Once upon a time there lived a king. Although he was married, he had no children. One day a Maghreb foreigner came to him (a resident of the Maghreb: Arabs call the countries of North-West Africa Maghreb) and said:
“If I give you a means for your wife to have children, will you give me your firstborn?”
The king replied:
- Okay.
Then the Maghreb man gave him two candies - one green, the other red - and said:
“You eat the green one, and let your wife eat the red one.”
The king gave the red candy to his wife. She ate it, became pregnant and gave birth to a boy, who was named Clever Muhammad. He was smart, capable of science, and also had a beautiful voice.
Then the queen gave birth to a second son, awkward and stupid; he was called Smart Ala; and then the third was born; he was completely stupid. Ten years later a Maghreb man came to the king and said:
- Give me the promised son.
The king went to his wife:
— A Maghrebi man came for our first-born.
“We won’t give him up for anything,” said the mother. “It’s better to let Ali take him.”
“Okay,” answered the king.
He called Ali and handed him over to the Maghrebin. He took the boy and went with him on the road. They walked along the mountain road until noon; then the Maghreb asked Ali:
“Aren’t you hungry and thirsty?”
- We've been walking for half a day. How can you not get hungry and thirsty? - the boy answered.
The Maghrebian took him by the hand, took him back to the king and said:
- No, this is not the firstborn!
Then the king called all three sons. The Maghrebin extended his hand and pointed at Clever Muhammad. They walked the journey in half a day, and the Maghreb man said to Muhammad:
“Aren’t you hungry and thirsty?”
“If you want to eat and drink, then I want too,” he answered.
- Yes, you are my son! - exclaimed the Maghrebi man.
He stamped his foot and went down underground with Clever Muhammad. This Maghrebi man was an evil wizard. Going underground, he brought the boy to the palace, which stood in the middle of the garden, brought him some book and said:
- Read!
Clever Muhammad took the book, but could not understand a single word in it. And the Maghrebi man said to him:
“If you don’t memorize this book in thirty days, I will cut off your head.” Then he left him and went away. Clever Muhammad sat over the book for twenty-nine days and could not make out a word. Then he thought: “Tomorrow I will die; I’ll go for a walk in the garden before I die.”
He went out into the garden and saw a girl tied by her hair to a tree.
-Who tied you up? he asked.
“A Maghreb wizard,” the girl answered.
- And for what?
- For that. that I had memorized a book of witchcraft.
Then Clever Muhammad untied the girl and said:
“He also gave me a book so that I could learn it in thirty days: but I didn’t learn it, and tomorrow I will die.”
“I’ll help you,” said the girl, “but when the Maghreb comes to you, say that you couldn’t learn anything.” And she began to teach him from the book of witchcraft, and then said:
“Now tie me by the hair again.”
Clever Muhammad tied her up, and they parted. At the end of the next day, the Maghreb man came to Clever Muhammad and asked:
-Have you learned the book?
“I didn’t understand a word of it,” answered the young man.
Then the Maghrebi man pulled out his knife, cut off Muhammad’s right hand and said:
- I give you a reprieve for another thirty days; If you don't memorize the book, I'll cut off your head.
“Okay,” replied Muhammad.
When the Maghrebi man left. Clever Muhammad read three words from the book of witchcraft, and his hand grew to its place. He went back to the girl, untied her, and they began to walk around the garden. And then they suddenly found three lost leaves from the book of witchcraft, which the Maghreb man had been looking for in vain for forty years. Clever Muhammad read them, and he and the girl managed to rise to the surface of the earth. Muhammad brought two horses, he himself sat on one of them, and the girl sat on the other.
“You go to your parents, and I’ll go to mine,” said Muhammad.
He arrived home and knocked on the door. His mother opened the door for him, was delighted, and they talked until the morning. And in the morning he told her:
- Mother! I will give you a lamb; sell it, but never sell the rope that will be on it.
The mother took the lamb and went to the market. The owner of the coffee shop, a hashish dealer, addressed her:
- Woman, are you selling a lamb?
“Buy it, but I’m not selling the rope,” she answered.
- Fine. Will you sell it for rial?
“May Allah open the gates of profit,” the woman objected.
- Fine. For one and a half rials?
“Okay, may Allah send you good luck,” the woman answered.
The hashish merchant, pleased, took the lamb.
“I’ll take it as a gift to the king,” he said. And the people who were sitting in the coffee shop approved of the merchant’s words:
- That's right, this is a gift worthy of a king.
The hashish merchant brought a plate of water for the lamb to drink. The lamb placed its front legs on the plate. The merchant hit him. The lamb raised its hind legs, plunged into the water, and disappeared.
The merchant clasped his hands:
- Ah! The lamb drowned in the plate!
People thought the hashish dealer had gone crazy:
- We need to send him to a madhouse!
Meanwhile, the Maghribian went to where he left the Clever Muhammad. But he found neither him nor the girl and said:
- I swear to Allah! Even if he is on the seventh land, I will bring him. And the Maghreb man headed to the city where the Jew Clever Mohammed. There he heard people talk about a lamb drowning in a plate. “This must be the trick of the Clever Mohammed,” thought the Maghribian. “We need to stay here and watch for him.”
And the cunning Muhammad called his mother the next day and told her:
“I will give you a camel, sell it at the market, but under no circumstances should you sell the reason with it, even if you were given four thousand gold coins for it.”
The mother turned around and saw a camel in front of her. She took him by the reins, led him to the market and entrusted him to the reseller. And the Maghreb man stood at the bazaar at that time and saw everything.
When the camel was handed over, the Maghreb man turned to the reseller:
- I need this reason. Buy me a camel, Allah willing, for twenty thousand gold coins. I'll just take the reins and give you the camel.
The reseller went to the mother of Clever Muhammad:
- Will you sell the camel for four thousand gold coins?
“May Allah open the gates of profit,” she objected.
—Will you sell it for five thousand? - asked the reseller.
- Okay, may Allah send you good luck. But know that I cannot sell the camel harness.
- What do you need this piece of rope for? - asked the reseller. - Take another thousand gold coins for it and sell it.
The mother of Clever Muhammad was delighted that she could receive such wealth and agreed. The Maghrebian took the camel, gave it to the reseller, pulled out the reins and put it in his bag. He galloped off to the steppe, rejoicing that Clever Muhammad was now in his hands.
But Clever Muhammad turned into a raven and flew up. Then the Maghreb turned into a kite and rushed after him. They flew like this for two days and two nights. The Maghrebian began to catch up with Clever Muhammad. But he saw some kind of garden below, went down and turned into a pomegranate on a high tree. And this garden belonged to the Sultan, the father of the girl whom Muhammad freed. The Maghribian went to the Sultan:
- I ask you for one pomegranate. A person close to me is sick, and he asks for pomegranate fruits. And they told me that they are not found anywhere except in your garden.
“Is now the time for pomegranates?” - asked the Sultan. The Maghreb answered:
- O Sultan! If there is not even one pomegranate in your garden, let my head fall.
Then the Sultan called the chief gardener and asked:
- Is it true that you have grenades?
- Oh sir! Is now the time for pomegranates? - the gardener was amazed.
“You see, your head is missing,” said the Sultan to the Maghrebin.
But he objected:
- Order the gardener to go around the garden and look in the trees.
By order of the Sultan, the gardener went to the garden. On one of the trees he saw a large pomegranate, cut it off, brought it and gave it to the Sultan. He looked at the beautiful fruit and doubted whether it was worth giving it away. He called the vizier:
“I wouldn’t want to give this pomegranate to a Maghreb citizen.”
“And if there hadn’t been a pomegranate in the garden, wouldn’t you have cut off the Maghrebian’s head?” - asked the vizier.
“Yes, I would cut it off,” answered the Sultan.
“That means the pomegranate belongs to him by right,” said the vizier.
And the Sultan gave the pomegranate to the Maghreb. But before the Maghreb man had time to take it, the pomegranate split and all the grains scattered in different directions. The Maghribian immediately turned into a rooster and began to peck the grains one after another. The Sultan and the Vizier looked at all this with amazement.
And Clever Muhammad hid in a grain that rolled under the leg of the throne. The Maghribian continued to peck at the grains until he had eaten them all. Finally he saw the last grain, in which was the life of Muhammad, and was already stretching his neck to grab it, but the grain suddenly turned into a dagger. The dagger hit the rooster in the chest and cut it in half. Here Clever Muhammad took on his former appearance and appeared before the Sultan.
- Tell me what happened here? - asked the Sultan.
And Clever Muhammad told him the whole story from beginning to end and said:
“It was I who untied your daughter’s hair and set her free.”
The Sultan called his daughter.
- My daughter, do you know this man? he asked.
The girl replied:
- Yes, it’s Smart Muhammad who untied my hair.
“If he is your savior, you must marry him,” the Sultan decided.
He ordered a marriage contract to be drawn up, and everyone had fun for forty days. And Clever Muhammad and the Sultan’s daughter began to live happily and raise sons and daughters.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru