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Overview
Haroun er Rachid wanders his city despite his own night curfew and finds music in a pastry shop. Its owner is also a magician and lute player serving the king of the genies. Summoned to entertain that king, the baker carries his sleeping guest to a house amid the sea, covering in four hours a distance described as forty months’ travel. He leaves Haroun on its terrace while he performs. The visitor wakes and enters a room where the genie king’s daughter sits with ten young women. When he proposes marriage, she asks for a contract and marriage gifts; he writes the agreement and gives her a silver sword, a silver crescent and a gold ornament. Before dawn the baker transports him back to the shop.
The daughter tells her father whom she has married. He fears that the household will be laughed at and tells her to keep the marriage quiet if her husband does not return. A son is born after a year. She keeps the identifying gifts for him, but his father remains absent. When the growing boy breaks an old woman’s bucket with his ball, her reproach about his unknown father sends him back to question his mother. He threatens her with heated iron until she names Haroun. Wearing a dervish’s clothing and taking the gifts, he travels to his father’s city and works in the same pastry shop. An old woman brings him to musical gatherings attended by Haroun’s daughter and the vizier’s daughter.
Haroun and his vizier discover these visits and arrange the young man’s execution. When he is stripped, the identifying gifts reveal his parentage and he is brought before his father with an escort. Haroun explains that his own daughter is the young man’s sister; the son marries the vizier’s daughter and eventually rules with his father. The mother’s tokens therefore bridge the separated supernatural and human households. The printed ending does not reunite her with Haroun. The long-distance carrying belongs to the magician, while her represented actions are negotiation, concealment of the marriage, motherhood and preservation of the recognition gifts.
Origins & earliest records
Basset, Nouveaux contes berbères (1897), no. 110, Haroun er Rachid et la fille du roi des génies, complete pp. 131–137. Note 204, p. 341, dates collection at Tétouan to 1883 and points to the earlier Étude sur le dialecte de Taroudant, pp. 13–27; no individual contributor is named in the inspected note.
Records & interpretation
Original DjVu pages 170–176 inspected through the son’s recognition, marriage and joint rule. Source note 204 inspected on page 380, printed p. 341; the following comparison to a Tazeroualt version is kept separate.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
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Nouveaux contes berbères
No. 110, complete pp. 131–137; source note 204, p. 341.
Family & connections
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References
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- Primary collected translation; original facsimiles inspectedOriginal collected narrative and source noteResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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