Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

In a city in the East there lived a poor tailor's son named Aladdin. He was lazy. He played in the streets. His widowed mother could not get him to learn a trade.

One day a man came up to him in the market. He said he was Aladdin's long-lost uncle, brother to Aladdin's dead father. He gave the boy money. He offered to set him up as a merchant. He took him outside the city, and into the hills, and there, after a long walk, he made a fire and sprinkled a powder on it and chanted, and the ground opened.

A flat stone with a brass ring lay revealed in the earth.

"Lift it," the man said.

Aladdin lifted it. There were steps going down. The man said: "Below are three great rooms full of gold and silver. Walk through them. Touch nothing. At the back there is a garden of fruit trees with jewels for fruit. Cross the garden. There is a niche. There is an old lamp in the niche. Bring it to me. As you come back, you may pick whatever fruit you like from the trees, but the lamp first. Take this ring for protection."

The man was not Aladdin's uncle. He was a sorcerer from a far country, and he had read in his books that this lamp was here, and that a boy named Aladdin was the only one who could safely take it out. The sorcerer could not enter himself.

Aladdin went down. He walked through the rooms of gold without touching them. He crossed the garden. He took the lamp from its niche. On the way back he stopped to fill his pockets with the jewel-fruit, because they were beautiful. The sorcerer at the entrance, growing impatient, called: "Hand me the lamp." Aladdin's hands were full of fruit. He said, "Help me up first, then I will give it to you." The sorcerer, fearing trickery, refused. They argued. The sorcerer in his rage chanted again, and the stone closed, and the earth came back over it. Aladdin was buried alive.

He sat in the dark for a long time. He cried. By accident, in his weeping, he rubbed the ring the sorcerer had given him.

A great spirit appeared. "I am the slave of the ring. What do you wish?"

"Take me home."

The spirit took him home in a moment. His mother, who had given him up for dead, wept over him. Aladdin showed her the lamp. It was old and dirty. His mother said she would clean it and sell it to buy them food. She rubbed it with a rag.

A second spirit appeared, much greater than the first. "I am the slave of the lamp. What do you wish?"

Aladdin and his mother were poor people. They asked first only for a meal. The genie brought a meal on silver plates. They sold the silver and lived on it for a time. Slowly, as Aladdin grew bolder, he asked for more.

He saw the sultan's daughter, the princess Badroulbadour, on her way to the bath. He fell in love with her at one look. He sent his mother to the sultan with a tribute of jewels, the fruit from the underground garden, and asked for the princess's hand.

The sultan was astonished by the jewels. He agreed, but he asked for time. In that time the grand vizier, who wanted his own son to marry the princess, persuaded the sultan to give her to his son instead. The wedding was set.

That night, Aladdin had the genie of the lamp transport the bride and the bridegroom from their bridal chamber to a small cold room in his own house. He locked the bridegroom in a closet. He told the princess he would not harm her, and slept in the next room himself, with a sword between them. In the morning the genie returned them, terrified, to the palace. The same thing happened the next night. After two nights of this, the vizier's son begged to be released from the marriage. The sultan annulled it.

Aladdin sent his mother again to the palace with a tribute even greater than before, eighty servants carrying golden basins of jewels, and the wedding was made. Aladdin commanded the genie to build a palace overnight, opposite the sultan's, and it stood there in the morning, of marble and porphyry and gold, with windows of jasper. The princess came across to live in it with him.

The sorcerer, far away in his own country, looked into his magic books and saw that the lamp had been used. He was furious. He came back. He put on the dress of a peddler and went through the city calling: "New lamps for old."

The princess, who did not know what the dirty old lamp was, gave the genie's lamp to the peddler in exchange for a new one. The peddler was the sorcerer.

That night the sorcerer rubbed the lamp. He commanded the genie to take the palace, and the princess inside it, and Aladdin's whole household, and carry them all to his own country in Africa. In the morning the sultan looked across and the palace was gone. He had Aladdin arrested for sorcery and was about to execute him.

Aladdin remembered the ring. He rubbed it. The ring's spirit appeared. "Take me to my palace and my princess." The ring's spirit, weaker than the lamp's, could not bring back the palace, but he could carry Aladdin to where it was, in Africa.

Aladdin found the palace. He climbed in by night and met the princess. They made a plan. The princess invited the sorcerer to dinner, dressed her best, smiled at him, and slipped a sleeping powder into his cup. While he slept, Aladdin came in and killed him. He took the lamp from the sorcerer's robe and commanded the genie to carry the palace home.

In the morning the sultan looked across and the palace was where it had always been. He embraced his daughter and pardoned Aladdin. They lived for many years and were good rulers.

But the lamp Aladdin kept hidden in a place no peddler could find, and he never let his wife near it again.