Arabian Nights stories

Stories from the Arabian Nights, retold for reading aloud: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, The Fisherman and the Jinni, and Aladdin.

The Arabian Nights is an old Arabic collection of stories by unknown authors. A frame holds it together: each night Scheherazade tells the king a story and breaks off at dawn, so he wants the rest the next night. The tales here come from that book and are retold in modern English, without the frame story.

Antoine Galland published Sinbad by itself in 1701, and its success led him to translate the collection into French. Ali Baba and Aladdin were added only in France, written down as a storyteller from Aleppo told them. Our English versions of Ali Baba, Sinbad and the fisherman’s tale follow Andrew Lang’s selections, which draw on Galland.

Morgiana sees a chalk mark on Ali Baba’s door and draws the same mark on doors up and down the street. Sinbad, a rich merchant of Baghdad, tells a poor porter named Hindbad about his first voyage. A fisherman nets a sealed brass jar and must outwit the jinni inside. Aladdin is the tale of the magic lamp.