing a new and thorough Persian edition of sharafename's Part One.
It would be years later that Awny translated sharafename into Arabic. An academic to the core he is credited with having appended considerable academic annotations and a detailed appendix to his oeuvre.
To this day Awny's Arabic translation of sharafename is considered one of his foremost contributions to the ongoing Kurdish issue. Scholars too consider it a primary source to be reckoned with in Kurdish historical studies.
At the request of the government Mohammed Ali Awny proceeded to translate Part II of sharafename which deals with Ottoman Sultans and their contemporary rulers in Persia and Central Asia. Sadly this valuable contribution to written history was published posthumously in 1962 prompting Cairo University's Dean of Oriental Studies Professor Yehya Khashaab to write the following words in the book's preface, "How I would have wished for Mohammed Ali Awny who gave the world an Arabic translation of sharafename, thus contributing to Islamic literature in general, to have lived long enough to see the fruition of his labor; may his sole rest in peace."
Following the sharafename experience Mohammed Ali Awny continued to translate important works on Kurds and Kurdistan ocasionally under an assumed identity so as not to embarass his royal employer (King Fouad) who at the time entertained cordial relations with the government of modern Turkey.
Awny is also credited with the translation of several famous works by various 17th century travelwriters among them the partial translation into Arabic of Evliya Celebi voluminous work "siyahetnama" (see book section).
Firmly settled in his adopted country Mohammed Ali Awny married Zeinab, the sister of his colleague Mohammed al-Rifa'i a native of Upper Egypt, from whom he begot a daughter Doreya and two sons, Salah al-Din and Essam al-Din.
With a career spent at the royal archives Mohammed Ali Awny died a few weeks before Egypt's monarchy came to an abrupt end in July 1952. He was buried in the Maghawry park in the Mokattam Hills not far from where the Bektashis, a famous Ottoman Sufi order, had set up their headquarters having themselves come to Egypt as refugees a couple of centuries earlier.