Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 2
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 2
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
Another example not very generally known is found in the Urdú romance,
“Gul-í Bakáwalí”: When the hero, Taj al-Malúk, the youngest son of King
Zayn al-Malúk, is born, the astrologers cast his horoscope and predict
that the king will lose his sight as soon as he looks upon him. In order
to prevent such a calamity, the king causes the child and his mother to
be placed in a house far distant from the city, where Zayn al-Malúk
grows up into a handsome, courageous youth. By chance he meets his
father, the king, while the latter is hunting, and the king no sooner
casts his eyes on the youth than he becomes blind. The royal physicians
tell him that only the Rose of Bakáwalí can restore his sight, and the
four other sons of the king set out together to procure this wonderful
flower. They fall victims to the wiles of a courtesan, who wins all
their money at play and ultimately imprisons them in her house. In the
meantime Taj al-Malúk has started on the same errand; he outwits the
courtesan, obtains the liberation of his brothers, and then journeys to
Jinnistán, where, by the help of a friendly demon, he plucks the Rose in
the garden of the beauteous fairy Bakáwalí, and retraces his way
homeward. Meeting with his four brothers on the road, he acquaints them
of his success, and on their doubting the virtue of the flower, it is
applied to the eyes of a blind man, and his sight is instantly restored.
Upon this the brothers take the flower from Taj al-Malúk by force and
hasten with it to their father. But the hero’s friends the demons build
for him a splendid palace, and the fame of his wealth soon reaches the
court of his father, who, with the four brothers and the ministers of
state, visits him, and after a great feast Taj al-Malúk makes himself
known to the king and relates the whole story of how he procured the
flower that had restored his sight. The king falls upon his son’s neck
and weeps tears of joy, saying, “You have restored the light of my eyes
by the Rose of Bakáwalí, and by the sight of you the door of
cheerfulness has been opened in my sorrowful heart. It is incumbent on
me to make known this enlivening news to your mother, who has looked out
for you with anxiety, and I must cause her, who has been afflicted with
grief at your absence, to drink the sherbet of the glad tidings of your
safety.” Then the king went to Taj al-Malúk’s mother, made many
apologies for his ill-treatment of her, exalted her higher than she was
previously, and gave her the joyful news of her son’s arrival. The
remainder of the romance recounts the marvellous adventures of the hero
in fairyland, whither he proceeds to rejoin Bakáwalí, and where he
undergoes many strange transformations; but ultimately all is “merry as
marriage bells.”—Nothing is said about the punishment or pardon of the
treacherous brothers, but doubtless in the original form of the story
the hero acted as generously towards them as did Khudadad when his
father would have put the forty brothers to death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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