Haji Qadir is the son of Mullah Ahmad, the son of Mullah Salih, son of Mullah Ahmad the Great. His mother's name was Fatimah. It is common in Kurdish literature and culture that the word Haji is not a prefix for going to Hajj, because he did not perform Hajj. His name was Qadir or Abdulqadir and he was born in the month of Hajj thus he was nicknamed Haji.
Haji was born in 1816 in the village of Gorkaraj, located southwest of KoyaKoya, near the archaeological site of Gomala in the Mordan Valley.
Haji was very young when his father died. At the age of seven, his mother Fate enlisted him in school. In Kurdish tradition, it was common for an only son whose father died as a child to be sent to school by his mother. Haji's primary education was with Mullah Ahmadi Omar Gumbati. This was Haji's cousin. Two years later, his mother Fate died. Thus, he was left without anyone and was raised by Mullah Ahmad.
He studied in the Monastery until he reached the stage of Faqe in Koya. In the summer of 1853, he went to Sheikh Watman village in the Balakaity region to study as a Faqe with Mullah Abdullah Jalizadeh. Both became the Faqe of Mullah Mohammed Kak Abdullah. After a while, Haji separated from Mullah Abdullah Jalizadeh and went alone to Sardasht, Sablagh (Mahabad), and Shno. He stayed in these cities for six or seven years until he completed his studies in Islamic sciences and the Arabic language. In 1862, he received his twelfth scientific license and returned to Koya via the Lajan plain and Balakayaty.
Haji's life in Koya was not easy, cause he was not allowed to become a mullah, or he did not want to become a mullah himself, His curiosity prevented him from marrying and having children.
Haji's relations with the top officials of the Koya community, the Hawezi families (especially Akhtar-Amin Agha, the poet), Ghafouri, and the mullahs, were good, but this did not prevent the insults of the nobility system and the dervish system that was always in the service of the ottomans. Sheikh Nabi Mawili played an important role in preventing him to have a peaceful life and forcing him to leave the country to some extent. Sheikh Nabi Mawili was a good mullah. He studied and lived in Rawandz. He was the sheikh of the Naqshbandi sect. His home was in Koya. He was ready to do anything bad for his own interests and to provide for the country. Undoubtedly, the attitude of such a person towards an intelligent, honest, intelligent, and patriotic person like Haji will be nothing but evil.
Haji leaves and goes into exile, eventually landing in Istanbul. He will not be lost in this big city just like Nali. He looked for loyal Kurds of his own race and found some of them, the most prominent of whom were members of the Badir Khan Pasha family.
In Istanbul, Haji does not appear as a backward peasant of the second half of the nineteenth century in Kurdistan, nor as a dead-washing mullah, but as an expert and conscious intellectual with a heart and mind full of progress and revolution. Therefore, the newly developed society was more likely to help him learn new things than its backward society. Istanbul's proximity to Europe allowed Haji to broaden his vision of Europe. He saw cars and trains in the country. He read the Ottoman newspapers and magazines closely.
The foundation of Haji's existence as an intellectual, contemporary scholar, politician, strategist and wise man began in Koya however he learned many new stuff in Istanbul. Haji who left his country was not only a poet, he carried new beliefs outside the twelve sciences of Islam and the Arabic language. The new society helped to broaden the horizons of his humanistic and nationalistic thought. The amount of time Haji spent in the lands of the Ottoman is unclear. Yes we know he was associated with the Badir Khans, but at that time members of the Badir Khan family were themselves arrested and pursued by the country's spies. They were spread through the other cities of Kurdistan and Syria, Turkey and Europe and Most of them still lived in Botan, so we know that Haji spent most of his life with them in Istanbul, but he may have lived with them elsewhere, such as on the Jzira Botan.
The most important source for explaining Haji's life is his own poems because he did not only write love poems but also entered the heart of the social life of his nation. Of course these types of poems give a lot of information thus we should give more attention to the products of this poet.
After a long life, he died in Istanbul in 1897, which was not a good life for himself and good for his nation. He is believed to have been buried in Istanbul, but his tomb is unknown.
The Cairo Kurdistan newspaper published the news of Haji's death in its third issue on May 20, 1898, one year after his death.[1]