In a dream, the childless sultan of Diyarbakr hears a voice telling him to take a pomegranate from his garden. Obeying the dream, the sultan eats fifty seeds from the pomegranate, and as a result, forty-nine of his fifty concubines all fall pregnant. The fiftieth concubine, Pirouze, is sent in disgrace to the sultan's brother Samer in Samaria, but it turns out that she is pregnant after all. Her son, Khudadad (or Codadad) grows up and goes to meet his father, but keeps his identity hidden. His father appoints him commander of the troops and tutor to the forty-nine princes, and he quickly becomes beloved of everyone, but the princes envy and hate him. One day they go out hunting and don't return, so the king tasks Khudadad with finding them.