The Editors of LIFE - LIFE Aladdin: The Origins and Journey of the World’s Most Magical Tale

Aladdin

The Origins and Journey of the Worlds Most Magical Tale

A 1965 illustration from Deans Gold Medal Book of Fairy Tales.

Introduction

A Boy and His Lamp

Imagine if it could all come trueall your hopes, your wants, your needsand all with the rub of a strange old lamp. What joys might follow? What troubles? Full of such enticements, the age-old story of Aladdin lives on and on

BY RICHARD JEROME

MENA MASSOUD IN DISNEYS new live-action Aladdin.

I wish...

How many times have we uttered those two words? Often we toss them off without even thinking: I wish I knew how to open this aspirin bottle; I wish it were Friday; I wish youd stop cracking your gum, because it makes me crazy. But there are other wishes too, deeper ones, when we reach into our souls and fantasize about making our deepest desires come truefor love, wealth, peace, a Mets world championship. Weve even endowed certain objects with supernatural munificence, wishing on stars, wells, fountains, turkey bones, and, of course, birthday candles.

That dream of magical wish fulfillment drives one of the most beloved tales in all literature and lore: the story of Aladdin, a teenage boy from the ancient Middle East who finds an old lamp which, when rubbed, summons a genie that grants his every desire. Its a timeless notion, and irresistible. Who hasnt put themselves in Aladdins curl-toe slippers and imagined all the things theyd wish for if given the chance? Small wonder that the tale has endured for centuries, told and retold all over the world, in innumerable forms and venuesfrom ancient times right up to Disneys Aladdin, a 2019 live-action remake of the studios animated 1992 blockbuster.

Where did this enchanting story come from? Aladdin and the Magic (or Wonderful) Lamp is arguably the best-known entry in The Arabian Nights (or The 1,001 Nights ), the fabulous collection of narratives that has dazzled and entranced listeners and readers ever since medieval times. Mostly originating from the Middle East, the Nights evokes a fantastical vision of Arabia and points beyond filled with romance, suspense, flying carpets, scimitars, mighty sultans, and dastardly sorcerers and viziers. There are plenty of those exotic elements in Aladdin although the story was not, in fact, part of the original Arabian Nights. Rather it was a relatively late addition, and one that may be as much French as it is Arabian. Thats because the template for all versions of the Aladdin tale was a 1709 translation of The Arabian Nights by Antoine Galland, a French scholar who either heard or read it courtesy of a young Syrian traveler named Hanna Diyab. The story has been translated into countless languages since, and each edition has its own special style, character, and syntax. But broadly, the plot goes like this:

Fifteen-year-old Aladdin is the neer-do-well son of a tailor named Mustapha who resides in the capital city of one of the largest and wealthiest provinces in China. (Spoiler alert: There isnt anything remotely Chinese about it. As British scholar Robert Irwin, author of the indispensable The Arabian Nights: A Companion, says, China here just means a distant once-upon-a-time land and it is in all respects perfectly Arab and Islamic.)

After Mustaphas death, Aladdin gives himself completely to idleness and vagabondism. But his world changes when he meets a sorcerer from the Maghreb (North Africa) who poses as Mustaphas brother and promises to set up his layabout nephew as a wealthy merchant. In fact, the sorcerer merely wants to trick Aladdin into retrieving an oil lamp that is stuck in a magic caveand gives him a magic ring for the task. Aladdin finds the lampbut gets trapped in the cave. Beside himself with despair he rubs his hands togetherinadvertently rubbing the ring, from which springs a genie (or jinni in the original Arabic)a horrid being with supernatural powers who frees Aladdin from the cave. When the youngster returns home he brings the lamp with him. Hoping to sell it to buy food, his widowed mother tries to clean the lamp, and a second genie, far more powerful and hideous than the first, appears. This one is bound to grant all the wishes of anyone who liberates him from the lamp.

With the genies help, Aladdin becomes rich and powerful and marries Princess Badroulbadour, daughter of the sultanafter magically breaking up her engagement to the viziers sonwhereupon the genie builds the newlyweds a palace more fabulously opulent than even the sultans.

Reenter the African sorcerer, who hears of Aladdins great fortune and vows to wrest the lamp from the young mans possession; he gets his hands on it by tricking Aladdins wife (who is unaware of the lamps importance), offering to exchange it for a new one. Now it is the sorcerer who has the genie of the lamp at his disposal. He orders the genie to take the palace, along with all its contents, to his home in the Maghreb. Luckily for Aladdin, he still has the magic ring and is able to summon the lesser genie, who transports him to the Maghreb where, with the help of the princess, he recovers the lamp and slays the sorcerer. Aladdin reclaims the lamp and genie, with whose aid he returns the palace to its proper place.

But thats not the end of it. The sorcerers more powerful and evil brother plots to destroy Aladdin for killing his brother and disguises himself as an old woman with healing powers. Badroulbadour falls for this disguise and commands the woman to stay in her palace in case someone comes down with an illness. Aladdin is warned of this danger by the genie of the lamp and slays the imposter. Everyone lives happily ever after, Aladdin eventually succeeding to his father-in-laws throne. He and Badroulbadour reigned together many years, the story tells us, and left an illustrious and numerous posterity.

The storys real-life posterity, meanwhile, has been just as illustrious. Why has Aladdin enjoyed such a shelf life, when so many other Arabian Nights tales remain obscure to most everyone but literary scholars and hard-core aficionados? At the heart of the story is the mystery surrounding Aladdin himself, says Paulo Lemos Horta, an assistant professor of Arabic literature at New York Universitys Abu Dhabi branch and editor of a new English translation of Aladdin by Yasmine Seale. Why should he, a boy of little talent or ambition, have been chosen for the extraordinary adventures that await him? To quote from my edition of the tale: How is it that a cruel, stubborn, and rebellious youth given to wild tendencies, finds himself the master of a hideous and gigantic jinni?

Whether or not we find Aladdin a worthy hero, Horta says, through the centuries, the tales broad and lasting appeal rests on its ability to encompass both our wildest longings and our deepest uncertaintiesboth the childhood dream of wish fulfillment and the terrors of coming of age.

Aladdin

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Kostya Kennedy

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Christina Lieberman

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Gary Stewart

WRITER Richard Jerome