Middle Eastern folklore?

[David19]

Does anyone have any information on Middle Eastern folklore, i'd like to learn a bit more about it, or really any type of folklore, but there doesn't seem to be as much available as for Europe, etc (e.g. in Celtic and Germanic societies, you still had folklore of Fae, elfs/alfs, disir (maybe?), etc).

It's something i'm very interested in.

Also, a lot of folklore comes from Pagan times (although not all), and i was wondering, does anyone also know if there were any folk magic practices that still remained (or remain?) in modern day Iraq from Sumerian times (as i'm very very interested in Sumerian reconstructionism, and i'd like to know a lot more about if modern Iraqi's had any folk magic or folklore (legends, 'myths', etc) that can be traced to Sumerian times).

Thanks for any help you can give me :).

[dragoncrone]

Look up the 'Nasreddin Hodja' stories, for starters. Hodja is sort of the Middle-eastern version of Sholom Aleichem, the simple man with ultimate wisdom.
Also look up 'peri' - the eastern term for fairies - and 'Rustam' who was a slayer of dragons.
There is also a Hittite narration about the Goddess Inaras aiding the weather god in defeating the dragon Illuyankas
(dragons always get the bad rap...)

[Djiril]

I've read some of this book, and it has a lot of interesting stuff in it, though mostly about Muslim societys:
Arab Folktales (http://www.amazon.com/Arab-Folktales-Inea-Bushnaq/dp/0394751795/sr=8-1/qid=1163271874/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0939371-7595237?ie=UTF8&s=books)