The story of the Princess Arab-Zandīq or The Story of ‘Arab-Zandīq (French: L'Histoire d'Arab-Zandyq) is a modern Egyptian folktale collected in the late 19th century by Guillaume Spitta Bey.Spitta-Bey, Guillaume. Contes Arabes Modernes. Leiden: Brill. 1883. pp. 137–151. It is related to the theme of the calumniated wife and classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children". These tales refer to stories where a girl promises a king she will bear a child or children with wonderful attributes, but her jealous relatives or the king's wives plot against the babies and their mother. Variants are collected in Egypt and across North Africa.
Summary A king calls his vizier to join him in visiting the city at night. They see a light in the distance and approach it. Inside, three women talk to each other: the first promises to bake a large pancake for the king and his army; the second that she can weave a tent large enough to accommodate the king and his army; and the third promises to bear the king twins, a boy and a girl with alternate hairs of gold and hyacinth (gold and jasper, in a Hungarian translation),Simon Róbert. Guha a szószéken: Egyiptomi népmesék [Egyptian Fairy Tales]. Budapest: Európa Könyvkiadó, 1971. pp. 116-125. and their laughter will make the sun and the moon appear, and when they weep the skies shall thunder and rain. (In a translation by E. A. Wallis Budge, the third woman says her daughter will have golden hair and her son "hyacinthine locks").Budge, Ernest Alfred Wallis, Sir. Egyptian Tales And Romances: Pagan, Christian And Muslim. London: T. Butterworth, 1931. pp. 394–403.Thal, Herbert Van. Oriental splendour an anthology of Eastern tales. London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1953. pp. 7, 174–180.
The next day the king summons the three women and marries them. He sleeps with the first two on two separate nights, and they fail to deliver their promises. The third woman gives birth to a son and a daughter. The midwife is bribed by the other wives to replace the twins for two blind dogs and to cast them in a box into the river. The king sees the blind puppies and, feeling he was deceived, orders the woman to be tied to the stairs and covered with pitch, and for everyone to spit on her.
As for the twins, the box is saved by a fisherman who lives on an island. He and his wife raise the twins. Years pass, and one day, the fisherman takes the boy to the market to sell his fishes. The king passes by the market and sees the boy, named Muhammed. Sensing a strange connection to the boy, he pays the fishes and takes the boy with him to the palace. The king later sends the boy back to the fisherman. Meanwhile, the king's wife notices the boy is one of the children the midwife was supposed to kill. The midwife tells the king's wife not to worry, for she has a plan to get rid of the boy and his sister.
The midwife puts her plans into action: she goes to the fisherman's hut and finds the sister of the clever Muhammed (Muhammed the Discreet, in W. A. Clouston's translation) sitting alone. The woman goads the sister into sending Muhammed after the singing rose of a maiden named Arab-Zandiq. The boy rides until he reaches the house of an ogress, suckles her breasts and salutes her. The ogress tells him that his deed earned him her favour. After Muhammed talks about the singing rose, the ogress tells him about the garden where it is located: he is to exchange the fodder of a goat and a lion, then a gate will open, and he is to take the flower with him and flee before he becomes stone.
It happens as the ogress describes. Muhammed takes the rose back to his sister. Some time later, he visits the king again, and the midwife returns to the fisherman's hut: the rose will not sing unless the mirror is near it. The girl sends her brother to get the mirror. Muhammed goes back to he ogress, who this time advises him to go beyond the garden, up a staircase and find the mirror in a room.
The boy brings back the mirror. The midwife returns to the fisherman's hut and convinces the sister to ask for Arab-Zandiq herself. Muhammed goes back to the ogress, who warns him that many have tried to get her and failed, doomed to be turned into stone by her powers. Muhammed rides his horse to Arab-Zandiq's palace, puts his horse's head against a wall of the palace and shouts at the maiden's window for her to appear. Arab-Zandiq, from her window, tries to shoo away the boy, and the horse and him are slowly transformed into stone. The third time, Arab-Zandiq leans out of the window, her hair reaching the ground. Muhammed seizes the opportunity to pull her out of the window by her hair. Defeated, the maiden tells the boy she is destined for him, and disenchants the many stones in her palace.
Muhammed brings Arab-Zandiq with him to his sister. Arab-Zandiq orders her servants to build a palace in the fisherman's island, and tells Muhammed to invite the king to their new palace for his wedding with Arab-Zandiq. The king becomes impressed with the boy's palace and invites the boy, his wife and his sister to the royal palace.
So the three go to the royal palace. Arab-Zandiq sees the poor woman shackled to the stairs and covers her with a shawl. The king's servants take notice of this act of kindness and question the guest. Arab-Zandiq orders them to take the woman, bathe and cleanse her, and to provide her with new clothes. During the banquet with the king, the fisherman reveals he found the box with the twins in the river and raised the two. The twins' mother, brought to the banquet, recognizes her children by their hairs of hyacinth and gold. The king still wants them to prove their relationship, so they weep and thunders roar and it rains; they laugh, and the sun and the moon appear. The king celebrates that his family is reunited and burns his wife and the midwife.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", a tale type that, according to scholars Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana, is very popular in the Arab world.
In a late-19th century study, scholar W. A. Clouston listed L'Histoire d'Arab-Zandik as the "Modern Arabic" version of The Sisters Envious of Their Cadette, from the compilation The Arabian Nights. French comparativist Emmanuel Cosquin also related the Egyptian tale to a French story about a calumniated wife, her children of wondrous aspect and a quest for magical objects.
Motifs French ethnologist , in regards to a Kabylian variant, noted that the sisters' jealousy originated from their perceived infertility, and that their promises of grand feats of domestic chores were a matter of "capital importance" to them.
Hasan El-Shamy remarked that in Middle Eastern tales the royal children, born of the third sister, are a brother-sister twin pair.
W. A. Clouston noted that the fairy Arab-Zandyk replaces the Speaking Bird of the other variants of type 707 in revealing the truth to the king.
Philologist Johannes Østrup ascribed an "Oriental" origin to the motif of the monarch banning lighting candles at night, which appears in many of the variants.Ostrup, J. "Tyrkiske Folkeeventyr". In: Dania n. 9. 1903. p. 87.
Another motif that appears in these variants is the hero suckling an ogress's breastmilk during the quest for the objects.
Variants Egypt El-Shamy mentioned that 14 variants of the tale type exist in the Egyptian archives (as of the 1980s).
The Nightingale that Shrieked In the tale The Nightingale that Shrieked, collected by Inea Bushnaq, the youngest sister promises twins: "a boy with locks of gold and silver" and a girl who can make the sun shine with her smile and rain fall with her weeping. Years later, they are sent on a quest for the Tree with Apples that dance and Apricots that sing and the Bulbul Assiah, the Nightingale that Shrieks, both tasks completed only by the brother.
The Promises of the Three Sisters In a tale El-Shamy collected from a female teller in a village in the Nile Delta and published with the title The Promises of the Three Sisters, a king forces a ban on lighting candles at night. He goes with his vizier to check on the people and sees an illuminated house. Inside, three sisters are weaving and talking: the eldest promises to bake a cake to feed the king and his army; the second that she will weave a carpet to sit the entire army; and the third that she will bear twins, a boy named Clever Muhammed and a girl called Sitt el-Husn ("Mistress of Beauty"), both with golden and silver hair. Years later, the twins quest for the "dancing bamboo, singing water and talking lark". Clever Muhammed, the brother, obtains the first two items, but fails in the third quest. The sister saves him and gets the bird. Author and translator readapted the tale, along with the variant The Nightingale That Shrieked, and translated it to French as L'Alouette hurleuse ("The Screaming Lark").
El-Schater Mouhammed In a tale collected by Yacoub Artin Pacha in the Nile Valley with the title El-Schater Mouhammed, a king forbids lighting candles at night. Three sisters, daughters of a bean seller, disobey the ban and light a candle one night. The king goes to the city with his vizier and dervishes to enforce the ban, and see the three sisters' house. They overhear their conversation: the elder wants to marry the king and promises to spread silk from their house to the palace; the second claims she can bake a cake grand enough for him and the people; the youngest promises to give birth to twins, a boy and a girl, the boy having hair of gold and silver and, when he cries, the sky will be clouded, it will be cold and rainy, and when he laughs, the skies will be clear, even in winter. Years later, the midwife tricks the king that the twins, the boy named El-Chater Mouhammed and the girl Sit-el-Hôsn oual Gamal, intent to dethrone the king, and suggests to give the twins the quest for the objects: the Tree of Sitti-Han (El-Chater obtains the tree and marries its owner, a maiden named Sitti-Han) and "a baby or infant who can speak eloquently".
North Africa Author E. M Chadli listed variants found in the Maghreb region: L'uccelo della verità ("The Bird of Truth"), by Destaing; "Il figlio e la figlia del re" ("The King's Son and Daughter"), by Biarnay; La storia di Zaohuet ed-Denia ("The Story of Zaohuet ed-Denia"), by Huet; La storia della tre sorelle ("The tale of the three sisters"), by Legey; L'ucello del paese dell'aratura ("The Bird from the Plowing Country"), by Pellar; Storie di tre donne ("Tale of three girls"), by Lacoste-Dujardin; and Il principe e la principessa alle fonti d'oro e l'universo, by Khatibi.
Tunisia