Aladdin

Aladdin in the Magic Garden, an illustration by Max Liebert from Ludwig Fulda's Aladin und die Wunderlampe^[1]

Aladdin (Arabic: علاء الدين‎, ʻAlāʼ ad-Dīn, IPA: [ʕalaːʔ adˈdiːn]; meaning, "glory of religion"^[2][3]) is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland (see sources and setting).^[4]

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The Sorcerer traps Aladdin in the magic cave.

Synopsis

Aladdin is an impoverished young ne'er-do-well in a Chinese town, who is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb, who passes himself off as the brother of Aladdin's late father Qaseem, convincing Aladdin and his mother of his goodwill by apparently making arrangements 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 from a booby-trapped magic cave of wonder. After the sorcerer attempts to double-cross him, Aladdin finds himself trapped in the cave. Fortunately, Aladdin retains a magic ring lent to him by the sorcerer. When he rubs his hands in despair, he inadvertently rubs the ring, and a jinni, or "genie", appears, who takes him home to his mother. Aladdin is still carrying the lamp, and when his mother tries to clean it, 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 Emperor's daughter. The genie builds Aladdin a wonderful palace – far more magnificent than that of the Emperor himself.

The sorcerer returns and is able to get 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 to his home in the Maghreb. Fortunately, Aladdin retains the magic ring and is able to summon the lesser genie. Although the genie of the ring cannot directly undo any of the magic of the genie of the lamp, he is able to transport Aladdin to Maghreb, and help him recover his wife and the lamp and defeat the sorcerer.

The sorcerer's more powerful and evil brother tries 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 his danger by the genie of the lamp and slays the imposter. Everyone lives happily ever after, Aladdin eventually succeeding to his father-in-law's throne.

"Aladdin Saluted Her with Joy", Arabian Nights, the illustration by Virginia Frances Sterret, 1928, shows the "Chinese" setting of the original tale.

Sources and setting

No Arabic source has been traced for the tale, which was incorporated into the book One Thousand and One Nights by its French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard it from an Arab Syrian storyteller from Aleppo. Galland's diary (March 25, 1709) records that he met the Maronite scholar, by name Youhenna Diab ("Hanna"), who had been brought from Aleppo to Paris by Paul Lucas, a celebrated French traveller. Galland's diary also tells that his translation of "Aladdin" was made in the winter of 1709–10. It was included in his volumes ix and x of the Nights, published in 1710.

John Payne, Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp and Other Stories, (London 1901) gives details of Galland's encounter with the man he referred to as "Hanna" and the discovery in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris of two Arabic manuscripts containing Aladdin (with two more of the "interpolated" tales). One is a jumbled late 18th century Syrian version. The more interesting one, in a manuscript that belonged to the scholar M. Caussin de Perceval, is a copy of a manuscript made in Baghdad in 1703. It was purchased by the Bibliothèque Nationale at the end of the nineteenth century.

Although Aladdin is a Middle Eastern tale, the story is set in China, and Aladdin is explicitly Chinese.^[5] However, the "China" of the story is an Islamic country, where most people are Muslims; there is a Jewish merchant who buys Aladdin's wares (and incidentally cheats him), but there is no mention of Buddhists or Confucians. Everybody in this country bears an Arabic name, and its monarch seems much more like a Muslim ruler than a Chinese emperor. Some commentators believe that this suggests that the story might be set in Turkestan (encompassing Central Asia and the modern Chinese province of Xinjiang).^[6] It has to be said that this speculation depends on a knowledge of China that the teller of a folk tale (as opposed to a geographic expert) might well not possess,^[7] and that a deliberately exotic setting is in any case a common storytelling device.

For a narrator unaware of the existence of America, Aladdin's "China" would represent "the Utter East" while the sorcerer's homeland in the Maghreb (Northern Africa) represented "the Utter West". In the beginning of the tale, the sorcerer's taking the effort to make such a long journey, the longest conceivable in the narrator's (and his listeners') perception of the world, underlines the sorcerer's determination to gain the lamp and hence the lamp's great value. In the later episodes, the instantaneous transitions from the east to the west and back, performed effortlessly by the Jinn, make their power all the more marvelous.

Adaptations

New Crowns for Old, a 19th Century British cartoon based on the Aladdin story (Disraeli as Abanazer from the pantomime version of Aladdin offering Queen Victoria an Imperial crown (of India) in exchange for a Royal one).

In the United Kingdom, the story of Aladdin was dramatised in 1788 by John O'Keefe for the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.^[8] It has been a popular subject for pantomime for over 200 years.^[9] The traditional Aladdin pantomime is the source of the well-known pantomime character Widow Twankey (Aladdin's mother). In pantomime versions of the story, changes in the setting and plot are often made to fit it better into "China" (albeit a China situated in the East End of London rather than Medieval Baghdad). One version of the "pantomime Aladdin" is Sandy Wilson's musical Aladdin, from 1979. Since the early 1990s Aladdin pantomimes have tended to be influenced by the Disney animation; for instance the 2007/8 production at the Birmingham Hippodrome starring John Barrowman, featured a variety of songs from the Disney movies Aladdin and Mulan.

Adam Oehlenschläger wrote his verse drama Aladdin in 1805. Carl Nielsen wrote incidental music for this play in 1918–19. Ferruccio Busoni set some verses from the last scene of Oehlenschläger's Aladdin in the last movement of his Piano Concerto, Op. 39.

The 1926 animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (the earliest surviving animated feature film) combined the story of Aladdin with that of the prince. In this version the princess Aladdin pursues is Achmed's sister and the sorcerer is his rival for her hand. The sorcerer steals the castle and the princess through his own magic in this version and then sets a monster to attack Aladdin, from which Achmed rescues him. Achmed then informs Aladdin he requires the lamp to rescue his own intended wife, Princess Pari Banou, from the demons of the Island of Wak Wak. They convince the Witch of the Fiery Mountain to defeat the sorcerer, and then all three heroes join forces to battle the demons.

The tale has been since adapted to animated film a number of times, including Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, the 1939 Popeye the Sailor cartoon.

The 1940 British movie The Thief of Baghdad borrows elements of the Aladdin story, including a genie who could grant three wishes and an evil vizier called Jaffar seeking to take over the kingdom through use of black magic.

In 1957, the story of Alladin and Magic Lamp was produced as a movie in Telugu entitled Allauddin Adhbhuta Deepam^[10], Tamil Allavudeenum Arputha Vilakkum^[11] and Hindi Alladdin Ka Chirag^[12]. They were directed by T. R. Raghunath and produced by T. S. Balaiah.

In 1962 the Italian branch of the Walt Disney Company published the story Paperino e la grotta di Aladino (Donald and Aladdin's Cave), written by Osvaldo Pavese and drawn by Pier Lorenzo De Vita. In it, 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 which is blocked by a huge rock and it requires a variation of "Open says me" (often mistaken as "Open Sesame") to open it, thus providing a link to Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.^[13]

In the 1960s Bollywood produced Aladdin and Sinbad, very loosely based on the original, in which the two named heroes get to meet and share in each other's adventures. In this version, the lamp's jinni (genie) is female and Aladdin marries her rather than the princess (she becomes a mortal woman for his sake).

A Soviet film Volshebnaia Lampa Aladdina ("Aladdin's Magic Lamp") was released in 1966.

The animated feature Aladdin et la lampe merveilleuse by Film Jean Image was released in 1970 in France.^[14] The story contains many of the original elements of the story as compared to the Disney version.

A Malayalam film Allauddinum Albhutha Vilakkum was made in 1979. This film was remade in Tamil as Allaudinaum Arputha Vilakkum the same year.

In 1982 Media Home Entertainment released Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.

Gary Wong and Rob Robson produced Aladdin the Rock Panto in 1985.

In 1986, the program Faerie Tale Theatre based an episode based on the story called "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp" directed by Tim Burton.

In 1986, an Italian-American co-production (under supervision of Golan-Globus) of a modern-day Aladdin was filmed in Miami under the title Superfantagenio, starring actor Bud Spencer as the genie and his daughter Diamante as the daughter of a police sergeant.

Perhaps the best known version (especially among the young) is Aladdin, the 1992 animated feature by Walt Disney Feature Animation. In this version several characters are renamed and/or amalgamated (for instance the Sorcerer and the Sultan's vizier become the same person, while the Princess becomes "Jasmine"), have new motivations for their actions (the Lamp Genie now desires freedom from his role) or are simply replaced (there is no Ring Genie, but a magic carpet fills his place in the plot). The setting is moved from China to the fictional Arabian city of Agrabah, and the structure of the plot is simplified. Broadway Junior has released Aladdin, Jr., a children's musical based on the music and screenplay of the Disney animation.

One of the many retellings of the tale appears in A Book of Wizards and A Choice of Magic, by Ruth Manning-Sanders.

There was also a hotel and casino in Las Vegas named Aladdin from 1966^[15] to 2007.

The videogame Sonic and the Secret Rings is heavily based on the story of Aladdin, and both genies appear in the story. The genie of the lamp is the main villain, known in the game as the Erazor Djinn, and the genie of the ring, known in the game as Shahra, appears as Sonic's sidekick and guide through the game. Furthermore, the ring genie is notably lesser than the lamp genie in the story.

While only featured for a short segment of the film, the story of Aladdin was used as a metaphor for the Law of Attraction in the 2006 self-development film The Secret.

2009 saw the release of the Hindi Bollywood retelling in the film Aladin.

Gallery

See also

• The Bronze Ring
• Jack and His Golden Snuff-Box
• The Tinder Box
• One Thousand and One Nights
• Arabian mythology

References

External links

• The Arabian Nights by Andrew Lang at Project Gutenberg
• Aladdin, or, The wonderful lamp, by Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger, William Blackwood & Sons, 1863
• "Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp", in John Payne, Oriental Tales vol. 13
• Alaeddin, by Sir Richard Francis Burton. (in HTML and annotated)
• The Thousand Nights and a Night in several classic translations, with additional material, including Payne's introduction [1] and quotes from Galland's diary.