Aladdin and the Magic Lamp

Also known as Aladdin aur Jadui Chirag

• 6 minute read
• Ages 7-12
• Alif Laila Stories

In a city in the east there lived a widow and her son Aladdin, who was clever and quick and did no work at all if he could help it.

One day a stranger came to their door in fine clothes, embraced Aladdin warmly and said he was his father's long-lost brother. He gave the widow money for food, and she wept with gratitude, and Aladdin went out with him the next morning.

The man was not his uncle. He was a magician from far away, and he had come a very long distance for one thing only.

The cave

They walked until the city was out of sight. In a bare valley the magician lit a small fire, threw powder into it and spoke words Aladdin did not understand. The ground split open, and there were steps leading down into the dark.

"Go down," said the magician. "You will pass through three halls and a garden. Touch nothing. At the end there is a lamp on a ledge. Bring me the lamp. And take this ring — it will keep you safe."

Aladdin went down.

The halls were full of jars of gold. The garden trees carried fruit made of cut jewels, red and green and white, glittering in a light with no source. He filled his pockets and his sash and the front of his shirt, because he could not help it, and at the far end he found the lamp — small, dull and dirty — and took it.

When he climbed back to the entrance the magician was leaning over the opening with his hand out.

"Give me the lamp. Quickly."

"Help me up first," said Aladdin. "I am carrying too much."

"The lamp first."

"Pull me out and you can have it."

The magician's face changed. He was not going to be argued with by a boy, and he had no intention of bringing him up at all. He threw powder on the fire, spoke the words backwards, and the ground closed over Aladdin's head.

The ring and the lamp

Aladdin sat in the dark for two days.

On the third day, in despair, he wrung his hands together — and rubbed the ring.

The cave filled with light and a great voice said: What do you wish? I am the slave of the ring, and of all who wear it.

"Take me home," said Aladdin.

And he was home, in his mother's house, with his pockets still full of jewels and the dirty lamp in his hand.

His mother went to clean the lamp so they could sell it, and rubbed the side of it with a cloth.

The room went dark, then bright. Something enormous stood in it.

I am the slave of the lamp. Ask what you will.

The princess

They were poor no longer. Aladdin asked for food, and there was food. He asked for money, and there was money. He grew up and grew careful, and he spent little and gave much away, and the city came to like him.

Then he saw the Sultan's daughter, Badroulbadour, passing in the street, and after that nothing else interested him.

He sent his mother to the palace with a bowl of the jewels from the cave. The Sultan had never seen stones like them, and after some months of asking and waiting and more jewels, the marriage was agreed.

Aladdin asked the lamp for a palace, and by morning there was one, opposite the Sultan's own, with windows of gold lattice and a courtyard of white stone. He married the princess and they were happy, and years went by.

The old lamps

Far away, the magician learned that Aladdin was alive and rich.

He came back to the city disguised as a pedlar, and walked through the streets below Aladdin's palace calling out an offer that made everyone laugh at him: New lamps for old! New lamps for old!

Aladdin was away hunting. The princess heard the shouting, remembered a battered old lamp on a shelf that nobody ever used, and thought she would play a joke on the pedlar.

She sent a servant down with it and got a bright new one in exchange.

That night the palace was gone. The princess was gone. Everything was gone, carried off to Africa, and there was nothing left in the square but flat ground.

Getting it back

The Sultan gave Aladdin forty days to return his daughter.

Aladdin still had the ring. The ring could not fight the lamp, but it could carry him, and it set him down in Africa outside the walls of his own stolen palace.

He got a message to the princess, and between them they made a plan, and it was the princess who carried it out. She invited the magician to dine with her, was pleasant to him for the first time, poured his wine herself and put into it what Aladdin had given her.

The magician drank it and did not get up again.

Aladdin took the lamp out of the man's coat, and by morning the palace stood in its own square again, opposite the Sultan's, exactly where it had been.