books of AlladdinUpdated at May 3, 2025, 04:23

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LiteratureFictional Characters
Aladdin
fictional hero
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Also known as: ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn
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Aladdin Aladdin Saluted Her with Joy, illustration by Virginia Frances Sterrett from a 1928 edition of The Arabian Nights.
Aladdin, hero of one of the best-known stories in The Thousand and One Nights.
The son of a deceased Chinese tailor and his poor widow, Aladdin is a lazy, careless boy who meets an African magician claiming to be his uncle. The magician brings Aladdin to the mouth of a cave and bids him enter and bring out a wonderful lamp that is inside, giving him a magic ring for his safety in the meantime. Aladdin goes in and returns with the lamp but refuses to hand it over to the magician until he is safely out of the cave. The magician thereupon shuts him inside the cave with the lamp and departs. Wringing his hands in dismay in the dark, Aladdin finds that he can summon up powerful jinn, or genies, by rubbing the ring. He returns home and soon finds that rubbing the lamp also produces genies. These supernatural spirits grant him his every wish, and Aladdin eventually becomes immensely wealthy, builds a wonderful jeweled palace, and marries the beautiful daughter of the sultan. After defeating the attempts of the frustrated African magician and his even more wicked younger brother to recover the lamp, Aladdin lives in longtime marital happiness, succeeds the sultan, and reigns for many years, “leaving behind him a long line of kings.”
Arabic:
ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn
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The story of Aladdin—like several other popular stories in The Thousand and One Nights, such as the adventures of Sindbad the Sailor—was not part of the original story collection.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
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LiteratureNovels & Short Stories
The Thousand and One Nights
collection of Middle Eastern and Indian stories
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Also known as: “Alf laylah wa laylah”, “The Arabian Nights”
Written and fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Mar 28, 2025 • Article History
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Aladdin Aladdin Saluted Her with Joy, illustration by Virginia Frances Sterrett from a 1928 edition of The Arabian Nights.
The Thousand and One Nights, collection of largely Middle Eastern and Indian stories of uncertain date and authorship. Its tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor have almost become part of Western folklore, though these were added to the collection only in the 18th century in European adaptations.

ShahrazadShahrazad (Scheherazade), illustration by Edmund Dulac from a 1911 edition of The Thousand and One Nights.
As in much medieval European literature, the stories—fairy tales, romances, legends, fables, parables, anecdotes, and exotic or realistic adventures—are set within a frame story. Its scene is Central Asia or “the islands or peninsulae of India and China,” where King Shahryar, after discovering that during his absences his wife has been regularly unfaithful, kills her and those with whom she has betrayed him. Then, loathing all womankind, he marries and kills a new wife each day until no more candidates can be found. His vizier, however, has two daughters, Shahrazad (Scheherazade) and Dunyazad; and the elder, Shahrazad, having devised a scheme to save herself and others, insists that her father give her in marriage to the king. Each evening she tells a story, leaving it incomplete and promising to finish it the following night. The stories are so entertaining, and the king so eager to hear the end, that he puts off her execution from day to day and finally abandons his cruel plan.
Also called:
The Arabian Nights
Arabic:
Alf laylah wa laylah
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Though the names of its chief characters are Iranian, the frame story is probably Indian, and the largest proportion of names is Arabic. The tales’ variety and geographical range of origin—India, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, and possibly Greece—make single authorship unlikely; this view is supported by internal evidence—the style, mainly unstudied and unaffected, contains colloquialisms and even grammatical errors such as no professional Arabic writer would allow.

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The first known reference to the Nights is a 9th-century fragment. It is next mentioned in 947 by al-Masʿūdī in a discussion of legendary stories from Iran, India, and Greece, as the Persian Hazār afsāna, “A Thousand Tales,” “called by the people ‘A Thousand Nights’.” In 987 Ibn al-Nadīm adds that Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbdūs al-Ja