Aladdin


Aladdin is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with One Thousand and One 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.

Plot

The story has frequently been retold with a number of variations. The following is a précis of the Burton translation of 1885, one of the more significant versions.
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 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. The genie builds Aladdin and his bride a wonderful 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 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". 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 Some have suggested that the intended setting may be Turkestan. 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 might well not possess. 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 is a princess whom 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, 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. 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 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. Similarly, Czech scholar distinguishes the three types in that, in type 560, the hero is helped by animals ; 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.

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. 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, Central Asia, India, and in Southeast Asia.

Three wishes

The version with three wishes has become a popular variant of the tale, popularized in the 20th century in the West.

Adaptations

Adaptations vary in their faithfulness to the original story. In particular, difficulties with the Chinese setting are quite often resolved by giving the story a more typical Arabian Nights background.

Books

  • One of the many literary retellings of the tale appears in A Book of Wizards and A Choice of Magic, by Ruth Manning-Sanders. Another is the early Penguin version for children, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, illustrated by John Harwood with many Chinese details; the translator or re-teller is not acknowledged. This was a "Porpoise" imprint printed in 1947 and released in 1948.
  • Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg, is an anthology containing 43 original short stories inspired by the tale.
  • "The Nobility of Faith" by Jonathan Clements, in the anthology Doctor Who Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas, is a retelling of the Aladdin story in the style of the Arabian Nights, but featuring the Doctor in the role of the genie.

    Comics

Western comics

  • In 1962, the Italian branch of Walt Disney Productions published the story Paperino e la grotta di Aladino, written by Osvaldo Pavese and drawn by Pier Lorenzo De Vita. As in many pantomimes, the plot is combined with elements of the Ali Baba story: Uncle Scrooge leads Donald Duck and their nephews on an expedition to find the treasure of Aladdin and they encounter the Middle Eastern counterparts of the Beagle Boys. Scrooge describes Aladdin as a brigand who used the legend of the lamp to cover the origins of his ill-gotten gains. They find the cave holding the treasure—blocked by a huge rock requiring a magic password to open.
  • The original version of the comic book character Green Lantern was partly inspired by the Aladdin myth; the protagonist discovers a "lantern-shaped power source and a 'power ring which gives him the power to create and control matter.
  • * In the Elseworlds series, there was even a story that combined the Green Lantern mythos with that of Aladdin called Green Lantern: 1001 Emerald Nights.