# Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp _Retold by Talerie (talerie.com) from Les Mille et Une Nuits, after Antoine Galland_ · 15 min read · ages 7+ An African magician sends young Aladdin into a cave for a lamp whose genie wins him Princess Badroulbadour, and when the magician steals it, the princess poisons him. Aladdin stabs the magician’s brother, disguised as Fatima, and after the sultan dies, Badroulbadour inherits his throne and shares it with Aladdin. --- Once upon a time, in the capital of a great kingdom of China, there lived a poor tailor named Mustafa with his wife and their son, Aladdin. The boy was lazy and stubborn and spent his days playing in the streets. Mustafa grieved over him until he fell ill and died, and Aladdin’s mother spun cotton to buy bread. When Aladdin was fifteen, a stranger stopped him in the square. “My boy, isn’t your father Mustafa the tailor?” “Yes, sir, but he died long ago.” The stranger threw his arms around him and wept. “I am your uncle, your father’s brother!” In truth he was a magician from Africa. He gave Aladdin gold, came to supper, and promised to set him up in a fine shop. He bought him splendid clothes, and after that Aladdin’s mother no longer doubted him. One day the magician led Aladdin far out of the city, to a narrow valley between two mountains. He lit a fire, threw in a perfume, and spoke strange words. The earth trembled and opened, and there lay a stone with a bronze ring in it. Aladdin turned to run, but the magician struck him so hard that the boy fell. “Uncle, what have I done?” Aladdin cried. “You must obey me,” said the magician, more gently now. “Under this stone is a treasure meant for you alone. No one else may lift it, not even I.” Aladdin lifted the stone easily. “Go down,” said the magician. “Pass through three halls full of gold, but touch nothing, and do not let your robe brush the walls, or you will die. Cross the garden beyond, climb to the terrace, and take the lamp burning in the niche. Empty it and bring it to me. You may pick all the fruit you like.” Then he slipped his own ring onto Aladdin’s finger, to keep him from harm. Aladdin did exactly as he was told and tucked the lamp inside his robe. In the garden the trees were hung with fruit that shone white, clear, red, green, blue, and purple. They were pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, but Aladdin thought they were colored glass. They were so pretty that he filled his pockets, two purses, and his sash with them. At the mouth of the cave he called, “Uncle, give me your hand.” “First give me the lamp, my boy. It will only get in your way.” “It isn’t in my way, Uncle. I’ll give it to you as soon as I’m out.” The magician flew into a rage. He threw more perfume on the fire and spoke two words, and the stone slid back into its place. He had studied magic for forty years. By geomancy, reading the future in sand, he had learned that this lamp would make him mightier than any king. But he was not allowed to take it himself; someone else had to put it into his hands. Sure that the boy was buried forever, he left for Africa that very day. For two days Aladdin sat in the dark without food or water. On the third day he clasped his hands and cried, “There is no strength and no power except in God, the High, the Great!” As his hands pressed together, he rubbed the ring, and an enormous genie with a dreadful face rose out of the ground and spoke. What do you wish? Here I stand, your slave, to do as you command, and slave to all who wear the ring on their hand. “Take me out of this place!” said Aladdin. At once he stood in the open air. He stumbled home and fainted from hunger and joy, and when he came to, he told his mother everything. The next morning there was no bread in the house. “Give me that old lamp,” said Aladdin. “I’ll sell it.” “It’s very dirty,” said his mother. “Cleaned up, it might fetch more.” She began to scour it with sand, and a hideous genie, far bigger than the first, rose before her and spoke in a voice like thunder. What do you wish? Here I stand, your slave, to do as you command, and slave to all who hold the lamp in their hand. Aladdin’s mother fainted. Aladdin snatched up the lamp. “I’m hungry. Bring us something to eat.” The genie came back with a great silver tray and twelve silver dishes of wonderful food. When the poor woman woke and heard the story, she begged Aladdin to get rid of the lamp. “Genies are demons!” “I’ll keep it out of your sight,” said Aladdin, “but my false uncle didn’t come all that way for nothing.” When the food was gone, Aladdin sold the silver dishes one by one to a dealer, who cheated him and gave him a single gold piece for each. At last an honest old goldsmith called him into his shop. “That dealer is a thief,” he said, and he paid seventy-two gold pieces for a single dish. “That is its true price. Ask any goldsmith you like.” When the money ran low, Aladdin rubbed the lamp himself, and the genie stood before him. What do you wish? Here I stand, your slave, to do as you command, and slave to all who hold the lamp in their hand. “I’m hungry,” said Aladdin. “Bring me something to eat.” And the genie brought another feast on silver dishes. For several years after that they lived simply. Aladdin spent his days among merchants and jewelers, picking up fine manners, and he discovered something else: the glass fruit from the garden was made of jewels finer than any in the city. He told no one. One day a herald ordered every door shut, because Princess Badroulbadour, the sultan’s daughter, was going to the bath. Aladdin hid behind the bathhouse door. When the princess lifted her veil, he saw the most beautiful face in the world, and he loved her from that moment. “Mother,” he said the next morning, “you must go to the sultan and ask for her hand for me.” His mother laughed. “You, a tailor’s son? And no one goes before the sultan without a gift!” “I have a gift. The fruit I picked in that garden isn’t glass, Mother. It’s jewels.” He arranged the stones in her porcelain dish, and they flashed so brightly that both of them were dazzled. At dawn she carried the dish, wrapped in a cloth, to the palace where the sultan sat in council, and stood facing his throne. No one called her. She went back on every council day, until at last the sultan said to his grand vizier, “Next time, bring that woman with the bundle to me.” So she was led to the foot of the throne, where she bowed her forehead to the carpet. Trembling, she told the sultan about her son’s love for the princess, and then she unwrapped the dish. The sultan sat speechless with wonder. “How beautiful! How rich!” he cried. “Isn’t this worthy of my daughter?” But the grand vizier wanted the princess for his own son. “Sire,” he whispered, “give me three months. My son will bring a finer gift.” So the sultan told Aladdin’s mother that the wedding must wait three months. Two months later, the city was hung with lanterns. The grand vizier’s son was marrying the princess that very night. “The sultan has broken his promise!” cried Aladdin’s mother. Aladdin went to his room and rubbed the lamp. What do you wish? Here I stand, your slave, to do as you command, and slave to all who hold the lamp in their hand. “Tonight, as soon as the bride and groom are in bed, bring them here, bed and all,” said Aladdin. As soon as the bridal chamber was closed, the bed rose and flew to Aladdin’s room. The genie locked the shivering groom in the privy for the night. Aladdin lay down with his back to the princess and a saber between them, to show he would never harm her. The princess was too frightened to speak. At dawn the genie carried the bed back to the palace. When the sultan came in at sunrise, the groom slipped away into the dressing room, and the princess only gave her father a sad look. The next night it happened again: the flying bed, the cold privy, the saber between them. When the sultan drew his sword in anger and demanded the truth, the princess told him everything, and the grand vizier’s son begged to have the marriage undone. “I would rather die than spend another night like those,” he said. So the marriage ended, and no one but Aladdin knew why. When the three months were over, Aladdin’s mother went back. The grand vizier whispered, “Set a price he can never pay.” So the sultan said, “Your son may marry my daughter when he sends forty basins of solid gold full of jewels, carried by forty black slaves and led by forty white slaves, all splendidly dressed.” Aladdin rubbed the lamp, and within an hour eighty slaves, forty of them carrying golden basins heaped with jewels, walked in pairs behind his mother to the palace while the whole city stared. The sultan gave his daughter at once. Aladdin asked for one more thing. “Let me build the princess a palace facing yours.” That night the genie built it: marble and jasper, a treasury full of gold, and at the top a hall with twenty-four windows whose lattices were set with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Aladdin had left one window unfinished on purpose. Princess Badroulbadour walked to her new home on a velvet carpet, and when she saw Aladdin, she was glad. “Prince,” she said, “I obey my father, and now that I have seen you, I obey him gladly.” So they were married. “Why is this window left undone?” the sultan asked when he came to visit the next day. “So that Your Majesty may have the honor of finishing it,” said Aladdin. The sultan’s jewelers tried to finish it. They used every jewel in his treasury, and the grand vizier’s too, and still it was not half done. So Aladdin had their work taken apart, rubbed the lamp, and in a moment the window matched all the others. “My son,” said the sultan, “there is no one like you in the world!” For years Aladdin and the princess lived happily. He gave gold to the poor, led the sultan’s army to victory, and the people loved him. Far away in Africa, the magician read his sand and saw that Aladdin was alive, rich, and married to a princess. In a fury the magician hurried back to China. Learning that Aladdin was away hunting, he bought a basket of shiny copper lamps and walked up and down before the palace, calling, “New lamps for old!” Children ran after him jeering, and grown-ups laughed. “He must be mad,” they said. But he only went on calling, “New lamps for old!” “There’s an old lamp on the cornice,” said one of the princess’s maids. “Let’s see if he’s really that foolish.” The princess, who knew nothing of the lamp’s power, laughed and sent a servant to trade it. The magician took the old lamp gladly, handed over a new one, and slipped away. That night, outside the city, he rubbed the lamp. What do you wish? Here I stand, your slave, to do as you command, and slave to all who hold the lamp in their hand. “Carry the palace, with everyone in it, to Africa, and me with it,” said the magician. In the morning the sultan saw only an empty field. He had Aladdin dragged back from the hunt in chains, and the executioner raised his sword. But the people loved Aladdin, and they were already climbing the palace walls. The frightened sultan ordered the executioner to put away his sword. Then the sultan led Aladdin to the window. “Where is your palace? Where is my daughter? Find her, or I will have your head.” “Give me forty days, Your Majesty,” said Aladdin. “If I fail, I will bring my own head to the foot of your throne.” For three days Aladdin wandered, half out of his mind. At nightfall he came to a river and, in despair, decided to drown himself. As he knelt to wash before his prayers, he slipped and grabbed a rock, and the ring rubbed against it. What do you wish? Here I stand, your slave, to do as you command, and slave to all who wear the ring on their hand. “Bring back my palace!” cried Aladdin. “I cannot do that. Only the slave of the lamp can undo what the lamp has done.” “Then carry me to it, under the princess’s window.” In an instant Aladdin was in Africa. At dawn a maid saw him, and she let him in by a secret door. The princess told him the magician kept the lamp hidden in his robe and came every day to say that Aladdin was dead and to ask her to be his wife. Aladdin bought a powder in the town and gave it to her. “Pretend you have forgotten me,” he said, “and ask him for African wine.” That evening the princess put on her finest jewels and greeted the magician warmly. “My tears will not bring Aladdin back,” she said. “Let us have supper. I would love to taste your African wine.” Delighted, the magician hurried off to fetch it. When the time came, she said, “In China, two people who love each other exchange cups,” and she gave him the one with the powder. He drank it to the last drop and fell dead. Aladdin came in, took the lamp from the magician’s robe, and had the genie carry the palace back to China. The next morning the sultan saw it from his window, rode over, and wept as he embraced his daughter. “Forgive me, my son,” he said to Aladdin. The magician’s body was thrown on the refuse heap for the beasts and the birds, and there were ten days of celebration. But the magician had a younger brother, even more wicked than he was. The brother read his own sand, learned that the magician had been poisoned, and came to China for revenge. There he heard of Fatima, a holy woman who cured headaches by laying on her hands. He went to her hermitage at night, made her give him her robe and veil and paint his face like hers, and then strangled her and threw her body into the cistern. Disguised as Fatima, he went to the square before Aladdin’s palace, and the princess invited the holy woman to stay with her. “Your hall is wonderful,” said the false Fatima, “but it lacks one thing. A roc’s egg should hang from the middle of the dome.” When Aladdin came home, the princess asked him for the roc’s egg. He rubbed the lamp. “Hang a roc’s egg from the dome.” The genie gave a shriek that shook the hall. “Wretch! You ask me to hang my master from your ceiling? You deserve to be burned to ashes! But the wish is not yours. It comes from the brother of the African magician, who is here in Fatima’s clothes and means to kill you.” And the genie vanished. Aladdin went back and said he had a terrible headache. The princess sent for the holy woman. As the false Fatima came close, the impostor reached for a hidden dagger. Aladdin seized his hand and stabbed him through the heart, and he fell dead on the floor. “You’ve killed the holy woman!” cried the princess. Aladdin pulled back the veil. “No, this is the man who murdered her, and he came to murder me. He was the African magician’s brother.” So Aladdin was free of both magicians. Some years later the old sultan died, and since he had no son, Princess Badroulbadour inherited the throne and shared it with Aladdin. They reigned together for many years and left a long line of children after them. --- - Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/aladdin-and-the-wonderful-lamp - Also known as: Aladdin and the Magic Lamp - Characters: Badroulbadour - Also in: [German](https://talerie.com/de/maerchen/aladdin-und-die-wunderlampe.md), [French](https://talerie.com/fr/contes/aladdin-et-la-lampe-merveilleuse.md), [Spanish](https://talerie.com/es/cuentos/aladino-y-la-lampara-maravillosa.md), [Portuguese](https://talerie.com/pt/contos/aladim-e-a-lampada-maravilhosa.md) - Author's country: France (https://talerie.com/en/tales/country/france) - Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q209515 - Tale type: ATU 561 (per Wikidata) - Source: Les Mille et Une Nuits, trad. Antoine Galland (Le Normant, 1806, tomes 5-6), «Histoire d’Aladdin, ou la Lampe merveilleuse» (https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Mille_et_Une_Nuits/Histoire_d%E2%80%99Aladdin) - Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: Les Mille et Une Nuits, trad. Antoine Galland (Le Normant, 1806, tomes 5-6), «Histoire d’Aladdin, ou la Lampe merveilleuse» — original: author died 1715 (+70 passed) - License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)