Iranian folklore
Iranian folklore, including jokes, legends, games, folklore heroes and beliefs is sophisticated and complex.
Heroes
"Rostam"
Samak-E 'Ayyar
Pourya-ye Vali
Hossein-e Kurd e Shabestari "The Kurdish Hossein of Shabestar"
Baba Shammal
Koroghlu (Iranian Azarbaijan)
Maadar Fulad-zereh "Mother of Fulad-zereh"
Ya'qub-i Laith is a popular folk hero in Iranian history, and it was at his court that the revitalization of the Persian language began after two centuries of eclipse by Arabic.
Dastans
"Dāstān" in Persian means "fable, fiction, story, tale". The genre to which they refer may go back to ancient Iran. It was a widely popular and folkloric form of story-telling: Dastan-tellers (narrators) tend to tell their tile in coffee houses. They told tales of heroic romance and adventure, stories about gallant princes and their encounters with evil kings, enemy champions, demons, magicians,Jinns, divine creatures, tricky Robin Hood-like persons (called ayyārs), and beautiful princesses who might be human or of the Pari ("fairy") race.