The next day, the sultan allows his son to saddle and ride Houssan, while the stepmother secretly orders her slaves to attack the boy.
The battle is fierce and they barely resist, when Schatr Muhammed comes in riding his horse Houssan and makes the enemy army retreat.
The next day, the princess tells her husband that the sultan, her father, will go to the battlefield to discover the identity of their mysterious knight (Faris) and lead their army to victory.
According to Toelken, this Subtype 2 is "the oldest", being found "in Southern Siberia, Iran, the Arabian countries, Mediterranean, Hungary and Poland".
[17] 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.
[18] Similarly, Hasan M. El-Shamy noted that the quest for the king's remedy appears as a subsidiary event "in the Arab-Berber culture area".
[19] In addition, Germanist Gunter Dammann, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, noted that the motif of the quest for the remedy appeared "with relative frequency" in over half of the variants that start with the Subtype 2 opening (stepmother's persecution of hero and horse).
[20] According to Germanist Günter Dammann [de], tale type 314 with the opening of hero and horse fleeing home extends from Western Himalaya and South Siberia, to Iran and the Arab-speaking countries in the Eastern Mediterranean.
[22] Anthropologist Andreas Kronenberg published a Sudanese tale titled Das Wunderpferd ("The Wonderful Horse"), collected in 1973 from a teller named 'Awad Muḥammad Halīl.
Some time later, a West African doctor and magician comes to town and tells the step-mother the boy is being helped by the horse, so her next course of action is to kill the animal.
The boy then takes shelter with a poor old woman that lives next to the king's garden and agrees to drive the oxen to move the water wheel.
The boy puts on the golden garments and rides the animal around the garden, stamping over the flowers - an event witnessed by the king's seventh and youngest daughter from her window.
The princess then inquires her mother about their servant at the garden, and, taking an interest in him, bakes fresh bread for him, leaving a golden coin in the sauce for him to find.
Some time later, the king goes with his daughters for a stroll in the garden, the eldest picks a banana, the middle one an orange and the youngest three limes of varied ripeness.
Next, war breaks out and the king sends his six sons-in-law to fight for the kingdom, and gives a lame horse for the gardener's assistant.
While his brothers-in-law ride in front, he summons his loyal horse and, wielding a sword, defeats his father-in-law's enemies, in a war that goes on for seven years.
The youth greets the Zeriba's owner, a sheik, and asks to borrow the place for a week, as well as an old gazelle and a young one, and disguises himself as an Arab.
After a meal, the "Arab" agrees to give them gazelle's milk, but tells a fake story they have to be branded on their backs.
The gardener's assistant then declares himself to be the mysterious knight who fought in the war, and his brothers-in-law as his slaves, due to the brands on their backs.
[23][24] Gertrud von Massenbach collected tale in the Dongolawi language with the title Das Wunderpferd ("The Wonderful Horse").
The story explains that the Sultan has seven daughters who spend some time in the garden collecting fruits (bananas, oranges and apples).
The king's son summons his horse by rubbing two of its hairs it gave him, and rides around the garden - an event witnessed by the Sultan's youngest daughter, from her window.
Later, when the princesses are gathering fruits in the garden, the youngest finds three pomegranates, two large and intact, and one small burst open.
The Sultan's wife decides to pay her daughter and her husband a visit, and sees that their shabby house looks like a castle from the inside.
The old woman advises her to bring the boys food and to lie down naked, so her own son will come cover her with her clothes.
The woman feeds extravagant dishes to her lover, like chicken, pastries and sweets, but meagre foods to her husband and her stepson, like soup and bread.
The king feels insulted by this, so he moves his youngest daughter and her husband to an onion storeroom, while he gifts lavish palaces for the elder six.
Muḥammad's brothers-in-law ride into the wilderness to find the milk, but the youth summons the mare and asks it to build him a palace and draw all animals next to the construction.
Later, war breaks out, Muḥammad joins the fray to defend the kingdom: he vanquishes his father-in-law's enemies, but is hurt in battle, and flees.