Molla Badji is an Iranian folktale collected and translated by researcher Adrienne Boulvin and published in 1975. It is related to the theme of the calumniated wife and is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children". These tales refer to stories where a girl promises a king she will bear a child or children with wonderful attributes, but her jealous relatives or the king's other wives plot against the babies and their mother. Variants are collected in Iran and in other Iranian languages and among Iranic peoples.
Sources Boulvin sourced the tale from Tabas.Boulvin, Adrienne. Contes populaires persans de Khorassan Band 2: Trente-six contes, traduits par A. Boulvin et E. Chocourzadeh. C. Klincksieck, 1975. p. 14 (Tale nr. 5). Ulrich Marzolph traced its source to Khorasan.Marzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. pp. 136-137 (entry nr. 10).
Summary In this tale, a trader has three daughters that go to Quranic school. Their teacher, named Mollâ Bâdji, has a daughter named Fâtme, who appears each day with a new garment. The sisters ask Mollâ Bâdji how Fâtme looks good every day, and the teacher suggests that the girls' mother is neglecting them, so they just have to get rid of her by drowning her in the vinegar jar. The girls follow their teacher's advice. Time passes, and the girls talk to their father about remarrying, and suggest their teacher, Mollâ Bâdji, as his new wife. The wedding is celebrated, and, on the wedding night, Mollâ Bâdji orders her husband to abandon his daughters in the desert, away from the village. The trader is reluctant at first, but agrees to take the girls to the desert under a false pretext of visiting their aunt. They leave the next morning and pass by a garden. The father blindfolds the girls and explains he will gather nuts for them, but has to protect their eyes from the shards that may escape and blind their eyes. The father snaps a tree branch to further the ruse, but flees and leaves the girls there. The three sisters take off their blindfolds and notice their father abandoned them there in the wilderness.
Some time later, the girls begin to feel hungry and plan to eat their cadette. She dissuades them by saying that they may eat her to sate their hunger, but the next day they will still be hungry, so she offers to go out. The third sister manages to find a brick wall and discover an underground path that leads to a palace. She goes back to her sisters and take them to the palace, where they spend the next months. One day, a king and his son are riding along the path, and overhear the three sisters' conversation about marrying a king: the elder sister promises to weave a carpet so large to accommodate the dignitaries of the whole kingdom, and half will still be unseated; the middle sister that with only an eggshell she can cook a dish to feed the whole army, and there would still be food left; and the cadette promises to bear the king twins, a girl with golden hair and a boy with teeth of pearl.
The king and his son decide to summon the girls to their presence, and announce that the prince shall marry the elder sister, and she has to prove her claim. The elder fails to weave their carpet, and is thrown in prison. The king's son marries the second sister and orders her to prepare the food. The middle sister also fails and is thrown in prison. He finally marries the third sister and threatens to kill her if she cannot fulfill her promise. However, by the end of nine months, she gives birth to twins: a daughter with golden hair and a son with teeth of pearl. The elder sisters, jealous of the youngest success, bribe an old matchmaker to get the twins and cast them in the water in a box, and put two puppies in their place. The matchmaker follows the deadly plan; the king's son orders his wife to be cast in prison and buried in hot sand.
As for the twins, the box washes ashore on a beach near a hermitage. A hermit finds the twins and a gazelle suckles them, thinking them to be its young. The gazelle nurses the babies and the hermit names the boy Mohammed and the girl Zari. After seven years, on his deathbed, the hermit predicts that a white horse will come out of the sea to help them, and they must never part with it. The white horse appears, and they ride it to the land of their parents. The twins build a large house for them and live here for years. Their aunts notice the twins are their nephews, and send the matchmaker to pay them a visit. The matchmaker compliments their home, but tells Zari about the tree of laughing flowers. Zari tells her brother Mohammed that she wants it for their garden.
Mohammed and the white horse go to the garden of fairies to find the tree and bring it home. Next, the matchmaker tells Zari about the marvellous robe, which is also found by the male twin. Lastly, the matchmaker sends them after the daughter of the king of the fairies. Mohammed rides the horse to the palace of the fairy king, steals the princess and takes her with him. Mohammed marries the fairy princess and she reveals the truth of their origin.
The king invites the twins and the fairy princess for a banquet at the palace. During the dinner, a magpie perches near the tablecloth. The twins interact with the magpie. The king is surprised by their behaviour and asks if the bird can understand them, to which the fairy princess asks if a woman can bear animals. The king realizes the twins are their children, takes off his wife from her cell, and punishes his sisters-in-law.Boulvin, Adrienne. Contes populaires persans de Khorassan Band 2: Trente-six contes, traduits par A. Boulvin et E. Chocourzadeh. C. Klincksieck, 1975. pp. 14-19 (Tale nr. 5) (In French).
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children": three sisters converse among themselves about their plans to marry the king, the youngest promising to bear children with wondrous aspect; the king decides to marry the youngest (or all three), and the youngest bears the wondrous children, who are taken from her and cast in the water by the jealous aunts; years later, the children, after many adventures, reunite the family, which leads to the aunts being punished.Boulvin, Adrienne. Contes populaires persans de Khorassan Band 2: Trente-six contes, traduits par A. Boulvin et E. Chocourzadeh. C. Klincksieck, 1975. p. 14 (Tale nr. 5).Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 242–243.
German scholar , in his catalogue of Persian folktales, listed 10 variants of the tale type across Persian sources, which he indexed as Die gerechtfertigte verleumdete FrauMarzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. pp. 135–137. ("The calumniated girl is vindicated").Belelli, Sara. The Laki variety of Harsin: Grammar, texts, lexicon. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2021. p. 283. . DOI: https://doi.org/10.20378/irb-51703
The initial sequence Both Boulvin and Marzolph also classify the tale as type ATU 480, for its initial sequence: father remarries and, on his new wife's orders, abandons his three daughters somewhere in the wilderness.Boulvin, Adrienne. Contes populaires persans de Khorassan Band 2: Trente-six contes, traduits par A. Boulvin et E. Chocourzadeh. C. Klincksieck, 1975. p. 14.Marzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. p. 136 (entry nr. 10).
This initial sequence also occurs as an alternate opening of type ATU 707 in Armenia, as a second and "common" opening, according to researcher ,Гуллакян, Сюзанна Арменовна [Syuzanna Armenovna Gullakian]. Указатель сюжетов армянских волшебных и новеллистических сказок: (Учеб.-вспом. пособие) / С. А. Гуллакян; М-во нар. образования АрмССР, Респ. учеб.-метод. каб. - Ереван: РУМК Миннаробразования АрмССР, 1990. p. 35.Гуллакян, С. А. "О сюжетном составе репертуара армянских волшебных и новеллистических сказок". In: "Советская этнография". № 6 (1991): 128. and in Georgia, as its own tale type of the Georgian Folktale Index, indexed as -480G*, "Stepmother and Stepdaughter".Kʻurdovaniże, Tʻeimuraz et al. The index of Georgian folktale plot types: systematic directory, according to the system of Aarne - Thompson. Tbilisi: Merani, 2000. p. 48.Грузинские народные сказки [Georgian Folk Tales]. Составление, вступительная статья, примечания и типологический анализ сюжетов: Т. Д. КУРДОВАНИДЗЕ. Book 1. Moskva: «Наука», 1988. p. 354.
Motifs The Iranian-language tales vary between the quest for the usual three treasures (a magical water, a magical tree and a type of bird) and the Fairy Maiden who reveals the truth at the end of the tale.
According to the type's description in Marzolph's index, in the Persian variants the third sister promises to bear the king a boy with golden hair, although in some tales she may also give birth to a twin sister.Marzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. p. 135 (section I), 136.
Variants Iran The Story of the Jealous Sisters In a variant titled The Story of the Jealous Sisters, collected by Emily Lorimer and David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer, from Kermani, a father abandons his three daughters in the woods. A prince finds them and marries the youngest sister. After she becomes his wife, she gives birth to twins: "a son with a tuft of golden hair and a daughter with a face as beautiful as the moon". Her jealous sisters throw them in the stream. The prince condemns his wife to be trapped in a lime pillar and for stones to be thrown at her. Years later, when the brother passes by her, the youth throws a rose leaf at her, which prompts the king to summon his sisters-in-law.Lorimer, David Lockhart Robertson; Lorimer, Emily Overend. Persian tales. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. 1919. pp. 58–62.
Mehrab Chah and the Three Sisters Boulvin collected another tale from Torbat-e Heydarieh which she translated as Mehrab Chah et Les Trois Soeurs ("Mehrab Chah and the Three Sisters"). In this tale, a king and a son spy on three sisters talking about their grandiose boasts: the elder boasts she can weave a carpet large enough to accommodate the dignitaries in only half of it; the middle one that she can cook with a single eggshell food for the whole army, and the youngest promises to bear twins, a girl with golden hair and a boy with pearl of teeth. The prince marries the three sisters and bids them fulfill their claims: the elder fails due to prickling the carpet with needles, and the middle one fails for cooking inedible food. The youngest gives birth to her promised twins, who are taken from her and cast in the sea. A hermit finds the box with the twins and gives them to be nursed by a gazelle. A white horse from the sea also gives its aid to the children. Years later, they move out to the city, and the boy is sent for the tree of laughing flowers, a magical robe and a fairy woman. He takes the fairy woman with him to live with his sister and marries the fairy woman. At the end of the tale, the fairy woman reveals the truth to the prince, her father-in-law.Boulvin, Adrienne. Contes populaires persans de Khorassan Band 1. Contes populaires persans du Khorassan: Boulvin, A. Analyse thématique accompagnée de la traduction de trente-quatre contes. Klincksieck, 1975. pp. 36-37.
The Shah and the Seven Women