Leaves of Pearls

Professor Osmanov classified the tale as two tale types: AaTh 550, "Quest for the Golden Bird", and AaTh 551, "the Sons on a Quest for a Wonderful Remedy for their Father".[5][lower-alpha 1]

Ulrich Marzolph, in his Catalogue of Persian Folktales, classified the tale as its own Iranian type 550, Die neidischen Brüder ("The Jealous Brothers"): the king sends his three sons on a quest either for a cure for his illness, or for a talking bird; the king's youngest son, the hero of the tale, finds the bird or remedy, kisses a sleeping maiden, and returns to his brothers; his elder brothers throw him in a ditch and steal the object to take the credit for the success of the quest; the sleeping maiden, owner of the object, wakes up and goes after the thief.[7] Marzolph listed 9 variants of his tale type across Iranian sources.[8]

The tale contains similarities to two tale types of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index: ATU 550, "Bird, Horse and Princess", and ATU 551, "Water of Life". Scholars Stith Thompson and Hans-Jörg Uther remarked on their similarity of plots and likeness of motifs, which makes it difficult to index as either one type or the other.[9][10]

In an Iranian tale collected by Iranist Arthur Christensen with the title Der Vogel Blumentriller (translated as The Bird Called Flower Trill), the king's three sons, Malik Muhammad, Malik Djamsheed and Malik Ibrahim, must seek the titular bird Flower Trill, whose song can heal the king. Only the youngest, Malik Ibrahim, finds the bird, which is owned by Tarfe Banu, the daughter of the Peri King of the Mountain of Qaf. At the end of the tale, she leads her army to the king's realm to retrieve her bird.[11][12]

In a tale from Isfahan, translated into Russian as "Листья дерева тутии" ("Leaves from the Tutia Tree"), the padishah of Chin (a term for "China"), Malek Faghfur, is losing his sight, and his only remedy is the leaves from the Tutia tree that grows on the land of Misr, in the garden of the daughter of the Shah of the Peris. The three princes, Malek Jamshid, Malek Shamshir and Malek Ibrahim, begin the quest: the first two princes stop by a city and play games against a beautiful lady, lose, and are turned into servants; Malek Ibrahim beats the same lady at her game, ousts a cruel ruler, then goes to Misr to find the leaves. He enters the palace of the Shah of the Peris and sees his daughter, deep in sleep, and falls in love with her. Malek Ibrahim takes the leaves with him and goes back to rescue his elder brothers, but they betray him, steal the leaves and throw him inside a well to die. Later, Ibrahim is rescued by a shepherd and his dog and goes back to Chin, where his elder brothers have been crowned padishah and vizier, and is tossed in the dungeons. Meanwhile, back in Misr, the Peri princess has also fallen in love with Ibrahim, and takes the opportunity to lead her father's army to Chin to see him again and punish the one who plucked the leaves from the Tutia tree.[13]

Orientalist Wheeler Thackston collected a Kurdish tale titled The Zay Tree and the Tay Falcon. In this tale, a king has three sons, two from a first wife, and the third from a second wife. He is also going blind, and only the titular zay tree and tay falcon can cure him, located in the city of fairies, guarded by demons and beyond Mount Qaf. The three sons each depart on a journey, and the youngest reaches a city whose leader proposes a riddle for him regarding the behaviour of living things being defined by nature or nurture, using cats as an example. He answers it wrong and flees the city to a cave in the mountains, where he releases a maiden from a demon and obtains a magic box that summons two magic slaves. The third prince continues on his quest and reaches a second city, whose king and army he defeats with the help of the magic slaves and makes them convert from "fire-worshipping" to Islamism. He finally reaches a large mountain and orders his slaves to bring him a steel stake, pegs, hammers, and a rope, then climbs the mountain to the other side where he reaches a palace. He climbs down the rope and arrives at a room full of guardian dogs and horses, and trades their fodder (straw for the horses, bone for the dogs), kept the former way so that they would always be hungry and sound against intruders. The third prince, next, arrives at the door to the location of the tree and the falcon, decorated with bells. Summoning the slaves, he produces pieces of cotton to muffle the alarm bells, and enters the chambers of an asleep queen of the fairies. He kisses her on the cheek, and a blue mark appears on her face. He also switch the positions of four lamps around the queen, unties 39 of 40 knots on her pants, takes the tree and falcon and summons his slaves to bring him to the top of the palace. After giving the treasures to the slaves for safekeeping, the prince returns to the first city, and is asked again the riddle of nature of nurture, and rigs the challenge by letting loose mice for the cats to catch. The king, admitting defeat, takes off his disguise and reveals she is a woman. The prince realizes his elder brothers must have come to the same city and died, but the she-king assures it is not so, and sends for the elder princes, imprisoned in the dungeons. The prince then goes to fetch the woman at the cave, and the group make their way to their homeland, the girls ahead, while the three princes follow behind them. While the girls are at a distance, the elder princes stab their cadet and leave him for dead in a river, and take the tree and falcon for themselves. Back to the queen of the fairies, she wakes up from her slumber and notices that someone has come to her room, since the zay tree and the tay falcon are not there. She then summons her fairy and demon sergeants to search high and low for the man who did that. Her journey takes her to the city of the blind king, where many people claim the success of the quest, but cannot verify the details of how they retrieved the tree and the falcon. The third prince, who was rescued and nursed back to health by a miller, appears to the queen of the fairies at last and tells her how he bypassed the guards. The queen of the fairies marries the third prince, and he, out of respect for their father, decides to forgive his elder brothers.[14]

In a tale collected by Russian philologist Aleksandr Gryunberg-Tsvetinovich and philologist Mikhail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamensky in Sistan with the title "Лист сорокаустого дерева" ("Leaf from the Magpie Tree"), a king has three sons, two by a first wife and one, the youngest, named Malik-Muhammad, by a second wife. One day, the king is losing his sight until he eventually goes blind. The king's soothsayers prescribe that only the leaf from the magpie tree can cure him. The elder princes depart in secret. Their cadet, Malik-Muhammad, asks his father the reason for the elders' departure, and is told about the cure for the king. The youth, then, decides to join his brothers, who make him their servant (he cooks their food and grazes their horses). One day, they reach a crossroads and go their separate ways: the elder two to the right and Malik-Muhammad to the left. The elder two reach a house where they spend the night, and play games with an expert female player, losing the bets and becoming their servants. Meanwhile, Malik-Muhammad meets three female diva sisters and, with their help, learns of the location of the tree with such leaves: the castle of the Peri King, where his daughter, the princess-pari, lives. The elder diva sister warns him that, if he approaches the Peri King's horse, tied next to the tree, it will neigh and alert the tree, which will sound and wake the sleeping princess pari, who will leave her room to check on the items and scold them; as soon as she leaves, the prince is to pet the horse and say soothing words to the horse and the tree, earning their trust in the process; then, he is to climb 40 stairs to the princess's room, steal one of her seven veils as a memento. The prince reaches the castle and the events unfold as the diva predicted: the prince, in the princess's room, steals one of her gem-encrusted veils and kisses her, then goes to the garden, steals a leaf of the tree, and rides back to the crossroads. At the crossroads, he notices his brothers' daggers (which they stabbed the tree with to serve as tokens) are rusty, indicating they are in trouble. Malik-Muhammed makes his way to the city where his elder half-brothers are and releases them from their servitude by betting with the female player and winning. Malik-Muhammad sends a caravan with the leaves of the magpie tree ahead of him, along with potential brides for his brothers, while he rides with his half-brothers. At one time, the brothers fill a flask with fresh water to drink, and agree to give some to Malik if he puts out both of his eyes. The youth agrees to their ghastly deal, takes out his eyes (which his brothers toss to Malik's pet hound), and abandons him on the road, then steals the magical leaves for themselves and heal their father, the king. Meanwhile, the princess-pari wakes up in her castle and notices that her room has been rummaged, her diva guardians in the stairs have been killed, and the leaves from her tree have been stolen. Realizing only one brave enough could traverse such perils, she decides to have him as her husband, so she summons an army of divas to search everywhere for him, until she stops just outside Malik-Muhammad's city walls with her palace, and demands the thief appears to her, lest she makes the entire city to cinders.[15] The compilers classified the tale as types AaTh 550 and AaTh 551.[16]

Philologists Aleksandr Gryunberg-Tsvetinovich and Mikhail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamensky collected a tale from an Afghan informant that lived in Shkhawr, with the title "Царица с Волосами в Сорок Гязов" ("The Queen with the Forty-Gyaz Hair"). In this tale, a king has three beloved sons from a first wife, and one that he hates from a second wife. One night, he sends a maid to hear what they are talking about: the three elder are asleep, while the youngest mentions about a Pearl that Shines in the Night, located in Mount Kof. The maid reports back to the king and he decides to send his three elder sons after the pearl, in fine horses, and the youngest with a lame mount. The four princes reach a crossroads, and go their separate ways: the elder three to the safe road that allows return, and the youngest to the road of not returning. The fourth prince finds and defeats a Black Div, a White Div and a Red Div. After saving another king, the grateful monarch tells him that the prince needs to reach the Simurgh, a large bird that lives in a tree, but its chicks are always menaces by a multiheaded dragon. With this advice, the prince traverses steppes and deserts until he reaches the Simurgh's nest and kills the multiheaded dragon to protect its nestlings. The Simurgh, in return, agrees to take him up Mount Kof, in exchange for feeding the bird with meat. On the aerial journey there, the prince feeds the bird part of his flesh when the meat is not enough, and, after landing, the Simurgh restores the prince's flesh. Finally in Mount Kof, the prince goes in search of the objects of his quest: the White Falcon and the Night-Shining Pearl, at the hands of the Queen with the Forty-Gyaz Hair (gyaz being a measurement unit). The Simurgh also advises him to compliment a scorched garden and insult a blooming garden by saying the opposite of what they are; compliment a crooked bridge and a crooked gate; exchange the fodder of two animals (hay for a horse, bones for a dog); lastly, when he reaches the Queen's room, he is to tie strands of her hair to 40 pillars in her room, switch two pearls' positions (move the one near her head to her feet, and vice-versa), exchange the positions between 40 pairs of her undergarments (the ones on the bottom are to be brought to the top, and vice-versa). The Simurgh then departs, and the prince follows the bird's advice to the letter, avoiding the dangers until he enters the Queen's chambers. After applying the Simurgh's instructions to the Queen's bed, he steals a set of keys, opens 40 rooms and finds the falcon and the pearl, and hurries back. Suddenly, the Queen wakes up and commands her servants to deter him, but the animals and objects refuse to do so, due to the prince's actions. The prince returns to a waiting Simurgh, which takes him back to the Div. The prince makes his way back to the crossroads and rides down the road where his brothers went down before, arriving at a city where they have become lowly servants.[17]