mis à jour le Mercredi 4 juillet 2018 à 18h24
(1944-2018)
It is with great sadness that we have learned the death of our friend Ephrem-Isa Yousif on Tuesday, in the morning of July 4th, at the age of 74, at the Bichat Hospital in Paris where he had just undergone a heavy surgery.
Born in 1944 in Sanate, an Assyro-Chaldean village in the north of Kurdistan of Iraq, near the city of Zakho, he began his studies in Mosul of which he pursued in 1974 at the University of Nice. He obtained two PhD degrees, first in Ancient Civilizations from the University of Nice (1980) and the second in Philosophy from the University of Toulouse (1981). It was in this last university that he taught Arabic philosophy, language and literature until 1992, the year he moved to Paris.
In Paris, he continued to teach philosophy in various academic institutions and since 1995, he has been the director of the Arabic collection at Editions L'Harmattan. He has also been a member of the Association of Writers of French Language (ADELF) and scientific advisor for the publications of the High Council of the Francophony.
Ephrem was a long-time fellow of the Kurdish Institute and he kept his seat on its Board of Directors for three years. He was, above all, the representative of the Institute to the Christian communities of Kurdistan, which he knew very well. He played a key role in Paris and Kurdistan on organizing symposia and conferences of the Institute on the Christians of Mesopotamia. Until recently he had made a remarkable intervention on the fate of these communities in a colloquium organized on 30 March 2018 at the French Senate by the Kurdish Institute.
We will remember him as a man of culture, generous, open, oecumenical, mindful for transmitting to the future generations the fabulous cultural heritage of Mesopotamia and the attachment to this land of Kurdistan, refuge of so many minorities, he loved.
The Kurdish Institute shares the grief of Monique, his wife and companion of more than thirty years, of his family and his many friends of all origins.
Information regarding his funeral will be provided as it becomes settles by his family.
Ephrem Isa-Yousif is the author of many books in French, a certain number of which have been translated into Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish and several articles have been devoted to him in Arabic.
Most of his books have been published by L'Harmattan Publishing House.
Bibliography: