Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Also known as Alibaba aur Chalis Chor

• 5 minute read
• Ages 8-12
• Alif Laila Stories

Ali Baba was a poor woodcutter with a rich brother named Cassim who never helped him.

One morning, cutting wood on the hillside, he heard horses and hid in a tree. Forty riders came up the track, each with a heavy sack across the saddle, and stopped at a blank face of rock.

Their captain dismounted and said: "Open, Sesame."

The rock split open like a door. The men carried their sacks inside, came out empty-handed, and the captain said "Shut, Sesame," and the rock closed. Then they rode away.

Inside the rock

When the hoofbeats had gone, Ali Baba climbed down and stood in front of the stone and said the words.

The cave opened.

Inside it was a room piled to the roof with everything the thieves had ever taken. Bales of silk. Carpets. Silver dishes. And gold, in sacks and in loose heaps, more of it than he had known existed.

He took three bags. Only three. He left everything else exactly as it was, said the words to close the rock, and went home.

The measuring bowl

His wife wanted to know how much gold it was, so she went to Cassim's house to borrow a measuring bowl.

Cassim's wife lent it, but she was curious. Before handing it over she rubbed a little wax under the bottom of the bowl.

When the bowl came back there was a gold coin stuck to the wax.

Cassim came to his brother that night and would not leave until he had the whole story and the words.

Cassim in the cave

Cassim went the next morning with ten mules, said "Open, Sesame," and went in.

The rock shut behind him.

He loaded sacks until he could carry no more, walked to the door and found he could not remember the word. He said "Open, Barley." He said "Open, Wheat." He said every grain he could think of, and the one word he needed had gone completely out of his head.

The thieves came back at noon.

Marjana

Ali Baba found what was left of his brother and brought him home, and the household would have been ruined by the questions if it had not been for a servant girl named Marjana, who was quicker than anyone else in the story.

She managed the burial so nobody asked anything. And when the thieves began searching the town for the man who knew their cave, it was Marjana who noticed the chalk mark a scout had left on Ali Baba's door — and went out that night and put the same mark on every door in the street.

The thieves came, found forty identical doors and went away with nothing.

The oil jars

At last the captain came himself.

He arrived as a merchant with nineteen mules and thirty-eight great leather jars of oil, and asked Ali Baba for a night's lodging. Ali Baba, who was a generous man, gave it gladly. The jars were stacked in the courtyard.

One of them held oil. The other thirty-seven held a man each, waiting for their captain's signal.

That night Marjana's lamp went out and she went into the courtyard for oil.

As she reached the first jar a voice inside it whispered: Is it time?

She did not scream, and she did not run. She said, quietly, "Not yet," and moved to the next jar, and the next, all the way down the row, and thirty-seven times a voice asked her the same question.

Then she went to the one jar that really did hold oil, filled the biggest pot in the kitchen, set it on the fire until it boiled, and carried it out into the courtyard.

And she went down the line.

In the morning the captain gave his signal and nobody answered.