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Middle-Eastern folk tale From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aladdin (/əˈlædɪn/ ə-LAD-in; Arabic: علاء الدين, romanized: ʻAlāʼu d-Dīn/ʻAlāʼ ad-Dīn, IPA: [ʕalaːʔ adˈdiːn], 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.[1]
| Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp | |
|---|---|
Aladdin finds the wonderful lamp inside the cave. A c. 1898 illustration by Rene Bull. | |
| Folk tale | |
| Name | Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp |
| Aarne–Thompson grouping | ATU 561 (Aladdin) |
| Region | Middle East |
Known along with Ali Baba as one of the "orphan tales", the story was not part of the original Nights collection and has no authentic Arabic textual source, but was incorporated into the book Les mille et une nuits by its French translator, Antoine Galland.[2]
John Payne quotes passages from Galland's unpublished diary recording Galland's encounter with a Maronite storyteller from Aleppo, Hanna Diyab.[1] According to Galland's diary, he met with Hanna, who had travelled from Aleppo to Paris with celebrated French traveller Paul Lucas, on March 25, 1709. 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 also records the discovery in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris of two Arabic manuscripts containing Aladdin (with two more of the "interpolated" tales). One was written by a Syrian Christian priest living in Paris, named Dionysios Shawish, alias Dom Denis Chavis. The other is supposed to be a copy Mikhail Sabbagh made of a manuscript written in Baghdad in 1703. It was purchased by the Bibliothèque Nationale at the end of the nineteenth century.[3] As part of his work on the first critical edition of the Nights, Iraq's Muhsin Mahdi has shown[4] that both these manuscripts are "back-translations" of Galland's text into Arabic.[5][6]
Ruth B. Bottigheimer[7] and Paulo Lemos Horta[8][9] 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.[10]
The story is often retold with variations. The following is a précis of the Burton translation of 1885.[11]
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, convincing Aladdin and his mother of his good will by pretending to set up the lad as a wealthy merchant. The sorcerer's real 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 who 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 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 (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. 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.
The opening sentences of the story, in both the Galland and the Burton versions, set it in "one of the cities of China".[12] On the other hand, there is practically nothing in the rest of the story that is inconsistent 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, but there is no mention of Buddhists, Daoists or Confucians.
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).[13] 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 (title) 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.[14] In early Arabic usage, China is known to have been used in an abstract sense to designate an exotic, faraway land.[15][16]
The story of Aladdin is classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as tale type ATU 561, "Aladdin", after the character.[17][18][19] 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.[20][21][22][23] 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.[24] 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.[25] Similarly, Czech scholar Karel Horálek 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.[26] The ultimate source of the genie in a container tales is 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.[27]
Since its appearance in The One Thousand and One Nights, the tale has integrated into oral tradition.[28] Scholars Ton Deker and Theo Meder located variants across Europe and the Middle East.[29] 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),[30][31] and in Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippines).[32]
The version with three wishes have become a popular variant of the tale, popularized in the 20th century in the West.[33]
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.
Sega Sammy have released a line of pachinko machines based on Aladdin since 1989. Sega Sammy have sold over 570,000 Aladdin pachinko machines in Japan, as of 2017[update].[53] At an average price of about $5,000,[54] this is equivalent to approximately $2.85 billion in pachinko sales revenue.
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