Leaves of Pearls (Iranian folktale)
# Leaves of Pearls (Iranian folktale)

Leaves of Pearls (Iranian: "برگ مرواريد") is an Iranian folktale first collected and published by author Saiyed Abolqasem Angavi Shirazi. It deals with a prince and his brothers sent on a quest to find a remedy for their father.

## Source

German scholar Ulrich Marzolph [de] sourced the tale from Hamadan.

## Translation

Professor Mahomed-Nuri Osmanovich Osmanov [ru] translated the tale as "Жемчужный листок" ("Pearl Leaves"), wherein the third prince and hero is named Malek-Mohammed.

## Summary

The king of Shahres has three sons by three different wives, and one day starts to lose his sight. A dervish comes to him and says his only cure is the leaves of pearl, but there are three castles where the devs live. The king's three sons offer to go fetch their father's cure, and reach a crossroads where a tablet says that they will perish if they ride together. Warned by the writing on the tablet, the half-brothers decide to go their separate ways, and leave their rings as token of life in case any of them falls in their quest. The elder two ride together to a city, where they find local work and stay there. As for the youngest, he reaches the castles of the Devs and subdues them, who promise to help him. They guide him to the next castle, and the third Dev offers to take him there: he provides him and the prince with to swift horses they ride to the entrance of the garden, from where the prince has to traverse alone. The prince climbs up a long staircase until he reaches the sleeping chambers of a maiden. He takes a branch of the leaves of pearl next to the maiden, kisses her face, and returns to the Dev. He goes back through the three Dev castles, and the Devs' sisters go with him. The prince reaches the crossroads with the girls and the leaves of pearl, and decides to look for his elder half-brothers in the nearby city. He pays their debs and buys them finer clothes, and they convene at the crossroads. However, the elder princes, on seeing the girls and the leaves of pearl, comment that their father will favour him and decide to get rid of their cadet by throwing him down a well. Meanwhile, the maiden at the garden wakes up and notices her branch of leaves of pearls is gone, so she utters a magic command to have the garden teleport next to the person that stole her possession. The next day, the king of Shahres sees the large palace near his city, and sends a slave to inquire about its master. The slave returns and tells the king that the mistress of the palace is the owner of the leaves of pearls, and wants it back. The king summons his elder sons to be questioned by the mistress of the palace, but they are unable to answer how they stole her leaves. The youngest prince appears and tells the whole story to the maiden, who agrees to marry him. The prince punishes his elder brothers and his father, and marries the three Devs' sisters and the owner of the leaves.

## Analysis

### Tale type

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". Ulrich Marzolph, in his Catalogue of Persian Folktales, classified the tale as type 500, 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 fot the success of the quest; the sleeping maiden, owner of the object, wakes up and goes after the thief.

## Variants

### Iran

In an Iranian tale, Der Vogel Blumentriller or 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.

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 throws 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.

