Aladdin and Myth

Aladdin (a corruption of the Arabic name Alāa ed-Dīn, Arabic: literally "nobility of faith") is one of the tales with an Arabic Syrian originin The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, and one of the most famous.

The "China" of the original tale much more closely resembles the medieval Muslim world of the other Arabian Nights stories, so much so that in retellings the "Chinese" element is often quietly forgotten.

The story concerns an impoverished young ne'er-do-well named Aladdin, in a Chinese city, who is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb in the far west, who passes himself off as the brother of Aladdin's late father; to retrieve a wonderful oil lamp from a booby-trapped magic cave. After the sorcerer attempts to double-cross him, Aladdin keeps the lamp for himself, and discovers that it summons a surly djinn that is bound to do the bidding of the person holding the lamp. With the aid of the djinn, Aladdin becomes rich and powerful and marries princess Badroulbadour.

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. Aladdin discovers a lesser, polite djinn is summoned by a ring loaned to him by the sorcerer but forgotten during the double-cross. Assisted by the lesser djinn, Aladdin recovers his wife and the lamp.


Meaning
The theme of a trickster being outwitted by another trickster of lowly birth is a widespread motif in fables.

One Jungian view of the story of Aladdin would hold it as a classic example of a "rags-to-riches" story. This type of story presents in three parts: from lowly beginnings, a protagonist achieves an initial success in life, traverses a major crisis in which all seems lost, and finally triumphs over adversity to achieve more stable and enduring success. This final success is only possible because the hero has learned a degree of inner maturity by going through the crisis. Aladdin's first success came too easily and was not based on his own efforts, but the genie's who helped him; his despair at losing the princess and the palace to the evil sorcerer takes him to a spiritual place at which he needs to arrive before he can develop true strength and wholeness by making his own efforts to succeed. The wholeness he finally achieves is symbolized by the re-establishment of the relationship with the princess. Under this view, one of the reasons for the enduring interest of the Aladdin story lies in our often unconscious recognition of the importance of its underlying meaning. We recognize our own struggles to grow and develop in Aladdin's journey.


Sources
No medieval Arabic source has been traced for the tale, which was incorporated into The Book of One Thousand and One Nights by its French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard it from an Arab Syrian Christian 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, France 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 Bibliotheque 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.

Note that although it is considered an Arabic tale either because of its source, or because it was included in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, the characters in the story are neither Arabs nor Persians, but rather are from the Far East. The Far Eastern country in the story is an Islamic country, where most people are Muslims. There is a Jewish community, regarded by others with a prejudice. There is no mention whatever of Buddhists or Confucians. Everybody in this Far Eastern Country bears an Arabic name and its King seems much more like an Arab ruler than like an actual Chinese emperor. The Country of the tale was a mythic far-off place, definitely eastwards.

For a narrator unaware of the existence of America, Aladdin's land would represent "the Utter East" while the sorcerer's homeland of Morocco 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 transition from the east to the west and back, performed effortlessly by Djins, make their power all the more marvelous.