The story of Shahmaran

A quick read

The honey well

A stone well on bare hills, a thick rope hanging into its dark mouth, and three men walking away over the ridge carrying jars.

Jamasp was poor. He cut wood with other men. One day they found a well full of honey. They tied a rope around him and lowered him in. He filled their jars until the honey was gone. Then they pulled the rope up without him.

The same scene, painted as a Persian miniature.

Sources

Nilgun Ciblak, Halk Kulturunde Sahmeran ve Tarsus'ta Sahmeran Efsaneleri, Cukurova Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu Dergisi - collected from four named Tarsus informants
Richard Burton (trans.), The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Nights 483-484 - The Queen of the Serpents / Hasib Karim al-Din
Ulrich Marzolph & Richard van Leeuwen, The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, pp. 348-350
Abdelfattah Kilito, on the hero coming into his father Daniel's knowledge only through her death (via Arabian Nights Encyclopedia p.350)
Eberhard-Boratav, Typen turkischer Volksmarchen, TTV 57
The Ottoman Camasbname tradition - the mesnevi retellings of the Jamasp material
Sakire Balikci (Mardin Artuklu Universitesi), Sahmeran Efsanesi ve Yilan Tilsimlarinin Psikanalitik Cozumlemesi - the Mardin variant in which Sahmeran deliberately misstates which part does what, and the greedy vizier takes the fatal one
Kurdish printed retelling supplied by Nika (bilingual EN/Persian anthology, pp. 143-144) - head/middle/tail division, the ministers seizing Jamasab's wife and children to force him, and the vizier tricked into the fatal part

Read end to end and corrected: August 9, 2026. Numbers checked: August 9, 2026.