2. The Folkloristic Heritage of Kurds, Jews and Syriac Christians of Northern Iraq

The present anthology is a testament to the intimate and long-standing relations between three ethno–religious communities of northern Iraq: the Kurds, Jews and Aramaic-speaking (‘Syr-iac’) Christians. The folklore of these three communities is closely intertwined, so that even specific narrative units (‘mo-tifemes’) and entire stories can overlap. This chapter traces both parallels as well as independent strands in the anthology, focusing especially on themes, character types and cultural–religious frameworks in which the stories are set. The material is categorised according to Thompson's Motif Index (1922–1936) and/or Aarne-Thompson-Uther’s Tale Type Index (2004), which also serves to elucidate international parallels, such as the (apparently) Indo-European motif ‘Love Like Salt’. The sto-ries are discussed according to themes, which correspond to those of Volume II. Sometimes, stories are ‘borrowed’ transcul-turally along with their cultural-religious realia and values, showing that enrichment from other cultures has not been perceived as a threat to a community’s unique identity. This includes drawing from another’s community religious litera-ture. This, however, does not negate creative freedom or a de-gree of the community’s cultural independence. Thus, with other stories, material which was originally shared was since adapted to particular cultural and moral codes (e.g. Zanbil-firosh; the basket seller). Similarly, in stories such as The Bridge of Dalale, the character of the protagonists has been drastically altered in some variants in order to express divergent types of social critique.