In an Azeri tale titled "Приключения мальчика" ("Adventures of a Boy"), first collected in Nukha and published in 1904, a woman has a son and a foal who are very close friends.
It happens thus: the woman's husband is told by the doctor that only the foal's meat can cure her, and goes to talk to their son about killing his pet horse.
The monarch insists his daughter repeats the action: she avoids any other suitor, save for the gardener, to whom she throws her apple.
The youngest princess, however, brings him a meal made of the deer's head and legs, and the king's health improves.
However, the enemy army overpowers his, until a mysterious knight appears in the battlefield accompanied by two animals, a tiger and a lion.
The king goes to meet his strange saviour and notices a wound on his arm, so he takes off a handkerchief and bandages his hand, then returns to the city.
[4] In a review of Zeynalli's publication, Russian scholar Nikolai P. Andreev [ru], who developed the first East Slavic Folktale Classification in 1929, classified the tale as type 532, "Neznaika".
The type may also open with the prince for some reason being the servant of an evil being, where he gains the same gifts, and the tale proceeds as in this variant.
According to Toelken, this Subtype 2 is "the oldest", being found "in Southern Siberia, Iran, the Arabian countries, Mediterranean, Hungary and Poland".
[14] A motif that appears in tale type 314 is the hero having to find a cure for the ailing king, often the milk of a certain animal (e.g., a lioness).
According to scholar Erika Taube [de], this motif occurs in tales from North Africa to East Asia, even among Persian- and Arabic-speaking peoples.
When his father leaves on a business trip, he gifts his son a special black horse that can talk and knows the secrets of men.
Ali-khan trades clothes with a beggar, hides his hair under a cap, calls himself "Kechal", then finds work as apprentice to the gardener of local king Ali-Mamed-khan.
He dons fine garments and meets his brothers-in-law en route to the palace, and agrees to share the venison with them, in exchange for him branding their cheeks.
Next, a war erupts; Kechal summons the horse and defeats the enemies, getting hurt in battle and having his injury bandaged by the king.
Ali-Mamed-khan goes to visit his daughter Khurshid-khanum and sees the bandage on Kechal's hand, finally realizing he was the one that saved the kingdom.
[17] In an Azeri tale titled "Черный конь" ("Black Horse"), also published by Hənəfi Zeynallı, a padishah has a son named Ibrahim.
Her plans failing twice, the stepmother dyes her own skin to pretend she has jaundice, and her doctor lies to the padishah she needs to wrap her body in the black horse's hide to restore her health.
The padishah tells Ibrahim they need to sacrifice his black horse, and the boy asks his father for one last ride on the animal with the saddle that belonged to his grandfather, Shah Mirza.
Back to Ibrahim, on the road, he sees a nest of Zumrut's chicks about to be attacked by a snake-like being named azhdaha, and kills the latter.
The group then make their way to a city swarming with troops, and Ibrahim learns they are to pay tribute to the local padishah, or to take princess Khurshud.
The boy takes shelter with an old woman, then summons his black horse to defeat the enemy army, getting hurt in the process.
[18] The compiler classified the tale as types 554 and 314, and sourced it from a teller named Abbas Nadir-oglu, from the village of Bilgəh, in Baku.
One day, prince Ibrahim is coming back from his classes and meets an old farmer guiding a black colt.
Ibrahim makes a trade with the farmer for the horse and brings it home with him, then builds a stable to house the animal without his father's knowledge.
Ibrahim saddles the horse and rides out of the stables, then shows his father the poisoned food and sherbet as proof of the queen's wickedness, and departs.
Despite trying to block his son's path, the black horse opens its wings and flies away, and the king goes to check on his allegations.
Back to Ibrahim, he stops by a plantain tree and kills a snake with his sword that was menacing a nest of birds.
He then burns his horse's hair, summons the helpful animals to his side and rides to defeat the enemy army, hurting his hands in the process.