The Story
Long ago and far away, in a city of white minarets and golden market stalls, there lived a poor boy named Aladdin. His father, a tailor, had died when Aladdin was young, and his mother wove cloth to earn their bread. Aladdin was good-hearted but idle, spending his days in the streets with other boys, playing games and running races, when he should have been learning a trade.
One day a stranger came to the city — a sorcerer from the far west, wrapped in a blue cloak, with dark eyes that moved too quickly. He found Aladdin in the marketplace and pretended to be his long-lost uncle, showing such affection and pressing so many coins on the boy's astonished mother that she wept with gratitude and allowed him to take Aladdin out to see the city.
For two days the sorcerer led Aladdin out beyond the city walls, further and further into the rocky hills, until they reached a place where the earth between two boulders was strangely discolored. The sorcerer built a fire, cast a handful of powder into it, and spoke certain words in a language Aladdin had never heard. The earth trembled. A flat stone appeared, with an iron ring set in it.
"Only you can lift it," the sorcerer told him, and gave him the secret words to say. Aladdin pulled the ring, spoke the words, and the stone rose with a grinding sound. Below was a narrow stairway going down into darkness.
"Go down," said the sorcerer. "Follow the passage and you will find three halls. In each hall are jars of gold and silver — do not touch them. Pass through and you will come to a garden with fruit-trees, and beyond the garden a lamp burning in a niche. Bring me the lamp, and you may fill your pockets with whatever fruit you like from the trees."
He slipped a ring from his finger and placed it on Aladdin's hand. "This will protect you," he said. "Now go."
Aladdin went down. He found the halls of treasure just as the sorcerer had described, passed them carefully, and emerged into the garden — but what a garden it was. The trees were laden not with ordinary fruit but with jewels: rubies and emeralds and sapphires hanging in clusters from the branches, catching the underground light like drops of colored fire. Aladdin, not knowing what they were worth, filled his pockets with them simply because they were beautiful, and carried the lamp back through the halls and up to the stairs.
He could see the square of daylight above. "Give me the lamp," called the sorcerer from above, stretching his hand down.
"Help me out first, then I will give it," said Aladdin.
The sorcerer's face changed. He had what he came for — or nearly. He spoke the words again, and the stone crashed back down into place.
He was gone. He had sealed Aladdin inside.
Aladdin sat in the darkness a long time, weeping. Then he began to rub his hands together for warmth — and by accident he rubbed the ring the sorcerer had given him. A great genie, tall as the stairway, rose in a swirl of smoke.
"I am the Slave of the Ring," said the genie, in a voice like wind through stone. "What do you command?"
Aladdin asked only to be taken home. In an instant, he was sitting in his mother's kitchen, the lamp in his lap and his pockets full of jewels no one had yet thought to value.
His mother, delighted to have him back but bewildered by his story, set about cleaning the lamp so she could sell it. She rubbed it once — and a second genie, even larger than the first, billowed out of the spout in a column of smoke and fire.
"I am the Slave of the Lamp," said the genie. "What do you command?"
They commanded food, and the finest food in the kingdom appeared on a silver tray. They ate well that night, and sold the silver tray the next morning to pay their bills.
In time, Aladdin learned to use the lamp wisely and sparingly. He grew from an idle boy into a thoughtful young man. The jewels he had brought from the cave, once identified by a jeweler who could hardly contain his astonishment, proved to be worth a fortune.
One morning in the market, a herald announced that the Princess Badr-al-Budur was to pass through the street and that all merchants and common people were to close their stalls and look away. But Aladdin was curious, and he hid himself and looked — and when the princess passed, he was so struck by her grace and beauty that he could think of nothing else for days.
He told his mother he wished to marry the princess. His mother laughed. The princess was the Sultan's only daughter. But Aladdin asked her to go to the Sultan and present a gift — and he filled a bowl with the jewels he had brought from the cave, which blazed with such extraordinary color and fire that the Sultan's courtiers fell silent as the mother entered.
The Sultan was astonished by the jewels. But he had promised his daughter to his Grand Vizier's son. He told Aladdin's mother to return in three months.
In those three months, the Vizier's son was quietly married to the princess before the three months were up. When Aladdin heard, he used the lamp to send the genie to bring the newlyweds' chamber to his own house, where they remained confused and frightened until morning, when the genie returned them. This happened for three nights, until the Vizier's son, unnerved beyond endurance, asked to be released from the marriage altogether. The Sultan agreed.
The Sultan, remembering the extraordinary jewels, received Aladdin's mother again. He agreed to the marriage.
Aladdin used the genie to build a palace beside the Sultan's own — of white marble and gold, with fountains and gardens and stables of pure white horses. He entered the city in a procession so magnificent that people threw flowers from their windows, and the princess, watching from her father's balcony, felt her heart quicken at the sight of him.
They were married and lived happily for several years. But the sorcerer had not forgotten. He had discovered that Aladdin lived and that the lamp was with him, and he came back to the city disguised as a lamp-seller, walking the streets crying: "New lamps for old! New lamps for old!" The princess, not knowing the story of the old lamp, traded it away innocently.
That night, the sorcerer commanded the genie to transport Aladdin's palace — with the princess inside it — to the far west of Africa.
Aladdin returned home to find his palace gone and the Sultan furious. He still had the ring, and the Ring Genie transported him to Africa. He could not use the Ring Genie to undo what the Lamp Genie had done — the powers were not equal — but he could act himself. He found the princess, and together they tricked the sorcerer: the princess pretended to have forgiven him and invited him to dinner, and poured into his wine a sleeping powder Aladdin had given her. The sorcerer drank, and slept, and Aladdin recovered the lamp.
He commanded the genie to carry everything back. The palace reappeared beside the Sultan's garden just as the sun rose. The Sultan, looking out his window, wept with relief.
And Aladdin, who had once been an idle boy with nothing, lived out his life with wisdom and kindness, using the lamp's power gently and caring for his people well. He understood, as he grew older, that the genie's power was extraordinary — but that the best things in his life: his wife, his family, the respect of his city, the pleasure of the morning light on white marble — those were entirely his own.