Open Questions: Hamda and the Fairy Fish

This story seems to be a fairly straightforward re-telling of Cinderella: is this an accurate statement?

Compare and contrast this story with the traditional Cinderella story: what is the same? What is different? What is the significance of these similarities and differences?

I thought it might be useful to share an interesting passage from a book I'm reading titled, Folklore and Folklife in the United Arab Emirates.

In the chapter on Folk Narratives, the author, Sayhid Had Hurreiz, writes:

"It is quite evident that the previous story (which is a UAE version of Hamada and the Fairy Fish--in the UAE it is titled al bideha or "The Fisherman's Daughter") is one of the variants of the famous folktale Cinderella . . . As is known in folktale scholarship, no other story enjoys wider distribution or extensive public attention that Cinderella. Its various themes and motifs have been used in opera, in children's motion pictures, in children's story books, in advertisements and so on. Studies covering many decades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and extending over Europe, Asia, the Near East and the USA have been published on this story" (75-76).

Just food for thought . . . .