Aladdin’s status as “a careless boy…always given to playing with the urchins of the street” has serious consequences his father, an impoverished tailor who has been desperately trying to teach Aladdin a trade, dies from grief and despair at his inability to do so, leaving Aladdin as a care and a worry to the boy’s mother.īut Aladdin’s seemingly certain destiny as an idle ne’er-do-well is interrupted when a “Moorish Darwish” (a North African sorcerer) shows up in Aladdin’s town, claiming to be the brother of Aladdin’s deceased father. Viewers of the Disney-film versions of Aladdin’s story will not be surprised when Aladdin is introduced as “a scatter-brained scapegrace from his birth”.

The story is set in China – proof, I suppose, that readers in the Arab world, during the medieval era when these stories were set down, were just as interested as people all over the world of today in experiencing a bit of vicarious travel through stories that are set in exotic, “foreign” locales. And whether one reads this story from classical Arabia as Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, or as ‘Ala-ed-Din and the Wonderful Lamp, one experiences the pleasure of turning to one of the most important and influential stories ever written.

Aladdin’s name would probably be better translated as ‘Ala-ed-Din but it is as Aladdin that he is universally known, and therefore I will follow popular usage in calling him Aladdin throughout this review.

Genie aladdin somebody rub the lamp