[2] Professor Mahomed-Nuri Osmanovich Osmanov [ru] translated the tale as "Жемчужный листок" ("Pearl Leaves"), wherein the third prince and hero is named Malek-Mohammed.
Warned by the writing on the tablet, the half-brothers decide to go their separate ways, and leave their rings as token of life in case any of them falls in their quest.
[5][a] Ulrich Marzolph, in his Catalogue of Persian Folktales, classified the tale as its own Iranian type 550, Die neidischen Brüder ("The Jealous Brothers"): the king sends his three sons on a quest either for a cure for his illness, or for a talking bird; the king's youngest son, the hero of the tale, finds the bird or remedy, kisses a sleeping maiden, and returns to his brothers; his elder brothers throw him in a ditch and steal the object to take the credit for the success of the quest; the sleeping maiden, owner of the object, wakes up and goes after the thief.
Scholars Stith Thompson and Hans-Jörg Uther remarked on their similarity of plots and likeness of motifs, which makes it difficult to index as either one type or the other.
While he rests, his elder brothers return empty-handed from the journey, see the cage and decide to take it with them, stealing the credit for the success of the quest.
Later, Ibrahim is rescued by a shepherd and his dog and goes back to Chin, where he discovers his elder brothers have been crowned padishah and vizier, and is tossed in the dungeons.
The princess takes the opportunity to lead her father's army to Chin to see the prince again and punish the one who plucked the leaves from the Tutia tree.
Thus, she takes an army of ghouls, divs and other creatures and stations herself just outside of Chin, and demands to see the thief that stole the leaves from her garden and she will spare the kingdom, lest she reduces everything to cinders.
The king sends his middle son, Shamshir, to placate the leader of the invading army, and also cannot produce evidence to substantiate his claims, and suffers the same fate.
The third prince tells his father he was the one that brought the leaves, doffs the lowly disguise, summons the devs by burning their hairs, which they gave him in case he needed their help, and goes to meet the princess.
He is also going blind, and only the titular zay tree and tay falcon can cure him, located in the city of fairies, guarded by demons and beyond Mount Qaf.
The three sons each depart on a journey, and the youngest reaches a city whose leader proposes a riddle for him regarding the behaviour of living things being defined by nature or nurture, using cats as an example.
The third prince continues on his quest and reaches a second city, whose king and army he defeats with the help of the magic slaves and makes them convert from "fire-worshipping" to Islamism.
Summoning the slaves, he produces pieces of cotton to muffle the alarm bells, and enters the chambers of an asleep queen of the fairies.
He also switch the positions of four lamps around the queen, unties 39 of 40 knots on her pants, takes the tree and falcon and summons his slaves to bring him to the top of the palace.
After giving the treasures to the slaves for safekeeping, the prince returns to the first city, and is asked again the riddle of nature or nurture, and rigs the challenge by letting loose mice for the cats to catch.
Her journey takes her to the city of the blind king, where many people claim the success of the quest, but cannot verify the details of how they retrieved the tree and the falcon.
The third prince, who was rescued and nursed back to health by a miller, appears to the queen of the fairies at last and tells her how he bypassed the guards.
The group make their way to Baghdad, their homeland, and the elder princes decide to betray their cadet and take the credit for the quest: they dump him in a well and steal the doves, but the birds do not coo, for their master is not present.
Later, a pasha (Bnafschanārîn, in male disguise) appears in the outskirts of the city with tents and their army, demanding the thief that stole the golden doves.
Meanwhile, Malik-Muhammad meets three female diva sisters and, with their help, learns of the location of the tree with such leaves: the castle of the Peri King, where his daughter, the princess-pari, lives.
The youth agrees to their ghastly deal, takes out his eyes (which his brothers toss to Malik's pet hound), and abandons him on the road, then steals the magical leaves for themselves and heal their father, the king.
Meanwhile, the princess-pari wakes up in her castle and notices that her room has been rummaged, her diva guardians in the stairs have been killed, and the leaves from her tree have been stolen.
[18] Philologists Aleksandr Gryunberg-Tsvetinovich and Mikhail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamensky collected a tale from a Wakhi informant that lived in Shkhawr, Afghanistan, with the title "Царица с Волосами в Сорок Гязов" ("The Queen with the Forty-Gyaz Hair"), which was translated into French language as La reine eux cheveux long de quarante gazes.
The maid reports back to the king and he decides to send his three elder sons after the pearl, in fine horses, and the youngest with a lame mount.
After saving another king, the grateful monarch tells him that the prince needs to reach the Simurgh, a large bird that lives in a tree, but its chicks are always menaces by a multiheaded dragon.
With this advice, the prince traverses steppes and deserts until he reaches the Simurgh's nest and kills the multiheaded dragon to protect its nestlings.
Finally in Mount Kof, the prince goes in search of the objects of his quest: the White Falcon and the Night-Shining Pearl, at the hands of the Queen with the Forty-Gyaz Hair (gyaz being a measurement unit).
The Simurgh also advises him to compliment a scorched garden and insult a blooming garden by saying the opposite of what they are; compliment a crooked bridge and a crooked gate; exchange the fodder of two animals (hay for a horse, bones for a dog); lastly, when he reaches the Queen's room, he is to tie strands of her hair to 40 pillars in her room, switch two pearls' positions (move the one near her head to her feet, and vice-versa), exchange the positions between 40 pairs of her undergarments (the ones on the bottom are to be brought to the top, and vice-versa).
After applying the Simurgh's instructions to the Queen's bed, he steals a set of keys, opens 40 rooms and finds the falcon and the pearl, and hurries back.