[3] 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.
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.
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.
Clever Mohammed is given another lame mule to join with his father-in-law's troops, but dismisses his mount and summons his magic horse to ride into battle.
After the war, the king complains that his six sons-in-law did nothing to defend the kingdom, and his youngest daughter suggests he finds his ring and his handkerchief.
At the end of the tale, Clever Mohammed returns to his homeland and, succeeding his now deceased father, orders the execution of his stepmother and her Jew lover.
[8][9][10] American folklorist D. L. Ashliman classified The Eleventh Captain's Tale in the Aarne-Thompson Index as type AaTh 314, "The Golden-Haired Boy and His Magic Horse".
According to Toelken, this Subtype 2 is "the oldest", being found "in Southern Siberia, Iran, the Arabian countries, Mediterranean, Hungary and Poland".
According to scholar Erika Taube [de], this motif occurs in tales from North Africa to East Asia, even among Persian- and Arabic-speaking peoples.
[19] 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".
[20] 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).
[21] 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.
[23] In a tale collected by Yacoub Artin Pacha in the Nile Valley with the title Le Cheval Enchanté ("The Enchanted Horse"), a widowed king remarries.
Later, war breaks out, and the gardener, joined by his faithful horse, helps his father-in-law and brothers-in-law, as a mysterious knight clad in green, red and white.
His new wife hates her stepson, named Clever Muhammed, and tries to poison him twice: in his food and in his clothes dye, but twice she is thwarted by the warnings of his magic filly.
The gardener (named Clever Muhammad) rides on a lame jackass, then summons the filly to defeat the armies and regain the king's possessions.
[25] Researcher Celeste Míguez Seoane collected an Egyptian tale from New Valley with the title El caballo verde ("The Green Horse").
The boy rides the green horse and throws the gold and coins to the people to distract them, and flees from home to another kingdom.
Later, the girls, daughters of the city's sultan, wish to marry, and every man is summoned to court, including the cripple, named Lame Habiyo.
[28] Austrian Africanist Leo Reinisch collected a tale from the Bilen language with the title Hámed ábin Jẳgī sīm qǔrás kegantó sanẳ (German: Der bettler Hamed heiratet die königstochter von Dschaga, English: "How beggar Hamed married the daughter of the Jaga king").
Things come to a head when the step-mother pretends to be ill and demands the horse to be sacrificed, but Ali rides the animal to another kingdom, where he finds work as a seller's apprentice.
Ali rides his horse to find the cure before his brothers-in-law, and, when he meets them en route, gives them an innocuous milk in exchange for them cutting off their earlobes.
Khaboobi then tells the boy to change his clothes, find himself a house in a nearby village, and if he needs anything, their rendezvous point shall be a ziga tree, then departs.
The Akkaba finds him in the woods and ask for some of the milk jars; Mohammed agrees to give them, in exchange for marking their backs with a firebrand.
[31] In a tale from the Malay Quarter published by author Izak David du Plessis with the title The Winged Horse, a sultan's son and a pitch-black foal are born at the same time.
When the boy, called Ishmael, is seventeen, his father gifts him the black horse, which is named Cavallo Di Wingo.
It happens so: Ishmael rides Cavallo Di Wingo three times through the ranks of soldiers; after the third lap, he then shouts Bismillah; a cloud descends upon them and transports them to the top of a mountain.
Some time later, the garden has flourished with beautiful colours, and many princes from neighbouring kingdoms come to see it and ask for Jogira's hand in marriage.
[32] Ethnologue Elsie Clews Parsons collected and translated a Cape Verdian tale titled The Youth and his Horse: a couple have no children, until the man procures a saib’ for a remedy.
Then, war breaks out with the king's foe, Re’ Mouro Grande; Billesmeu rides his horse, fights three times against the enemy army, and steals their flags.