David Neil McKenzie, he was an English professor, researcher and expert in Iranian languages. McKenzie's works are famous for both their breadth and their accuracy and depth, especially his work on modern Kurdish and the Khorasan language. In 1957, after several years of research in Kurdistan, he wrote his doctoral thesis on Kurdish language and dialects and later published it in two volumes in 1961 and 1962 under the title Kurdish Dialect Studies.
$Life$
He was born on 08-04-1926 in London. During World War II, when his mother and sister fled to Canada, he stayed with his father and helped the army. In 1943, he was sent to India for military service. After a while he was sent to Peshawar where he learned Pashto. After returning to Britain, he began studying Persian at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in September 1948 at the age of 22. And he got his bachelors degree in 1951. In 1953, he received a master's degree in ancient Iranian languages. In 1951, he began research on Kurdish with CJ Edmonds. Since the autumn of 1954, he has been in various parts of Iraqi Kurdistan with his wife and two children for 10 months, collecting information and researching the Kurdish language. In 1957, he submitted his doctoral thesis entitled A dialectological survey of Northern and Central Kurdish. He then became a professor of Iranian languages at the University of London. From 1975 until his retirement in 1994, he taught at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
After retirement he returned to Llanfairpwll in Wales. He died in a car accident and heart problems on #13-10-2001# in Bangor, Wales.
$Books$
Kurdish dialect studies, Oxford University Press، 1961-1962.
The Dialect of Awroman (Hawrâman-î Luhôn). Grammatical Sketch, Texts, and Vocabulary, Copenhagen 1966.
A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, Oxford University Press، 1971.
The Khwarezmian element in the Qunyat al-munya Zahidi al-Ghazmini, Mukhtar ibn Mahmud, d. 1260, 1990.
The Golden Wheat translated by Farhad Shakeli and Khabat Arif into Kurdish Alphabet, Aras Publishing House, Erbil.
McKenzie, David Neil. Mackenzie and the Kurds, translated by Anwar Sultani, Karaj: Moon, 2017.
$Articles$
Bāǰalānī, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, In Honour of J. R. Firth (1956), University of London, (An 18 page article).
The Language of the Medians, in BSOAS 22 1959, pages 354-355.
Zoroastrian Astrology in the Bundahishn, BSOAS, 27, 3, 1964, 511-529.
The Origins of Kurdish, In Transactions of the Philological Society, 1961, pages 68-86.
The Buddist Sogdian Texts of the British Library, Acta Iranica، 10، Téhéran-Liège، 1976.
Iranica Diversa, volume 2، SOR, LXXXIV, 1-2, Roma, 1999.[1]