Shafaq News – Ilam

In Ilam’s Fayli region, a mountainous area along Iran’s western border, local folklore continues to play an active role in daily life, visible in homes, seasonal rituals, and embroidered textiles.

According to Iranian Hamshahri Online, the province recently added six new elements to Iran’s national intangible heritage list, bringing the total number of officially recognized elements to 94.

The New additions include traditional songs, Kurdish legends, and orally transmitted skills such as the folk song Nîtwanm Per, knowledge of wild mushroom gathering and its associated beliefs, the legends of Dalg Wehar (Mother of Spring) and Shamaran (Queen of Snakes), as well as the skill of tying the women’s turban known as Sarun and the Shili Mili ceremony in certain Kurdish towns.

Residents consider these practices a living part of a continuous symbolic system. Farzad Sharifi, director general of cultural heritage in Ilam, described the province as one of Iran’s richest in intangible heritage.

He highlighted the prominence of the Shamaran legend, a half-woman, half-snake figure symbolizing knowledge and life, whose images are hung in homes as talismans for protection and luck. Shamaran motifs also appear across Iranian, Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi Kurdistan in paintings, sculptures, and embroidery.

The women’s turban, Sarun, holds particular significance among the Kalahur tribe, tracing back to the Median and Achaemenid eras as a symbol of identity and belonging in rural communities spanning Eivan, Chwar, and Chardavol. Meanwhile, the Dalg Wehar legend connects weather and hope: villagers place a bowl of soup on their doorstep overnight, interpreting any shortage in the morning as a sign of a fertile year ahead.

Sharifi emphasized that registering these elements nationally aims to protect traditions at risk of disappearing and to integrate them into the public memory.

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