Aladdin ( ; , , ATU 561, 'Aladdin') is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with One Thousand and One Nights (often known in English as The Arabian Nights), despite not being part of the original text; it was added by the Frenchman Antoine Galland, based on a folk tale that he heard from the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab.Razzaque (2017)
Sources
Known along with Ali Baba as one of the "orphan tales", the story was not part of the original Nights manuscripts and any authentic Arabic textual source has not been found. It was incorporated into the book Les mille et une nuits by its French translator, Antoine Galland.Allen (2005) pp.280–
John Payne quotes passages from Galland's unpublished diary recording Galland's encounter with a Maronite storyteller from Aleppo, Hanna Diyab. According to Galland's diary, he met with Hanna, who had travelled from Aleppo to Paris with the French traveller Paul Lucas, on March 25, 1709. Hanna told various tales to Galland so he would end the book. Galland wrote his summaries of Hanna's performances and used a number of the tales (but not all). For Aladdin, Hanna gave him a manuscript, so Galland didn't record a summary in his diary.
Galland's diary further reports that his transcription of "Aladdin" for publication occurred in the winter of 1709–10. It was included in his volumes ix and x of the Nights, published in 1710, without any mention or published acknowledgment of Hanna's contribution.
Payne later recorded the discovery in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris of two Arabic manuscripts containing Aladdin (alongside Zayn al-Asman). One was written by a Syrian Christian priest living in Paris, named Dionysios Shawish, alias Dom Denis Chavis. The other was supposed to be a copy the Arab scholar Mikha'il Sabbagh made of a manuscript written in Baghdad in 1703. It was purchased by the Bibliothèque Nationale at the end of the nineteenth century.Payne (1901) pp. 13-15
The arabist Hermann Zotenberg believed in the authenticity of Sabbagh Manuscript, so he published a critical edition of the arabic version of Sabbagh in 1888. This version was used by Sir Richard Burton in his English translation of Aladdin (Supplementary Nights Volume III). Sabbagh's version is still used by modern translators (like Jarouche) as an alternative to Galland's very frenchified version.
As part of his work on the first critical edition of the Syrian branch of the Nights, the Arabist scholar Muhsin Mahdi has shownIrwin (1994) pp. 57-58 that both the Chavis and Sabbagh manuscripts are "back-translations" of Galland's French text into Arabic.Mahdi (1994) pp. 51-71Dobie (2008) p.36
Ruth B. BottigheimerBottigheimer, Ruth B. "East Meets West" (2014). and Paulo Lemos HortaPaulo Lemos Horta, Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 24-95. have argued that Hanna Diyab should be understood as the original author of some of the stories he supplied, and even that several of Diyab's stories (including Aladdin) were partly inspired by Diyab's own life, as there are parallels with his autobiography.
Plot
The story has frequently been retold with a number of variations. The following is a précis of the Richard Francis Burton translation of 1885, one of the more significant versions.Burton (2009) pp. 1 ff
Aladdin is an impoverished young ne'er-do-well, dwelling in "one of the cities of Ancient China". He is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb, who passes himself off as the brother of Aladdin's late father, Mustapha the tailor. The sorcerer convinces Aladdin and his mother of his good will by pretending to set up the lad as a wealthy merchant, but his real ulterior motive is to persuade young Aladdin to retrieve a wonderful oil lamp (chirag) from a booby-trapped magic cave.
After the sorcerer attempts to double-cross him, Aladdin finds himself trapped in the cave. Aladdin is still wearing a magic ring the sorcerer has lent him. When he rubs his hands in despair, he inadvertently rubs the ring and a genie appears and releases him from the cave, allowing him to return to his mother while in possession of the lamp. When his mother tries to clean the lamp, so they can sell it to buy food for their supper, a second, far more powerful genie appears; this one is bound to do the bidding of the person holding the lamp.
With the aid of the genie of the lamp, Aladdin becomes rich and powerful and marries Princess Badroulbadour, the sultan's daughter (after magically foiling her marriage to the vizier's son). The genie builds Aladdin and his bride a palace, far more magnificent than the sultan's.
The sorcerer hears of Aladdin's good fortune, and returns; he gets his hands on the lamp by tricking Aladdin's wife (who is unaware of the lamp's importance) by offering to exchange "new lamps for old". He orders the genie of the lamp to take the palace, along with all its contents, to his home in the Maghreb. Aladdin still has the magic ring and is able to summon the lesser genie. The genie of the ring is too weak to directly undo any of the magic of the genie of the lamp, but he is able to transport Aladdin to the Maghreb where, with the help of the "woman's wiles" of the princess, he recovers the lamp and slays the sorcerer, returning the palace to its proper place.
The sorcerer's more powerful and evil brother plots to destroy Aladdin for killing his brother by disguising himself as an old woman known for her healing powers. Princess Badroulbadour falls for his disguise and commands the "woman" to stay in her palace in case of any illnesses. Aladdin is warned of this danger by the genie of the lamp and slays the impostor.
Aladdin eventually succeeds to his father-in-law's throne.
Setting The opening sentences of the story, in both the Galland and the Burton versions, set it in "one of the cities of China".Plotz (2001) p. 148–149 Beyond that, nearly everything else in the rest of the story is more consistent with a Middle Eastern setting. For instance, the ruler is referred to as "Sultan" rather than "Emperor", as in some retellings, and the people in the story are Muslims and their conversation is filled with Muslim platitudes. A Jewish merchant buys Aladdin's wares, while Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucians are not mentioned.
Notably, ethnic groups in Chinese history have long included Muslim groups, including large populations of Uyghurs, and the Hui people as well as the Tajiks whose origins go back to Silk Road travelers. Islamic communities have been known to exist in the region since the Tang dynasty (which rose to power simultaneously with the prophet Muhammad's career). Some have suggested that the intended setting may be Turkestan (encompassing Central Asia and the modern-day Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang in Western China).Moon (2005) p. 23 The Arabicized Turkic Kara-Khanid Khanate, which was located in this region and had a strong identification with China, bears a strong resemblance to the setting, their rulers even adopting the Arab title of Sultan, even going so far as to adopt the title of "Sultan of the East and China", which was used alongside Turkic titles such as Khan and Khagan; however, chancellors were referred to as Hajib rather than Vizier.
For all this, speculation about a "real" Chinese setting depends on a knowledge of China that the teller of a folk tale (as opposed to a geographic expert) might well not possess.Honour (1973) - Section I "The Imaginary Continent" Although the story was first recorded in French, early Arabic usage of China is known to have been used in an abstract sense to designate an exotic, faraway land.
Badroulbadour Badroulbadour / Badr ul-Badour / Badr al-Badur ( , "full moon of full moons") is a princess who Aladdin married in The Story of Aladdin; or, the Wonderful Lamp. Her name uses the full moon as a metaphor for female beauty, which is common in Arabic literature and throughout the Arabian Nights.
When Aladdin finds a magic lamp, he discovers it contains a jinni bound to do the bidding of the person holding the lamp. With the aid of the jinni, Aladdin—an impoverished young man who, in other circumstances, could not have aspired to marry a princess—becomes rich and powerful and marries Princess Badroulbadour.
In Disney's Aladdin, her name was changed to Jasmine and she was made an Arabian princess. She is also mentioned in a poem by Wallace Stevens called "The Worms at Heaven's Gate" in his book Harmonium. She is a character in the children's novel Wishing Moon by Michael O. Tunnell, and is portrayed as a scheming, black-hearted villainess.
The name Badroulbadour also appears in the novels The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, and The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington (as Princess Bedrulbudour), and Come Dance with Me by Russell Hoban. Hoban also mentions Badoura as the name of an Arabian princess in The Arabian Nights. Monica Baldwin, in her novel The Called and the Chosen, uses the name Badroulbadour for the Siamese cat who belonged to her heroine, Ursula, before she became a nun.
Motifs and variants Tale type The story of Aladdin is classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as tale type ATU 561, "Aladdin", after the character.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 204.Ashliman, D. L. A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, vol. 11. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987. pp. 122-123. . In the Index, the "Aladdin" story is situated next to two similar tale types: ATU 560, The Magic Ring, and ATU 562, The Spirit in the Blue Light. All of these stories deal with a down-on-his-luck and impoverished boy or soldier, who finds a magical item (ring, lamp, tinderbox) that grants his wishes. In this regard, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in his revision of the international index, published in 2004, remarked that the similarities between the three tale types make it hard to differentiate them. On the other hand, per Stith Thompson's The Folktale, in type 561, the magical item is stolen, but eventually recovered thanks to the use of another magical object.Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. p. 71. Similarly, Czech scholar distinguishes the three types in that, in type 560, the hero is helped by animals (the snake gives the ring and the dog and the cat retrieve the stolen object); type 561 does away with the animals, leaving the hero to recover the stolen lamp with the second object, and, finally, type 562 inserts another person that helps the hero. Other genie in a container tales include Homer's Iliad, where the god Ares is trapped in a bronze urn and offers to grant Hermes whatever he wants if he is set free, and The Fisherman and the Jinni.Iliad 5.385–391.
Distribution Since its appearance in The One Thousand and One Nights, the tale has integrated into oral tradition. Scholars Ton Deker and Theo Meder located variants across Europe and the Middle East.Deker, Ton; Meder, Theo. "Aladdin en de wonderlamp". In: Van Aladdin tot Zwaan kleef aan. Lexicon van sprookjes: ontstaan, ontwikkeling, variaties. 1ste druk. Ton Dekker & Jurjen van der Kooi & Theo Meder. Kritak: Sun. 1997. p. 40. In addition, according to scholar Kurt Ranke, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, the "greatest distribution density" occurs in Europe and in the Mediterranean region, with variants also collected in the Middle East (Turkey, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Iran), Central Asia (in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), India (among the Santal people), and in Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippines).
Three wishes
The version with three wishes has become a popular variant of the tale, popularized in the 20th century in the West.
Adaptations