The most important part of oral literature is the "folk story". The narrative of an event verbally is called a Story. In the stories, real events, fantasy, war and conflict, love and friendship, and so on are narrated in an interesting way. The story takes the listeners to their dreams, sometimes leads them to the mountains, sometimes to the seven heavens, and sometimes leads them to the heroes. In the past, all these stories were told verbally.
Every nation has its own story and their stories tell the success of their lives. The Kurdish nation is one of those nations that is very rich in folklore. The folklore stories of the Kurdish people have a high level.
In fact, stories have a long history, and when humans lived somewhere, their experiences became stories and those stories were narrated from generation to the next. Some literary scholars believe that the stories of Kurdish folklore date back to 15 thousand years ago. In an interview that I had with the Kurdish researcher and author, "Zaynal'abedin Zinar", I asked him; What stage does the Kurdish folklore stories go back to? "The history of Kurdish folklore is very old. No one can say when Kurdish folklore began to appear for sure, however, based on some assumptions and the content of some of those stories, one can say that the Kurdish folklore stories began before some of the Prophets came. It began with Ezdati. When there were still no prophets, the Kurds thought that there must be some secret and moral power that controls the universe, so they called it "Azda", which means, the one who created me, who is God. This Azda became a moral religion for Kurds and we call it Yazidi or Ezdayati." he said.
There are a lot of different stories in Kurdish folklore, and each one talks about something different. It is known that some of the stories are based on real-life experiences and some are fictional. Therefore, there are stories such as real, fictional, historical, romantic, mythical, social, and historical ones in Kurdish folklore.
The source of the folklore stories is unknown. Those folklore stories teach us to learn from our past experiences. These stories show us our ancestral attitude and behavior.
Kurdish folklore stories are like a deep sea. These stories bring light to the darkness. They are Kurdish culture lights. Kurdish stories have very high levels in terms of words and details, and many writers have compared them to the stories of other nations, and Kurdish stories have often been proven to be richer than other nations' stories. Most of the Kurdish folklore stories are similar to other nations' stories and are equally rich and high-level in terms of words and details. The Kurdish writer, "Aladdin Sajaddi" has compared Kurdish folklore stories to other nation's stories in detail in his book called "The History of Kurdish Literature", and it shows the high position and importance of Kurdish stories. In fact, the rich literature that is in the Kurdish folklore stories can be rarely found in other nations' stories.
The Kurdish folklore story creators are from all social classes. From the narration, the form of poetry, and even the creation of the story, it appears that these stories were invented by which of the social classes. The lover often was not successful in living with their loves, so they created a story about their love and the challenges they had to face to win their love. The national oppression or the oppression that the Lords and Aghas had over the people or lots of examples of subjugation have made them create and invent stories and narrate all their sufferings through imagination and facts in the form of stories and leave them for the next generations. That is why kings, from Kings to beggars, lovers, and shepherds were all creators of Kurdish folklore stories.
In "Mem and Zin" the story of Ahmad Khani, love, and geography of Kurdistan appears. The experiences and heroic actions of the Kurdish nation have often been retailed in the form of stories narrated by the travelers in the main story.
As it is mentioned earlier, the Kurdish folklore stories are very rich, and in the past when there was no electricity, or modern technologies, the people and families used to sit in their old, clay houses and they used to tell their experiences around the table or make up stories throughout the night. Sometimes they would gather around in the mountains or caves and narrate stories. These stories are transferred to the new generations, and the new generation also made up new Kurdish stories and have written them down in books. There are a lot of original Kurdish words in these stories and the writers, researchers, and scholars have used them in their dictionaries. In fact, the Kurdish stories prove the rich lexical sources of the Kurdish language. There are tens of words for the same phenomena in Kurdish literature that could be used.
On the other hand, folklore is the foundation of the nation and the nation is known for its folklore and the recognition of the culture of the nation. The main part of Kurdish folklore is stories. Folklore stories have a great impact on nationalization. Because the history and tales of the past are all retailed in these stories, they are very important for the Kurds to receive them from their past. Most of the Kurdish singers have used those stories as their song lyrics. These stories were both the history of the Kurdish nation and also, had great impacts on the nationalization process.
The Kurdish nation is weak in the field of cinema and they have not been able to use folklore stories for film production and transfer them into movies. There are hundreds of Kurdish stories that are based on true events that show the Kurds' bravery and success against their enemies, but unfortunately, most of these stories have not been written down and they have remained in the verbal form thus, the Kurds have not been able to use them properly in film production projects.
On the other hand, Kurdish folklore has been stolen by the Kurdistan occupiers and they have changed them and introduced them as their own folklore stories. They have plagiarized many stories, songs, lyrics, and even old Kurdish documents and after manipulating them, they recorded these as their own folklore. This happened because Kurds do not have an independent government.
Due to the occupation of Kurdistan by the invaders, the Kurdish nation has always been engaged in war and displacement. They have not been able to work on these subjects, but now all the writers and researchers of this field must try their best to visit the elderly and collect historical evidence on folklore stories.
