The Classification of Folk Tales in the Collection "Seven" by Bastani Parizi and "The History of Kerman" by Mahmoud Hemmat

Stories reflect a significant part of a people’s culture, and they can be considered and studied from different aspects. Scientific studies in the field of story have begun for more than two centuries. The Grimm brothers were the first ones who collected tales using a scientific approach. About a century later, in 1910, Antti Aarne prepared the grounds for universal study of stories by composing his Index of Folktale Types. Aarne’s index was later revised by the American folklorist, Stith Thompson. This revision is known as the Aarne-Thomson tale type index. In the field of Iranian tales, the first and the most serious work for the scientific classification of stories was done by Ulrich Marzolph in 1984. Although Iranian researchers and students have undertaken considerable studies in this field, no significant work has been conducted in the classification of tales. The present study seeks to classify folktales in many contemporary historical texts of Kerman, which makes this study unique. This study has investigated seven works by Bastani Parizi (1924-2014) and one work by Mahmoud Motadayyen, also known as Hemmat Kermani (1918-1995), based on the the Aarne-Thomson and Marzolph indices.