Once upon a time, in a small cottage among some hills, lived a woman with her son. To her great sorrow, the young man, though barely twenty, had less hair on his head than a baby. Despite his old appearance, the youth was very lazy. Whatever job his mother found for him, he refused to work and always came back home in a few days.

One fine summer morning, he was lying half asleep in the little garden in front of the cottage when the sultan’s daughter rode by, followed by a group of elegantly dressed ladies. The youth lazily propped himself up on his elbow to look at her, and that one glance changed his entire being.

‘I will marry her and no one else,’ he thought. Jumping up, he went to find his mother.

‘You must go to the sultan right away and tell him I want his daughter for my wife,’ he said.