'Teaching us wonder': Turkey embarks on cultural mission to preserve its fairytales

Mammoth task to collate magical folklore of Anatolian plateau involves thousands of stories

Once upon a time, in the old, old days when the mouse was a barber, and the donkey ran errands, and the tortoise baked bread, there was a great mountain called Kaf Dai on the border of the spirit realm, from which many of the fairytales and myths of the Middle East sprang forth.

Today, Kaf Dai is thought to be somewhere in the Caucasus mountain range that separates the Black Sea from the Caspian. In this magical place - also known as Jabal Qaf in Arabic and Kuh-e Qaf in Persian - princes are cursed by witches, who turn them into stags; beautiful maidens are birthed from oranges; and sultans, courtiers, slaves and farmers alike are at the mercy of the peri (fairies) and ifrit (demons) that populate the Turkish fairyland.