Ahmed
Ahmed the Orphan
A sultan encounters an abandoned orphaned child, and takes him in and names him Ahmed. Ahmed is well educated and honourable, and once he is grown, the sultan appoints him treasurer. One day, the sultan sends him on an errand to the sultan's mistress's rooms. When Ahmed enters the room, he sees the mistress in the arms of a servant, but he pretends not to notice and does not inform the sultan. However, the mistress, fearing that he reveal her infidelity, rushes to the sultan and complains that Ahmed has tried to assault her. The sultan, furious, calls his slave and commands him to go and wait in specific location, and then, “when a man comes to you and tells you to do what the sultan has commanded, behead him and give the head to the next man who comes”. The sultan then summons Ahmed, and instructs him to hurry to that same location, and to tell the waiting servant to "do what the sultan has commanded". But on his way, Ahmed comes across the lover of the mistress drinking with his fellow slaves, who clamour for him to join them. Ahmed protests that he is on important business for the sultan, so the lover volunteers to deliver Ahmed's urgent message in his stead. The lover takes Ahmed's place and is killed by the waiting servant. When the lover does not return, Ahmed goes to the house where the servant waited, receives a basket from him, and returns to the sultan. When the basket is opened and the lover's head is revealed, Ahmed explains the mistress's infidelity, and the sultan proclaims that all is as god willed it. The mistress too is executed.
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Nishimura offers the following notes on motifs and analogues: Motifs and Types: TMI K511 Uriah letter changed. Falsified order of execution. K978 Uriah letter. K1612 Message of death fatal to sender. ATU 910K Walk to the Ironworks. ATU 930 The Prophecy. TU 2205 Fridolin. Analogues: Shiki [Shiji, History], Sejia 7 (pp. 132-133); Scala Coeli, 719 ‘Un chevalier sauvé de la mort…’; Wesselski, Mönchslatein, 34; Gesta Romanorum, 283 ‘Fulgentius’; Cinthio, Hundred Tales [Gli Hecatommithi], 8.6; Timoneda, El Patrañuelo, 17; Behrnauer, Die vierzig Wesire, ‘Die Geschichte von dem König und seinem Günstiling’ (pp. 65-67. See Valdan, 120); Kathasaritsagara, ch. 20, end of ‘24. Story of Phalabhūti’; Schiller’s Der Gang nach dem Eisenhammer is a similar story. The stories that do not change people in the middle of the story, but rewrite or switch letters and usually end with the marriage to the princess, include Gesta Romanorum, 20 ‘Der ungewollte Nachfolger’; The Golden Legend, 175 ‘Pope St. Pelagius’ (pp. 427-428); ‘The Ogre with three Golden Hair’ in Grimm’s Fairy Tales (KHM 29), ‘Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren’; Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, 3.6 and 4.1; Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5.2; Cardonne’s ‘Die Geschichte von der unerhörten Grausamkeit eines Vaters’ in Mélanges de littérature orientale, and Choi In Hak, A Study on Korean Folktales…, 668, ‘Yanban (aristocrat) and the Servant’; Nihon Mukashibanashi Tsukan, 28, Index 302A, ‘Messenger of the Water God -- Rewriting Type’; Takagaki Kin’nosuke, Tales from Cambodia, 1 ‘The Twelve Daughters of Angkor’. Reference stories, etc.: Ilias, 6; Bible, ‘Samuel 2’, 11 (The king gives Uriah a letter to send to war to get rid of Uriah, and Uriah dies and David takes his wife. From this marriage Solomon is born). Nepos, Heroes’ Biography, IV, ‘Pausanias’, 4 (A man sent by Pausanias to the Persian king, wondering why none of those sent for the same reason had returned, opens the letter and reads the bearer to be killed. It also describes a conspiracy with the King of Persia. When the plot is discovered, Pausanias flees to the temple, where he is sealed up and dies). Saikaku, Budo Denraiki, 7.1, ‘Own Life’s Quick Messenger’. Bibliography: Chauvin VIII145A; J. Schick, Corpus Hamleticum; Takagi Toshio, A Study of Fairy Tales, pp. 228-9; Minakata Kumagusu, ‘Own Life’s Quick Messenger’; Nakatsukasa Tetsuo, The World of Aesop’s Fables, pp. 39-40; Nihon Mukashibanashi Tsukan, Kenkyu-hen 2, 302A. |
| Critical Literature |
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| Nishimura (2001), Perry (1959), Clouston (1884), Basset (1903) |
| Ahmed appears in the following versions and secondary versions |
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| This inset story appears in no versions of the database |
| Ahmed is narrated in the following occurrences | ||||
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| Ahmed appears in the following manuscripts |
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