King Khosrau loves to eat fish. One day, a fisherman prsents him and his wife Shirin with a huge fish. The pleased King rewards him greatly with four thousand dirhams, but Shirin tells him that he made a mistake, because now his courtiers will all compare their rewards to the fisherman's. She says he needs to get the money back from the fisherman, and has him called back. Her plan is for Khusrau to ask whether the fish is male or female, and whatever the answer, say that they wanted the opposite.
However, the witty fisherman anticipates this and says that the fish was a hermaphrodite. Laughing, Khusrau gives him even more money. The fisherman happens to drop a single coin and, despite having a huge sack of eight thousand dirhams, stoops to pick it up. Shirin points this out as a sign of greed and selfishness, and the King becomes angry and accuses the man of vice. The fisherman respectfully responds that he picked the coin up not because of its value, but because it bore an image of the king, and he did not want anyone to step on it and dishonor the king. Pleased by the fisherman's cleverness, Khusrau gives him another four thousand dirhams and decrees that women give bad advice that will cost you money.