As a specific phenomenon of spiritual culture, folklore is, at the same time, inseparably linked to literature by all nations that have written language. The forms of interaction between literature and folklore were diverse: from a cursory mention of folklore characters or a simple retelling of plots to skillful literary treatments of several stories or tales. Many literary monuments existed in parallel in two traditions - written and oral. The process of interaction between them gave birth to a special branch of verbal creation at the junction of folklore and literature - Arabic folk literature, including folk novels, stories, tales and a unique multi-genre complex of monuments - "1001 Night". The presence of a written tradition of monuments of folk literature does not allow us to classify it as folklore, and the presence of oral tradition and saturation of folklore elements allows us to talk about folk literature as a specific phenomenon, to distinguish it from the general series of literary genres. Tale is the most ancient genre of Arabic folklore, which emerged as a result of the development of mythology of Arabic-speaking tribes in the pre-Islamic era, as one of the prose genres of art.