Histoire du prince et de son cheval (English: "Story of the prince and his horse") is a modern Egyptian folktale first collected by author Gillaume Spitta-Bey in the late-19th century. Orientalist E. A. Wallis Budge translated it as The Story of the Prince and his Horse. Orientalist J. C. Mardrus included the tale as The Eleventh Captain's Tale in his translation of The Arabian Nights, despite it not being part of the original text of the compilation.
The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 314, "Goldener", with an alternate introductory episode: evil stepmother persecutes hero and his horse. Similar tales are known across North Africa and the Middle East.
Summary
A sultan's son and a mare's foal are born at the same time, and their respective mothers die. The foal is given to the prince, who pets and feeds it whenever he comes back from school. To abate his sorrow, the sultan remarries. The sultan's new wife (originally a slave girl), however, has a lover, a Jew, and both conspire to kill her step-son. One day, the horse cries and confesses to the prince, named Mohammed L'Avisé ("Clever Mohammed"; "Muhammad the Clever One", in Wallis Budge's translation), about his stepmother's devious plan to kill him by adding poison to his food. Warned by the horse, however, the prince gives the poisoned food to a cat, which eats it and dies.
Failing that, the Jew tells the sultan's wife to feign illness and demand the foal's heart as a cure for her. She follows his instructions and tricks her husband into killing his son's pet horse. Clever Mohammed convinces his father to let him take a last ride on the animal before its execution. The next morning, the prince mounts the horse and gallops away from his family, away from his kingdom and into another realm. Clever Mohammed buys a poor man's shabby garments. His horse then gives him a hair of its mane and a firestone to summon him.
Clever Mohammed enters the kingdom and talks to the local king's royal gardener, who hires him as his assistant. Clever Mohammed works driving the oxen in the garden to turn the water wheel to irrigate the royal gardens. One day, Clever Mohammed summons his horse, wears his princely garments and rides around the garden, trampling the ground - an event witnessed by the king's youngest princess. The boy then dismisses his horse and goes back to his shabby disguise. The royal gardener appears soon after and, seeing the destruction around the garden, threatens to punish him, but the youngest princess orders him to rest his hand and not harm the boy.
Some time later, the king's seven daughters throw their kerchiefs to choose their husbands as a retinue passes under the window of the princesses' castle. The six elder princesses throw theirs to noble men, but the youngest withholds hers since she cannot see the gardener's assistant in the crowd. The king then orders the boy to the brought to the assemblage. As soon as she sees him, she throws her kerchief to him, signifying her choice, much to her father's disgust. The king marries his six elder daughters, but orders his youngest to be locked up in a room with her low-born husband.
The king's disappointment makes him ill, and only the milk of a she-bear brought in the skin of a she-bear can cure him. He orders his six sons-in-law to search for the she-bear's milk. The king sends his sons-in-law to get the cure for him and gives Clever Mohammed a lame horse to join in the quest. While his brothers-in-law depart ahead of him, Clever Mohammed summons his loyal horse and asks for a tent and a pen filled with bears. His brothers-in-law arrive and ask Clever Mohammed - which they do not recognize - for some of the bears' milk. Clever Mohammed agrees to give some to them, in exchange for him branding their backs with his ring and a circle. The brothers-in-law agree to it and are give old bear's milk to give to the king, while Clever Mohammed keeps the real cure to himself. The six sons-in-law's remedy is useless, while Clever Mohammed gives his father-in-law the correct one, much to the latter's annoyance.