Saiful Maluk

The Story of Prince Saiful Maluk (قِصَّة سَيْف الْمُلُوْك وَبَدِيْع الْجَمَال) is an Arabic fable, a story of love between a prince and a fairy. It is considered a later addition to the One Thousand and One Nights collection of Arabic fables.

In South Asia, the story was put into beautiful Punjabi verse by 19th-century poet and mystic Mian Muhammad Bakhsh. It has also been retold in numerous languages such as Balochi, Bengali, English, Urdu and Punjabi.

The story might have given the name to the Saiful Malook lake in northern Pakistan, regarded as one of the most beautiful lakes in the country.

Story
Saiful Maluk was a prince of Egypt. He had significant wealth which he had inherited from his forefathers. Inscribed on the treasure were two seals; one bearing the image of Saiful Muluk and the other one being that of Badi-ul-Jamala. One night, Prince Saiful Maluk saw in a dream, a lake and a fairy. He got up and went to tell his dream to his father, asking him about the place and the fairy. His father told him that he can't meet the fairy as she isn't human, unlike him. However, the longer the prince recollected his dream, the more he was overwhelmed with love for the fairy.