Teaching Stories

Teaching stories is a term used by the writer Idries Shah to describe narratives that have been deliberately created as vehicles for the transmission of wisdom. Whilst it is a term that has been used in a number of religious and other traditions, Shah's use of it was in the context of Sufi teaching and learning, within which this body of material has been described as the "most valuable of the treasures in the human heritage". The range of teaching stories is enormous, including anecdotes, accounts of meetings between teachers and pupils, biographies, myths, fairy tales, fables and jokes. Such stories frequently have a long life beyond the initial teaching situation and (sometimes in deteriorated form) have contributed vastly to the world's store of folklore and literature.