The story of "Aladdin," one of the most popular characters of the Arabian Nights, famous in the Western and Arabic world and beyond, does not occur in any known Arabic text. Aladdin was first included in the translation of the Arabian Nights by Antoine Galland, the French scholar who introduced European readers to the One Thousand and One Nights in early 18th century.
Story of "Aladdin"
"Aladdin" is a classic rugs-to-riches story where the main character comes upon a magic lamp and is granted all his heart's desires by the genie, or Slave of the Lamp, that lives within. From food to a magnificent palace and the King's daughter as his bride, the wishes of Aladdin are granted by the powerful genie and finally the hero defeats the evil sorcerer and lives happily ever after. Storytellers have altered and elaborated on the story and it influenced productions ranging from 18th-century pantomimes to Disney movies.
Aladdin and the Storyteller
Arabian Nights have a long history of lost and copied manuscripts from the 10th to the 19th century. Antoine Galland based his translation on the three-volume Syrian manuscript, the oldest extant text of the Arabic collection, dating from the late 13th to early 15th century. To appeal to the French aristocratic audiences of his time, Galland strayed from the Arabic text and paraphased, added, adapted, omitted and abridged the original. He also used a storyteller.
The storyteller was Hanna, a Maronite from Aleppo, introduced to Galland by the traveller Paul Lucas. Among the stories Galland recorded from Hanna and Lucas was Aladdin and Ali Baba. Aladdin is presumed to be a product of the Syrian oral tradition but it is also possible that is the product of Hanna's imagination. The storyteller would never have imagined that Aladdin would become the most recognisable character of the Arabian Nights. The One Thousand and One Nights translation by Galland was published in 1704.
Story of Aladdin and Forgery
Forgery is also part of the history of the Arabian Nights and the story of Aladdin. In the 1787 Syrian priest Dom Denis Chavis forged a Syrian manuscript that appeared as completing Galland's 14thC manuscript. Chavis's manuscript contained also the story of Aladdin. Aladdin appeared again in another forgery: a manuscript created in 1805-9 by Mikhail Sabbagh, another Syrian living in Paris. He claimed to have copied it from a Baghdad manuscript of 1703. Both manuscripts were proved forgeries.
Arabian Nights and Aladdin
The Arabian Nights are a tapestry of forgery, storyteller inventions and translator interventions. As any other collection of folktales the One Thousand and One Nights are rich with cultural and historical layers. In the 1980s Mahdi revealed the Syrian manuscript of 13th-15thC as the most "untainted" one. However, as Irwin and Dobie among others have commented, the quest for a true, "untainted" Arabic source is "also problematic to the extent that it negates the significance of intercultural transmission".
Related Articles
- Aladdin and the Thief of Baghdad: Folk Tale, Silent Movie and Disney Film
- Who Invented Fairy Tales? Storytellers and the Brothers Grimm
Sources
The Arabian Nights, trans. Husain Haddawy, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
The Arabian Nights, Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, London: The Folio Society, 1999
S. Makdisi, F. Nussbaum (eds.), The Arabian Nights in Historical Context, Oxford University Press, 2009
Lito Apostolakou - Lito is a historian with an interest in digital archives and online historical resources. She is the author of blog Palimpsest.
