Azizan

Arabic bedtime stories for kids: eleven classics by age, with what to skip

For ages 2–4, start with the Ringdove and the Net, Juha Counts His Donkeys and the Little She-Goat; for ages 5–8, the Four Friends, the Hare and the Moon Spring, the Juha tales, Sindbad's first two voyages and Jbene. All eleven are anonymous or centuries-old tales whose originals are public domain, and each one below has a two-line retelling in our own words and a note on what the old versions contain that you may want to leave out. We checked every tale against at least three independent sources before listing it. Azizan (azizan.app), founded by Aida Fard, is a family storytelling app where relatives record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories page by page. Its stories are in Persian today; it has no Arabic stories. This page is a free guide for Arabic-speaking families, written in our own words from sources we opened and checked.

Azizan (azizan.app) is a family storytelling app for immigrant and diaspora families: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories aloud in the family's mother tongue, page by page, and each recording stays on the child's shelf forever. Real family voices — never AI narration. Persian (Farsi) first.

Where these tales come from

Three of the corpora are shared across the Arab world rather than belonging to one country: Kalila wa Dimna, the Arabic book of animal fables by Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century); the Juha anecdotes, an anonymous oral tradition printed in collections from the 1880s onward and in al-Aqqad's Juha the Laughing Jester in Egypt; and the Sindbad voyages, which circulated as a separate book before being added to the Thousand and One Nights. The two folk tales are regional: the Little She-Goat is recorded in Palestine (1923 and 1989) and Tunisia, and Jbene in Palestine and Jordan. We did not find a Lebanese or Syrian Jbene and do not claim one.

Modern children's picture books, cartoons and apps of these tales are copyrighted and are not our source. The retellings below come from the old texts: the Arabic Wikisource chapters, the 1819 and 1885 English translations of Kalila, Hanauer's 1907 Palestinian collection, Borrow's 1884 Turkish Jester, and the Arabic and 1914 English Sindbad texts. See which Kalila fables are child-safe, the Juha tales and Sindbad for kids for the longer versions.

Ages 2–4: short, rhythmic, nobody hurt

The Ringdove and the Net

A hunter scatters grain and drops his net over a whole flock of doves. The ringdove tells them to flap together; they rise with the net, fly to her friend the mouse Zirak, and he gnaws every knot, the leader's last. A crow who watched it all asks to be the mouse's friend too.

What to know: in all the old versions nobody dies in this story and the hunter simply gives up. The mouse's long inserted back-story, told in the same chapter, contains a nested parable in which four creatures die; leave the back-story out.

Juha Counts His Donkeys

Juha buys ten donkeys, rides one and counts nine. He gets down and counts ten. Up: nine. Down: ten. In the end he decides it is better to walk with ten than to ride with nine, and walks home behind them.

What to know: counting from one to ten is the refrain, which is why it suits the youngest. In the Palestinian version his master makes him walk; in the common Arabic version he decides himself. Nothing to remove.

The Little She-Goat with the Iron Horns

A mother goat sings a rhyme at the door each evening and her kids open. A hyena learns the rhyme, smooths his rough tail and tricks them; he swallows the kids whole. The mother climbs onto his roof, calls him out, and in one bout the kids tumble out unharmed and the hyena runs over the hill.

What to know: the traditional tellings have the mother rip the hyena's belly open. The version where the kids come out whole and the hyena runs away is itself attested (the Artas telling, 1923), so a gentle retelling changes nothing that happened. The villain is a ghoul in some tellings and a hyena in others.

Ages 5–8: longer tales with one moment of danger

The Four Friends

The crow and the mouse Zirak join a tortoise at a pond, and a frightened gazelle makes four. When the gazelle is caught in a snare, Zirak chews him free; when the slow tortoise is tied up by the hunter, the gazelle lies down as if hurt, the crow lands on him as if to eat, and the hunter puts the tortoise down to chase them. Zirak frees her. The hunter comes back to cut ropes and nobody.

What to know: nobody is hurt in any version. The original ends with the hunter deciding the land is haunted by jinn or sorcerers; the Syriac version has him simply leave, so you can too. The gazelle is male in every source; the tortoise is female.

The Hare and the Moon Spring

In a drought the elephants find the hares' spring and crush their burrows coming to drink. A hare called Fayrouz climbs a hill and tells the elephant king the Moon has sent her. At the spring she has him dip his trunk; the moon's reflection shakes into pieces, the king believes the Moon is angry, says sorry and promises never to come back.

What to know: in the Arabic, Syriac and Sanskrit versions the elephants trample hares to death, and the elephant king bows down to the moon. A retelling can keep the crushed burrows and the apology and leave out the deaths and the worship; keep both halves of the ending, the apology and the promise.

The Monkey and the Turtle

An old monkey king, driven from his throne, lives in a fig tree by the sea and drops figs to a turtle, who becomes his friend. The turtle's wife, lonely, pretends to be ill and says only a monkey's heart will cure her. Halfway across the water the turtle confesses; the monkey says he left his heart in the tree, is carried back, climbs up and stays there.

What to know: in the Arabic the heart is a doctor's prescription, never food; the Indian version has the wife want to eat it, so do not mix the two. The chapter's inserted tale, in which a donkey's heart and ears are eaten, is separate and can be skipped. One page of real menace; read it together the first time.

Juha, His Son and the Donkey

Juha and his son set off for town with a donkey. Both ride, and a village says the donkey is overloaded. The son rides, and the next village says the old father walks. Juha rides, and the next says the little boy walks. Both walk, and the town laughs that the donkey is resting. At the market they sell it.

What to know: the Aesop line of this tale ends with the donkey falling off a bridge and drowning; the Arabic tellings end with the sale. Almost every Arabic version adds a spoken moral about pleasing everyone; the old texts push it, and you can leave it out. Let the villagers do the criticising, not the narrator.

Juha's Pot

Juha borrows his neighbour's big copper pot and returns it with a small pot inside: it had a baby. The neighbour happily keeps both. Juha borrows the big pot again and does not return it. When the neighbour knocks, Juha says the pot has died. A pot cannot die. You believed it could have a baby.

What to know: the "death" is of an object; the condolence formula in the Arabic is the joke. Juha keeps the pot in every version, so make the neighbour's eagerness for another "birth" visible, as the Arabic children's tellings do, and a child reads him as greedy rather than Juha as a thief.

Juha at the Feast

Juha arrives at a feast in his work clothes and nobody serves him. He goes home, puts on his finest robe and comes back; now he is seated at the head of the table with the best dishes. He dips his sleeve into each dish: eat, eat, my sleeve, for without you I would not have reached this food.

What to know: nothing to remove. The sleeve line is the one printed in al-Aqqad's Egyptian collection; the Turkish version feeds a fur coat. End on Juha's line, without a lesson.

Sindbad and the Island that Moved

Sindbad sails from Basra with merchants. They land on a green island and light cooking fires; the island shudders and the captain shouts that it is a huge fish. The fish dives, the ship sails on, and Sindbad floats a day and a night on a big wooden washing tub to a new island, where King Mihrjan gives him work at the harbour until his old ship arrives with his bales.

What to know: the Arabic text has many passengers drown and fish nibbling Sindbad's feet; a retelling keeps him alone in the sea and drops the body count. In the Arabic the island is a fish and he floats on a washing tub (the French line says whale and plank).

Sindbad and the Roc's Egg

Left behind on an island, Sindbad finds a huge white dome with no door. The sky darkens: a giant bird, the roc, lands on it, for the dome is its egg. He ties himself to its leg with his turban and is carried to a high place above a valley glittering with diamonds, where big snakes hide in the rocks. Merchants throw meat from the cliff and eagles carry it up; he ties himself under a piece, rides up with it and shares the diamonds.

What to know: the Arabic says the roc feeds its young on elephants and that the snakes could swallow one; the meat comes from a slaughtered beast. Keep the snakes to one page, hiding, as in the source, where they never attack him.

Jbene

A mother wishes for a daughter white as a square of cheese, and Jbene is born. Jealous girls take her to pick dom fruit, fill her basket with snails and leave her stranded in the tree at dusk. A horseman brings her home; she hides as a servant, herds the flock and sings to the birds to greet her mother and father. The emir's son follows the song, and her parents are sent for.

What to know: use the Ramallah telling (1989), which has no ghoul and no death. Other versions have cousins burned, a ghoul who eats her, or a servant girl punished; none of that belongs in a bedtime version. In one telling she blackens her face with soot to hide, which needs care in pictures.

Tales we looked at and set aside

Our Persian library applies the same rule, which is why the Shahnameh stories on Azizan are the ones that can be told without the gore: see Persian stories by age.

Reading them aloud at bedtime

  1. Pick by age, not by fame. A three-year-old wants the counting refrain of the donkeys, not the roc.
  2. Read in the Arabic your family speaks. A grandmother retelling the she-goat rhyme in her own dialect is the point; the written tale is only the skeleton.
  3. Stop at the last event. The old texts often add a proverb; the child does not need it, and the picture of the small pot on the shelf says more.
  4. Let a relative far away read it. A recording of Teta or Jiddo reading one page at a time can be replayed every night, across any time zone. That is what Azizan does for Persian today; for how families manage it for other languages, see apps for grandparents reading to grandchildren abroad.

Related guides

Questions

Which Arabic bedtime stories are safe for a 3-year-old?

The Ringdove and the Net (Kalila wa Dimna), Juha Counts His Donkeys and the Little She-Goat. All three are short, have a refrain, and nobody is hurt in the retelling. The she-goat's hyena is beaten in one bout and runs away; the kids come out whole, which is an attested version of the tale.

Are Kalila wa Dimna fables suitable for young children?

Some are. The Ringdove, the Four Friends, the Hare and the Moon Spring and the Monkey and the Turtle can be told without deaths. Others, such as the Tortoise and the Two Ducks, end in a death that is the whole point of the tale, so we leave them for later.

Are these stories religious?

No. Kalila wa Dimna, the Juha anecdotes and Sindbad are secular tales. The old Sindbad text has pious phrases in every scene of peril and the Hare and the Moon Spring has the elephant bow to the moon; a retelling for mixed families can leave both out without changing the story.

Are Arabic folk tales in the public domain?

The originals are: Ibn al-Muqaffa's Kalila wa Dimna is an eighth-century text, the Juha anecdotes are anonymous oral tradition, and the Sindbad cycle is anonymous. Modern children's adaptations, translations after the 1920s, cartoons and apps are copyrighted; retell from the old texts, not from them.

Does Azizan have these stories in Arabic?

No. Azizan's stories are in Persian today. This page is a guide for Arabic-speaking families; the retellings are summaries in English for parents choosing what to read tonight.

Where can I read the originals?

The Arabic Kalila wa Dimna chapters and the Sindbad voyages are on Arabic Wikisource. English translations of Kalila from 1819 (Knatchbull) and 1885 (Keith-Falconer) are on archive.org, Hanauer's 1907 Folk-Lore of the Holy Land has the Palestinian Juha tales, and the 1914 Sindbad books are on Project Gutenberg.

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Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

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