The Anka Bird is a Khorasan folk tale. Each year a div steals the jewelled pomegranates from a sultan’s tree; the youngest of his three sons follows the thief down a well into the world below, and must find his way back up again.
ℹ️ This is an English translation of a Turkish oral folk tale collected in Khorasan. Several Persian and dialect terms are explained in the notes below. The Turkish original is available here: Anka Kuşu (Horasan Masalı).
THE ANKA BIRD
There was one, there was none. There was no one at all but God.1
There was a sultan and he had three sons. He had a great orchard, and in that orchard a great pomegranate tree. Every year this tree bore three pomegranates, and the inside of each of them was filled entirely with rubies2 and jewels. Every year, when these pomegranates ripened, a div3 would come, pluck them and run off.
This year too the sultan’s eldest son said, “Let me go and see who it is that comes and plucks these pomegranates.” The boy rose in the night and went and kept watch beside the tree. When midnight came, sleep pressed down on the boy. He lay down there beside the tree. At midnight the div came, plucked one of the pomegranates and ran off.
The next night, the middle son said to his father:
“Father, tonight is my watch; let me go and keep watch there.” And his father said:
“Your elder brother went and could do nothing. What can you do now?”
The boy said:
“No, tonight is my watch; I must go.” His father said:
“Very well, go.”
When night fell, the boy went and kept watch there. When midnight came, sleep pressed down on him too, and he lay down there under the tree. The div came, plucked a pomegranate and ran off. The next night, the sultan’s youngest son said to his father:
“Tonight is my watch; I must go and keep it.”
The sultan said:
“My son, your elder brothers could do nothing. What work can come from your hand?”
The youngest son says:
“Father, tonight is certainly my watch; I must go! I am going.”
His father said:
“Very well, go.”
When night came, the boy took his rifle and his cartridge belt and went to keep watch under the tree. At midnight sleep pressed down on him. The boy at once cut his hand with his knife. Then, so that his sleep would flee, he poured a little salt on the wound. After a while he saw a dark shape above the tree; he drew out his rifle, put a bullet in it and fired. When morning came he went to his father’s palace and said:
“Father, I have found where the pomegranates went. Now let my brothers and I go and bring them back.”
His father said:
“Good.”
The three brothers rose, saddled their horses and rode off following the div’s trail of blood; they rode and rode and came out into the desert. Following the blood they came at last to a great rock. Beyond the rock there was no more blood. They came and lifted the rock and looked, and sure enough there was a well beneath it! The eldest brother said:
“Come, tie me with the rope now, and I shall go down.”
They tied him with the rope. Going down, when he reached the middle of the well he said:
“I am burning!” They drew him back up.
The other brother said:
“Tie me, I shall go down.” They tied him too; when he reached the middle of the well he said:
“I am burning!”
They drew him up too.
Their youngest brother said:
“Tie me, I shall go down. If I say ‘I am burning,’ do not draw me up; on the contrary, let me go, let me go down.”
Their other brothers said:
“Very well.”
They tied the youngest brother with the rope and let him down to the bottom of the well. However much he said “I am burning,” they let him go and lowered him. When he reached the bottom he looked, and there sat a girl like a houri, like a peri, with a div asleep and his head laid on her knee.
The girl was astonished and said:
“O son of man, you who have suckled raw milk!4 What are you, and what is this place? Why have you come here?”
The boy said:
“I have come to fight the div.”
The girl said:
“O boy! Go — if the div rises from where he lies, he will eat you in one mouthful.”
The boy said:
“No, I mean to fight him fairly.”
The girl said:
“Very well!”
The boy drew his sword from its scabbard and trod on the div’s foot. The div did not wake. Again he trod on his foot, three times over, until at last the div woke.
The div said:
“O son of man, what are you, and what is this place?”
The boy said:
“I have come to fight you.”
They fought each other. The boy called upon Hazrat Ali,5 lifted him up and threw him to the ground, and cut off his head. The girl rejoiced greatly and said:
“We are three sisters, and all three of us are here; now all three of us must go up.”
The boy said:
“So be it.”
The girl asked:
“Who is at the mouth of the well?”
The boy said:
“My brothers are.”
The girl said:
“Very well — if your brothers play you false and do not draw you up, let me show you a way.”
The boy said:
“Show me.”
The girl said:
“If we go up and they do not draw you up, there are two stones here. If you strike them against each other, two rams will come and play here. One of these rams is white and one is black. If you can leap onto the white one, it will carry you up. If you leap onto the black one, you will go down as far again as you are down now.”
The boy said:
“So be it.”
He sent the three girls up, then had all the rubies and jewels at the bottom of the well drawn up. Then he tied the rope to himself.
His brother said:
“Who are you?”
The youngest brother said:
“It is I.”
Whereupon his brother above loosed the rope from his belt and let it go. And he fell to the bottom of the well. Ten minutes later he came to himself and saw that he was still at the bottom of the well. He cast about and found the two stones, and struck them one against the other. Whereupon two rams appeared. The rams played. He tried to leap onto the white one, but leapt onto the black; and he went down as far again as he had been down before. For several hours he lay there senseless.
A few minutes later he looked, and a light was showing. He rose and walked slowly towards the brightness, until the brightness grew. He followed that light until he reached a village. Hungry and thirsty, he stopped there. He looked, and an old man had yoked his two oxen and was ploughing in a field. He said:
“Father!”
The man said:
“At your service!”
The boy said:
“If you will bring me tea and bread, I will drive these oxen at the plough in your place.”
The old man said:
“Very well! You come and drive these oxen at the plough, and I will go and bring you tea and bread. Only mind you do not raise your voice, for there are two lions lying over there. They will rise and come roaring into the village and eat every one of them.”
The boy said:
“Very well, you go and bring me bread, and do not trouble yourself at all!”
The old man rose and went to fetch tea and bread for the boy from his house. When the man had gone to the village, the boy cried out, and those two lions came. The boy rose and wrestled with the two lions, seized them, yoked them in place of the oxen and ploughed the field with them, and turned the oxen loose into the desert. The old man climbs the hill to see what the boy is doing. When he reaches the top of the hill he sees the boy has seized the two lions, yoked them, and is ploughing the field, and has turned the oxen loose into the desert. He came and said to the headman:
“Headman! Why are you sitting there? Get up, a young man has come. I went to bring him tea and bread, and I saw that he had seized the two lions, tied up the oxen and was ploughing the field. Come, let us go and look at him!”
All the people of the village gathered; they were afraid and they went all the same. They came up to the boy and saw that this young man had tied up the lions and was ploughing. The headman spoke and said:
“Young man, what is your wish? Whatever you ask, I shall grant it.”
The boy said:
“I have no wish at all; only show me the road to Akşehir, that I may go there.” The headman said:
“I do not know the road to Akşehir.6 Go a few trees7 that way; my sister is there, she knows, she will show you the road.”
The boy went to that sister’s house. Her sister said:
“I have not seen it either; go a few trees further that way, there is a sister of mine there, she knows, she will show you the road.”
The boy goes to the next sister. The next sister also says:
“I have not seen it either; go a few trees that way, there is a sister of mine there, perhaps she will show you the road.”
He went to the next sister, and the next sister said:
“I have not seen the road to Akşehir.”
The boy was quite at a loss; he went and went and came to a stream. By the side of the stream was a plane tree. Weary, the boy sat down under that plane tree and fell asleep. A few hours later he woke from his sleep and heard a hissing sound. He cast about and looked, and saw a snake up in the tree; it was going to eat the young of the Anka bird8 that were up in the tree. The boy rose from where he lay, drew his sword from its scabbard, struck the snake and cut it in two pieces. One piece he threw into the birds’ nest, and the other piece he hid.
When the Anka bird came and saw her young, she rejoiced greatly; for every year she had young, and the snake would come and eat them, but this time her young were where she had left them. Her eye fell on the boy lying there, and she said:
“Ha! So it is this boy who comes and steals my young; now I shall punish him.” She flew from where she stood and went to take up a mountain, to strike him with it. The Anka bird’s chick said: “No, he is our friend. The snake meant to eat us, and he cut the snake in two pieces. He threw one of its pieces to us to eat, and hid one piece for you.”
The Anka bird went and took the other piece of the snake and ate it, then came and spread her wing over the boy so that he might sleep in comfort, and made him shade. When the boy woke from his sleep, he saw the Anka bird standing over his head. The Anka bird said:
“O boy, whatever your desire, say it and I shall grant it. Every year I had young, but I never saw them. This year you came, and I have my young. Now whatever your desire, whatever your wish, say it and I shall give it to you.”
The boy said:
“I have no wish at all; only tell me the road to Akşehir, that I may go there.” The Anka bird said:
“Very well; since you wish to go to Akşehir, you shall go. You will catch fifty rams. You will kill them all and flay them, and fill their skins with water. When it is ready, tell me, and I shall carry you to Akşehir.”
The boy said:
“Very well.”
He went out hunting and caught all the rams, slaughtered them, flayed their skins and filled them with water; he made the meat and the water ready. The Anka bird said to the boy:
“Come, put this meat on one side and the water on the other, and sit yourself in the middle, and I shall carry you to Akşehir.”
The Anka bird rose from where she stood and flew up towards the sky, and asked the boy:
“O boy, how does the world look to you?”
The boy said:
“The world looks to me the size of five kran.”9
The Anka bird flew higher still. When she said water, the boy would give her meat; when she said meat, he would give her water; he had it the wrong way round, until all the provisions were used up. The Anka bird said:
“How does the world look to you?”
The boy said:
“I cannot see the world at all.”
The Anka bird said:
“O boy, give me water!”
The boy turned and looked; the meat was finished. At once he cut a piece from his own leg and gave it to her. When the Anka bird took it into her mouth, she found that its taste was sweet. She hid it under her tongue and did not eat it, until she had brought him to the White World. Then she said:
“O boy, this is Akşehir; now go where you will, you are free. This is your own country. Now I have one wish of you.”
The boy said:
“What is your wish?”
She said:
“I have brought you to Akşehir; now walk a little for me, that I may see how you walk.”
The boy said:
“No, Anka bird, I am weary, I cannot walk.”
The Anka bird said:
“No, that will not do! You asked a wish of me and I granted your wish. Now I ask you to grant mine.”
The boy rose from where he sat, but because his leg was cut he could not walk. The Anka bird came and said:
“O boy, I asked you for water; your meat was finished — why did you cut your leg and give it to me? You should not have done this.”
The Anka bird brought that piece of flesh out from under her tongue and fixed it back in its place with the water of her mouth, and his leg became better than it had been before. She said:
“O boy, now you may go.”
The boy rose and walked. The Anka bird rejoiced and said:
“Very well, now what do you want?”
The boy said:
“I want nothing at all.”
The Anka bird said:
“Come, let me give you some feathers; whenever you have need, burn one of them and I shall be there at once.”
The boy took a handful of feathers from her and took his leave of her. The Anka bird flew away, and the boy came to his own country, went to a butcher’s shop and became his apprentice. The vizier’s daughter used to come every day and buy meat from this butcher. One day the vizier’s daughter came again to buy meat, and her eye fell on this boy; seeing him, she fell in love, and said:
“I want you; I have lost my heart to you.”
The boy said:
“No, you are the vizier’s daughter; how could I come and take you? I cannot take you. If your father hears of it, he will kill us.”
The boy said:
“My father believes now that I am no longer living. No, I must leave this shop and work somewhere else.”
The boy leaves the butcher and goes to a shoemaker, and becomes his apprentice there. Here he must sew one pair of shoes a day. His father, meanwhile, wants to marry off his two sons, and grieves for the youngest. In the meantime five pairs of shoes are wanted for the wedding, but whichever shoemaker they order them from will not accept. When they say it to this boy, he says:
“I will have these five pairs of shoes ready within two days.”
His master said:
“Boy, how will you sew five pairs of shoes in two days?”
The boy said:
“Do not trouble yourself, I shall sew them.”
The master said:
“If you cannot sew them, the padishah will cut off our necks.”
The boy said:
“No, do not be afraid, be easy.”
His master took it upon himself to deliver them within two days. The boy worked night and day until he had finished the five pairs of shoes. And on the soles of the shoes he wrote the girls’ names. The smallest pair was the youngest girl’s. Her name too he wrote on the sole of her shoe. They came and took the shoes away. When the girls put them on, they saw with astonishment that every pair fitted their feet exactly. When the youngest girl looked at the sole of her shoe, she saw her own name written there. She heard that the shah’s son was alive. Whereupon she went to the shah and said:
“O padishah, what are you still waiting for? Your son is alive.” He said: “What are you saying?” She said: “Come, let us go, I will show you.”
They rose, and all the people of the palace went to the shoemaker.
They asked the shoemaker:
“Where is the boy who sewed these shoes?”
The master, in his fear, thought the boy had sewn the shoes badly and that they would now kill him, and said:
“The boy is lying upstairs above the shop.” They went and woke him, and saw that he was the padishah’s own son. They brought him into the city.
His father said:
“My son, how did you come to fall into such a state?”
The boy said:
“My eldest brother and my middle brother, the two of them threw me to the bottom of the well; that is what befell me.”
The boy told his whole story from beginning to end. Whereupon his father ordered that everyone in the desert who had a donkey should bring wood from the forest. They went and brought wood. The sultan piled the wood in one place and heaped it up, and then set it alight. He took both his sons by the hand and threw them into the fire, and burned them. Then he married the youngest girl to his youngest son. And after that he gave his throne and his crown to his son, and himself sat down in a corner.
Translator’s Notes
- The Khorasan opening formula: Biri vardı, biri yoktu. Hüdâdan başka hiç kimse yoktu. Hüdâ is the Persian word for God. The rhyme is lost in English; the sense is kept. ↩
- The Turkish has la’l, from the Persian for a ruby or a red gemstone — a word that belongs to the ornate register of Persianate storytelling rather than everyday Turkish. ↩
- A div (Persian dīv) is a giant, demonic being of Persian and Turkic tradition — larger and older than the “giant” of European tales, and not interchangeable with a devil. The word is kept rather than translated. ↩
- Çiğ süt emmiş insanoğlu — “son of man who has suckled raw milk.” A fixed epithet for human beings in the mouths of otherworldly creatures. Raw, unboiled milk marks humans as unreliable and unfinished; the phrase is half insult, half diagnosis. ↩
- Hazrat Ali — Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, invoked as a source of strength at the moment of combat. The invocation is especially characteristic of Alevi and Shi’i communities, and its presence here places the tale culturally. ↩
- Akşehir here does not mean the town of that name in Anatolia. It is ak (white) + şehir (city) — the “White City,” the upper world of daylight, as against the dark world below the well where the boy has fallen. Later in the tale the same place is called the Ak dünya, the White World. ↩
- “A few trees that way” renders birkaç ağaç o tarafa. Ağaç (literally “tree”) was used in this region as a unit of distance, roughly a league — the distance between one landmark tree and the next. The literal form has been kept because the tale’s landscape is measured in trees. ↩
- The Anka (Arabic ‘anqā’, and closely related to the Persian Sīmurgh) is the great bird of Near Eastern tradition: enormous, ancient, nesting on a mountain or a world-tree, and often the only creature able to carry a hero between the lower and upper worlds. It is not the phoenix, though the two are sometimes equated; the Anka does not burn and rise again. ↩
- A kran was a silver coin of Qajar Iran. “The size of five kran” is the storyteller’s way of showing how far up they have flown — the world reduced to a handful of small coins. The currency, rather than any Turkish one, is another mark of where this tale was told. ↩
Source
Tulu, Sultan. Horasan’dan Masallar ve Halk Hikâyeleri. Ankara: Ürün Yayınları, 2005.
Translated from the Turkish. The Turkish original is published in this archive as Anka Kuşu (Horasan Masalı).