Aladdin
Middle Eastern folk tale; one of the best-known tales associated with The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), despite not being part of the original text
Aladdin ( ə-LAD-in; Arabic: علاء الدين, romanized: ʻAlāʼ ad-Dīn, IPA: [ʕalaːʔ adˈdiːn], ATU 561, 'Aladdin') is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with One Thousand and One Nights (often known in English as The Arabian Nights), despite not being part of the original text; it was added by the Frenchman Antoine Galland, based on a folk tale that he heard from the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab.
Sources
Known along with Ali Baba as one of the "orphan tales", the story was not part of the original Nights manuscripts and any authentic Arabic textual source has not been found. It was incorporated into the book Les mille et une nuits by its French translator, Antoine Galland.
John Payne quotes passages from Galland's unpublished diary recording Galland's encounter with a Maronite storyteller from Aleppo, Hanna Diyab. According to Galland's diary, he met with Hanna, who had travelled from Aleppo to Paris with the French traveller Paul Lucas, on March 25, 1709. Hanna told various tales to Galland so he would end the book. Galland wrote his summaries of Hanna's performances and used a number of the tales (but not all). For Aladdin, Hanna gave him a manuscript, so Galland didn't record a summary in his diary.
Galland's diary further reports that his transcription of "Aladdin" for publication occurred in the winter of 1709–10.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Aladdin” is middle Eastern folk tale; one of the best-known tales associated with The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), despite not being part of the original text. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Aladdin, Middle and Eastern, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “middle Eastern folk tale; one of the best-known tales associated with The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), despite not being part of the original text” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q209515. The Library of Congress control number is sh94002789. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1709.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Aladdin”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Aladdin primary sources, Aladdin archive and Aladdin research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Aladdin”?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Aladdin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.