Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

There once lived a poor tailor who had a son called Aladdin, a careless, idle boy who would do nothing but play all day long in the streets with idle children of his own age. This so grieved the father that he fell sick and died soon afterward. When Aladdin heard of his father’s death he was not in the least troubled, and would not earn his living as a tailor, though his mother begged him with tears. He was now forced to support himself and her, yet he would not work, but spent his days as before. One day when he was playing as usual, a stranger who had come from Africa watched him closely, then drew him aside and asked if he was not the son of Mustapha the tailor. “Yes, sir,” said Aladdin, “but my father has been dead a long time.” The African magician threw his arms round Aladdin’s neck, kissed him, and wept, saying he was Mustapha’s brother—Aladdin’s uncle—and had been forty years out of the country; he knew the boy by his likeness to the dead man. He asked Aladdin’s trade; the boy hung his head. The magician gave him two pieces of gold and told him to take them to his mother with his love, and say that he would come and see her that evening. The widow had never heard of any brother-in-law, yet when the stranger came and spoke of Mustapha she received him kindly for her husband’s sake, and the magician spoke so well that she believed him.

Next day the magician bought Aladdin a fine suit of clothes and took him among the richest shops, treating him as a merchant’s son and promising to set him up in trade. Toward evening he led him out of the town gates toward the mountains, saying he would show him something wonderful; Aladdin need only gather sticks while he kindled a fire. When the fire burned the magician threw a powder on it and muttered strange words; at once the earth trembled and opened, showing a flat stone with a brass ring set in it. Under that stone, he said, lay a treasure which Aladdin alone might lift, because he was his brother’s child; if Aladdin obeyed in all things he would become richer than any sultan. The magician drew a ring from his own finger and put it on Aladdin’s, saying it would guard him from every evil. Aladdin took hold of the brass ring, lifted the stone, and went down a narrow stair into a cave. He passed three great halls filled with jars of gold and silver, which he must not touch; then a garden of trees whose fruits were sparkling coloured stones; then a niche where a lighted lamp hung. He was to take down the lamp, pour out the oil, and bring the lamp carefully up, gathering as much of the shining fruit as he pleased on the way.

Aladdin found all as the magician had said. He passed the halls without touching the jars, plucked from the trees until his pockets and sash were stuffed with the sparkling fruit, took down the lamp, poured out the oil, and climbed back toward the mouth of the cave. The magician, leaning over the opening, cried for him to hand up the lamp first—meaning to seize it and leave the boy below to perish. Aladdin, heavy with fruit, asked to be helped out first and would then give the lamp. Words grew sharp; in a fury the magician threw more powder on the fire, muttered a second spell, and the stone slammed shut. Aladdin was left in darkness with the lamp and the ring.

For two days he cried and lamented, certain he must die. At last, clasping his hands to pray, he rubbed the ring by chance. A vast genie rose out of the earth and asked what he would have. Aladdin begged only to be set on the surface of the earth. At once he stood outside beside the mountains, the stone sealed as if it had never opened. He ran home to his mother and told her everything. They looked at the dirty lamp; she meant to scrub and sell it for food. As she rubbed to polish it, a genie even mightier than the first appeared and asked what she would have. Terrified, she fainted. Aladdin snatched the lamp and demanded food. The genie spread a silver tray with twelve silver dishes of rich meat, white bread, cakes, and wine, then vanished. Mother and son ate their fill. Over the following weeks they sold the dishes one by one to a goldsmith who cheated them of the true value, yet the money kept them; when it ran low Aladdin rubbed the lamp alone and asked for more, always careful that no stranger see the spirit.

One day the mother heard the women of the neighbourhood talk of the sultan’s daughter Badroulboudour, who went twice a week to the bath. She told Aladdin of the princess’s beauty. He was seized with a desire to see her face, which was hard, for she always went veiled. He hid behind the bath door; when she unveiled he saw her and was so overcome that he went home and told his mother he loved the princess and meant to marry her. She laughed at such folly in a poor tailor’s son; he answered that the lamp would help them, and insisted she go to the sultan with his request, taking as a present the sparkling fruits from the cave—true jewels of untold worth, though mother and son still thought them coloured glass. After days of urging she wrapped a portion in a fine napkin and went to the palace. The sultan was in council; when her turn came she stammered out her son’s suit and opened the napkin. The sight of the jewels so astonished him that he turned to his vizir. The vizir, who hoped the princess for his own son, whispered that such a gift deserved an answer—but begged three months’ delay to consider. The sultan told the widow to return in three months; then her son should marry the princess.

Aladdin waited joyfully, counting the days. Before the three months ended, however, he heard drums and talk in the streets: the vizir’s son was to marry the princess that very night. In a rage he rubbed the lamp and ordered the genie to bring bride and bridegroom to him at once. The genie snatched up the marriage bed with both upon it and set it in Aladdin’s room. Aladdin ordered the genie to put the bridegroom outside in the cold. He told the princess she would not be harmed, but she was too frightened to speak and spent a miserable night while he slept beside her. At dawn, he ordered the genie to carry the couple back to the palace. The princess told her mother of the strange house and the night’s terror; her mother called it an idle dream—until the next night the same thing happened again. The vizir’s son, half dead with fear, begged to be released from the marriage; the sultan, puzzled and angry, dissolved it and gave back the dowry.

When the three months were up, Aladdin’s mother went again to remind the sultan of his word. He remembered the jewels, yet at the vizir’s urging he still stalled, and now demanded a further gift: forty basins of pure gold filled with jewels like the first, borne by forty enslaved attendants, each led by another richly dressed enslaved attendant—eighty in all—and then Aladdin might have the princess. The widow went home weeping at a demand no poor woman could meet. Aladdin only smiled, rubbed the lamp, and ordered the basins and the whole train. They filled his court in an hour. He sent his mother at their head to the palace. The sultan, dazzled beyond speech, could refuse no longer, and named that day for the wedding. Aladdin first asked leave to raise a palace worthy of the princess opposite the sultan’s own. Rubbing the lamp, he commanded a palace of the finest stone, walls of gold and silver, windows set with jewels matching the lamp-fruit, stables full of horses, and a treasury overflowing. It stood complete by morning. He also asked a royal dress, a horse, and a troop of slaves; so mounted he rode to the sultan amid the people’s wonder.

The wedding was held with great splendour; Aladdin’s mother was given rooms in the palace, and the princess, who had feared a stranger, found Aladdin courteous and open-handed. He led her into the hall of his new house where a feast was spread, and musicians played until late. In the days that followed he rode out among the people, scattering gold, hearing petitions, and winning love by his frank manners. The sultan, delighted, treated him in all things as a son, and even the vizir, though jealous at heart, dared not speak against him openly.

Meanwhile the African magician, who had left China believing Aladdin dead in the cave, cast his figures and learned that the boy lived in wealth, and that the lamp had raised a palace fit for kings. Half mad with rage that his forty years’ search should enrich another, he set out again for China. Outside the town he fell into talk with children who pointed to Aladdin’s palace and chattered of a wonderful lamp. At once he understood. Disguising himself as a merchant, he bought a dozen bright copper lamps and walked under the palace windows crying, “Who will exchange old lamps for new?” A jeering crowd followed him. The princess, sitting in the hall of four-and-twenty windows while Aladdin was away hunting, and knowing nothing of the lamp’s power, laughed at the odd cry and sent a slave-girl to fetch the old ugly lamp from Aladdin’s room and trade it for a new one. The magician snatched it, knew it for the true lamp, rubbed it in a quiet place, and ordered its genie to take him, the palace, and everyone inside it away to his own country in Africa. In a moment the ground where the palace had stood was bare.

Next morning the sultan looked out and saw an empty space where the palace had been. Sure Aladdin had played him false by magic, he ordered the young man—then out hunting—seized on his return and sentenced to die without delay. The executioner made Aladdin kneel in the courtyard, bandaged his eyes, and raised the scimitar. At that instant the crowd, who loved Aladdin for his gifts and justice, forced the gates and cried for mercy so loudly that the sultan paused. The vizir urged him to strike at once; Aladdin begged only forty days to seek the princess, swearing to return and die if he failed. Moved by the people and by that plea, the sultan granted the forty days—on pain of a worse death if the palace and the princess were not restored.

Aladdin wandered in despair about the city and the open country, living on charity, until he came near a river and resolved to cast himself in. As he wrung his hands he rubbed the ring he still wore. The genie of the ring appeared—bound to serve the wearer, yet far less powerful than the genie of the lamp, and unable to fetch the palace from Africa. He could, however, carry Aladdin to the spot where that palace now stood. In a twinkling Aladdin stood beneath its walls in a strange land. He heard the princess weeping within. One of her women looked out, knew him, and ran to tell her mistress; the princess herself opened the window, and they embraced with tears of joy. She told how she had been fooled into giving up the lamp to a man crying new lamps for old. Aladdin told her to hide her grief, to receive the magician kindly that evening, and to ask him for a cup of African wine; he gave her a small box of powder to slip into the cup. She dressed in her finest clothes, spoke softly to the magician of friendship, and said she was weary of the wines of China and longed to taste those of Africa. Flattered, he went to his cellar; while he was gone she put the powder in his cup. He drank, fell lifeless to the floor; Aladdin climbed in at the window, found the lamp where the magician had hidden it, rubbed it, and ordered the genie to set the palace back in its place in China under the sultan’s eyes.

The sultan wept for joy to see the palace and his daughter safe. Not long afterward the magician’s younger brother came to China to avenge him. He killed a holy woman named Fatima, took her clothes and veil, and entered the city in her disguise. People gathered around the supposed holy woman asking for blessings, and the princess invited her to stay.

The false Fatima admired the palace hall but said it needed one thing: a roc’s egg hanging from the dome. When the princess repeated this wish, Aladdin asked the lamp’s genie to provide it. The genie gave a terrible cry. Aladdin had unknowingly demanded that the genie’s master be hung in the hall, an offence for which the household might have been destroyed. But the genie knew the request was a trap. He revealed that the visitor was the dead magician’s brother, who had murdered Fatima and intended to kill Aladdin.

Aladdin returned to the princess, pretended to have a headache and asked her to fetch the holy woman to lay hands on him. When the disguised magician approached, Aladdin seized his dagger and stabbed him in the heart. The princess thought he had killed Fatima until he explained the disguise and the genie’s warning.

After these dangers Aladdin and the princess lived in peace. When the old sultan died, Aladdin took the throne and ruled many years with justice, leaving a long line of kings after him.

Where this story comes from

“Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” is in Andrew Lang’s The Arabian Nights Entertainments (Gutenberg 128)—the Maghrabi magician, the cave, the ring and lamp genies, and “New lamps for old!”

This is a condensed adaptation of Lang’s adventure. It retains the two genies, the abduction of the newlyweds, the lamp exchange and the final roc-egg trap that prompts the genie’s warning. The happy ending does not make every action by Aladdin admirable.

Read the original: Andrew Lang, The Arabian Nights Entertainments (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers: includes enslavement, abduction of newlyweds, threatened execution, suicidal despair, poisoning and killings.

Power does not give everyone the same choice

The magician manipulates Aladdin by claiming family ties, while the Sultan treats marriage as something wealth can purchase. Aladdin also abuses power when he has the newlyweds carried away: the princess’s terror matters even though the narrative later makes him her husband.

The exchanged lamp turns secrecy against its owner. The princess has never been told what the object does, so the magician exploits missing information rather than an obvious failure of judgment. Later she helps recover it through a plan they share. In the last danger, the genie supplies the warning Aladdin could not discover for himself.

Follow who knows the object’s power

Make a row for the cave, the lamp exchange and the roc-egg request. List what Aladdin, the princess and each magician know at that point. Which deception works through a false identity, and which through hidden information? Name one piece of knowledge that could have prevented a crisis.

For the story’s transmission, the Bibliothèque nationale de France account identifies Aladdin among the tales Hanna Dyâb of Aleppo supplied to Antoine Galland for his French Nights.

Talk about it

• Why does the magician need Aladdin to enter the cave?
• How does Aladdin meet the sultan’s price for the princess?
• How does “New lamps for old!” nearly destroy him—and how does he win the palace back?

Related stories

• Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves — another Arabian Nights treasure and household wit
• The Fisherman and the Genie — a sealed vessel and a dangerous spirit
• Scheherazade and the Sultan — the frame of the Nights