Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 6 (of 6)
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 6 (of 6)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
The fisherman had a son named Mohammed l'Avisé (Al-Shatír), who was as
handsome as his mother; but the king had a son whose complexion was like that
of a Fellah. The boys went to school together, and the prince used to say,
"Good day, fisherman's son," and Mohammed used to reply, "Good day, O son of
the king, looking like a shoe-string." The prince complained to his father,
who ordered the schoolmaster to kill Mohammed and he bastinadoed him severely.
The boy went to his father, and turned fisherman. On the first day he caught a
mullet (Fr. rouget), and was about to fry it, when it cried out that it was
one of the princesses of the river, and he threw it back. Then the wazir
advised the king to send Mohammed to fetch the daughter of the king of the
Green Country, seven years journey distant. By the advice of the fish,
Mohammed asked the king for a golden galley; and on reaching the Green
Country, invited the inhabitants to inspect his galley. At last the princess
came down, and he carried her off. When she found she was entrapped she threw
her ring into the sea, which the fish caught. When the king proposed to the
princess, she first demanded her ring, which Mohammed immediately presented to
the king. Then she said it was the custom of her country on the occasion of a
marriage to dig a trench from the palace to the river, which was filled with
wood, and set on fire. The bridegroom was required to walk through the trench
to the river. The wazir proposed that Mohammed should walk through the trench
first; and by the fish's advice, he stopped his ears, cried out, "In the name
of God, the Compassioning, the Merciful," threw himself into the trench, and
returned from the river handsomer than before. So the wazir said to the king,
"Send for your son to go with us, that he may become as handsome as Mohammed."
So the three threw themselves into the fire, and were burned to ashes, and
Mohammed married the princess.
V.--Histoire de Dalâl.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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