I was already fairly familiar with the original tale, having read an abridged version and heard much second-hand information of what happened. Now it was time for something more. I was going to read the earliest known English translation of the Arabian Nights tale, in all it flowery-languaged glory, and see what I thought. You can find the version I read here. As I went, I tried to picture the characters from my favourite Disney movie filling the appropriate roles – which often proved difficult, as we will soon see. I don't know whether this was the exact version they read at Disney when deciding to adapt this story, of course – there have probably been a ton of translations and adaptations over the centuries, so the odds are against it – but all I can say is, props to Disney for actually being able to make something so beautiful out of this story. Okay, I may have just spoiled my entire comparison. Anyway. Read on....
The story tells us several times that it takes place in China, but I'm not sure if the tale itself supports this. Maybe I'm wrong, and ancient China really did feature predominantly Muslim communities, regions ruled by Sultans, and first names like Alaeddin, Bedrulbudour, and Fatimeh. Otherwise, my best guess is that either China was randomly chosen as the story's setting by someone who had never actually been there, or else the story was first told in China, but by the time it was collected and retold for the Arabian Nights it had been altered to be more relatable for an Arab audience. I do not think Disney was the first to give the story its Arabian setting, in any case. The tale is, after all, part of the Arabian Nights.
The story itself begins with an explanation of how Aladdin's father, a poor tailor, died because he despaired of Aladdin ever making anything of himself (a lot of faith in his son this man has), and how his mother struggled to support the family following that. Aladdin's mother is alive and present for all of the original story, and she's actually a fairly major character, and a pretty interesting one at that. Although I don't think any parent should ever say it was her child's fault that her husband died – least of all in front of her child! How does she think that will make Aladdin feel?! I bet he has some major emotional scarring knowing that's what his mother thinks of him... and then she wonders why, as the story tells us, Aladdin never comes home except at mealtimes! The story feels the need to tell us at least five or six times in the first paragraph what a useless good-for-nothing Aladdin is. I'm not sure why we're expected to connect with or root for this character we've just been told a hundred times isn't worth anything, although it could be a good idea if this part was used to make us feel sorry for Aladdin, what with his parents who wouldn't accept or believe in him. As it is, all they do is tell us he's useless, while we don't really see any thoughts of his that would either support or contradict that. Actually we don't really get much insight into the characters at all. We're told what they do, and we're told what their motivations are, but we're never really shown how they feel or why they do what they do. I suppose this can be forgiven since it was a translation of a written account of a word-of-mouth tale. You can tell it has none of the polish of an actual book, but that's to be expected. Still, right from the start, I give Disney all the points for establishing Aladdin's character as heroic and likeable, showing us both why his society views him as worthless, and why we the viewers should not. I must say how very impressed I am with them for pulling it off, too – once you've said, “Okay, our main character is going to be a thief and a liar”, there's just so much potential to go wrong, but Aladdin never does. When the guards call Aladdin riffraff, street rat, and scoundrel, or when Prince Achmed calls Aladdin a worthless street rat, no one would ever think we're supposed to agree with them!
In the Disney version, Aladdin is established very early on as not having any parents (“I'd blame parents, except he hasn't got 'em...”) and the impression I get is that they were out of the picture for long enough that Aladdin either doesn't remember them at all or, at most, has only the vaguest memories. We have no idea whether Aladdin's parents were anything like the ones he had in the Arabian Nights tale, but if they were, he was probably better off without them. I do almost wonder if the mother in the tale would have preferred having Disney Aladdin for a son, because at least then he would have been contributing a little by bringing back food for the family, even if he was stealing it. Aladdin in the original story is not a thief; he seems too lazy to be bothered, and spends his days instead hanging around with the “vagabond” boys of the neighbourhood. (I was very disappointed to learn that he had no monkey.)
Almost right away once the story gets going, the evil sorcerer comes to town, looking for Aladdin. In this story the sorcerer is not named Jafar, nor is he the same character as the Royal Vizier, who appears later. He is most often referred to in text as the Maugrabin, a word which I had to look up. It's an archaic word meaning “an African moor”. So, not very nice, continually referring to the villain this way as if that's what makes him evil... Just like in the Disney movie, the sorcerer is looking for Aladdin to get inside a wondrous Cave filled with treasures so he can obtain a certain Genie lamp. In the original story, he achieves this by pretending to be Aladdin's uncle, and successfully fools both Aladdin and his mother into believing this. Now, that aspect of the original story is quite fascinating, and I must say it's positively creepy to imagine Jafar pretending to be Aladdin's uncle in order to trick him into helping him! In the original story, it's not quite as creepy as it might be, because while it's established pretty clearly that the sorcerer is lying about being related to Aladdin, there's no hint of him being evil until he traps Aladdin in the Cave. The impression I got was that we are supposed to realize the sorcerer is bad simply because he is a sorcerer, the same as if they told us he was a kidnapper or a rapist or a murderer. Here I think the text simply failed to age with the times, because it's a little hard to assume someone who does magic is automatically bad when you also happen to be a fan of Harry Potter. Jafar, of course, in true Disney Villain form, is established as bad right away, although Disney does have the benefit of audio and visuals to help make this clear. Even if you couldn't tell by his hissing voice, the way he first appears to us in shadow, or the way his eyes seem to be glowing red in the nighttime, the way Jafar mercilessly sends Gazeem into the Cave of Wonders when there's every sign he won't be coming out again would clear things up in a hurry. Can't you just imagine Jafar in all his obvious villain glory, pretending to be Aladdin's uncle and Aladdin believing him, while we mentally shout at the screen for Aladdin not to listen to him? Now that would be something!
So the sorcerer stays with Aladdin's family for a few days until they're good and convinced he's related to them and that they can trust him. Quite a long portion of the story is devoted to the sorcerer winning Aladdin's and his mother's trust, and the story does tend to drag a little here. I must say the pacing isn't great, often dwelling far too long on one point which had already been made or could just as easily have been summarized. But to be fair, it is realistic for the sorcerer to take his time about grooming Aladdin and his mother for the scam ahead, just to make sure that when he does finally ask Aladdin to go into the cave, the latter well and truly trusts him. After all, in the original story Aladdin is not locked in a dungeon and doesn't meet the princess until much later, so the sorcerer can't use any of that to motivate him!
The sorcerer takes Aladdin to a wondrous Cave filled with treasure, and here's where the story gets a little confusing. For one thing, it's made clear that, just like in the Disney movie, only Aladdin can get into the cave and retrieve any of the treasure. But what we're never shown is why it's Aladdin this cave decided to let in. Disney's Cave of Wonders is a sentient, temperamental being who insists that only a “Diamond in the Rough” may enter, and it's not hard to see why Aladdin fits that description – smart and generous and brave, I can only begin to imagine what great uses he could put his talents to and how they could serve the people of Agrabah, but for the moment, he's living on the street struggling to survive, unable to reach any potential from this restricted state. But the original story just spent the entire first paragraph telling us Aladdin is useless – why are we now supposed to believe that he is the one person in the world with the ability to retrieve this splendid treasure? What makes him worthy of being chosen, out of all the people in the entire world, to have a great treasure in reserve for him? Now, later on in the story we're told Aladdin has become more admired and heroic, so maybe there are some “diamond in the rough” factors at play. But at this point we haven't had any hints of hidden potential inside Aladdin, so if that's what they were going for, I don't think it's working.
In the original story, Aladdin is able to touch and take the treasures, I guess since the whole treasure was meant to be his. Here the story spends another long paragraph telling us a dozen times – in case we missed it the first several times – that Aladdin doesn't know the jewels' worth, being poor and young. I'm not sure if either of those things actually mean that you can't recognize a real jewel when you see one, especially if said jewels are inside a cave that you've already been told is filled with wondrous treasure. Maybe this Aladdin isn't supposed to be very bright. Anyway, he still collects the treasures along with the lamp, because he thinks they're pretty, so I don't know why the story doesn't just have it that he does realize their value, and he's so weighed down that he can't climb out of the cave, and asks the sorcerer for help. The sorcerer is plotting to trap Aladdin in the cave once he gets the lamp and leave him to die (first mention we've had of him doing anything evil, like I said, apart from – gasp! – practising magic), so he refuses to help and tells Aladdin to give him the lamp first before he will help him (same as Jafar does in the Disney movie). Aladdin cannot reach the lamp because the treasures he collected are in the way, and says he will give the sorcerer the lamp once he gets out of the cave. He means it, too, having no reason not to trust the man he believes is his uncle, and the sorcerer knows it. But he is so angry that he will have to wait until Aladdin gets out of the cave before he gets the lamp that he – wait for it – casts a spell to trap Aladdin in the cave. Knowing full well he will never get at the lamp if he does this, and never even considering that Aladdin is now in possession of a powerful genie lamp and might just think to examine it, considering it was so important to the sorcerer. Did he seriously not consider that he could help Aladdin out of the cave, let him give him the lamp, and then just – push him back down the cave's stairs? Stab him like Jafar tried to do? Use the genie to kill him later, since I don't believe the genies in this story have any limitations on what they can do? (Except not being able to go against an order given to another genie, as we find out later.) I had never realized before how Disney's version of this scene adds far more to the story than simply making the sequence more exciting to watch on screen; their changes actually ensure the story makes sense. As far as Jafar knows, Aladdin has fallen to his death at the bottom of the cave, or he probably would have considered that Aladdin would figure out how to use the lamp and get out of there. He doesn't realize Aladdin could have survived that fall because he doesn't know about the magic carpet, and he's been given the lamp by Aladdin and thinks he still has it, not realizing until it's too late that Abu has stolen it back. It really is a pity that there are no animal sidekicks in the original story, because I need to hear Iago's reaction to the sorcerer making a dumb decision like that!
Aladdin of the original story is actually stuck for three days in the Cave without any food or any hope of seeing the outside world again, and spends the whole time crying in despair. No matter what the story said about him before, I have to feel bad for him. It also tells us he hasn't slept in all that time, which is a little hard to believe because if he's done nothing but cry for three days you'd think eventually he'd end up crying himself to sleep. Then he says a prayer for deliverance, and it's directly after that he finds a genie – which works really well until you consider that this genie does not come out of the lamp. There is still a genie in the lamp, that comes later, but this one was in a magic ring the sorcerer gave Aladdin, telling him it would protect him from harm. I have so many questions. Why are there two genies in this story; what does that add to the plot? Why did the sorcerer never consider that Aladdin might get out of the cave if he's trapped in there with two magical objects that have genies inside?? Why did Aladdin never consider examining the lamp, since he knew how important it was to the sorcerer? That's pretty much the first thing he does in the Disney movie! And above all, why did the sorcerer willingly give his genie to Aladdin in the hopes that it would help Aladdin retrieve another genie?? Why does he even need the genie lamp that was in the cave if he already had a genie inside his ring???
So Aladdin goes home and tells his mother what happened, and for some reason the story prints every word of Aladdin's explanation even though we've just seen all of this happen for ourselves and don't need to be told again. It's not the only time the story does this, and I have no idea why they couldn't just say, “Aladdin told his mother what had happened” or some such. I did feel like the whole adventure helped repair their relationship somehow, because they seem to work together and listen to each other more after this. We don't really see their relationship before, but I can guess they probably barely interacted, since we are told Aladdin is almost never home. That was a pretty nice part of the story, actually. They also discover the second genie in Aladdin's lamp at this point, only now that seems superfluous since we already had a genie inside the ring (who doesn't appear again for ages – why couldn't we have just stuck with one genie??) The genies in this story are without personalities and seem to exist only to serve their masters and grant wishes; they're hardly in the story except when Aladdin needs to make a wish, never say anything except to remind Aladdin they'll do whatever he asks them, and to be honest, I kept forgetting they were there. They're almost more like sentient magic spells than proper characters, and they certainly never sing, go into impromptu comedy routines, or have dreams of being free. Aladdin never tries to get to know them personally, and they could never be considered Aladdin's friends.
We're told about how Aladdin uses his magic lamp (but never the ring; it's like it just vanished) to make a living for himself and his mother (though for some reason at this point they decide to only wish for enough to cover their basic needs), and there's some long anti-Semetic sequence that is thankfully not a known part of the story today, and then it's time for Aladdin to meet the princess. Unlike in the Disney movie, Aladdin makes a conscious decision to try and look at Bedrulbudour (the original name of the princess who would become Jasmine), and he knows perfectly well it's the princess he's looking at. But just like in the Disney movie, all it takes is one look and he's head over heels in love. I just wish he had seen her and fallen in love somewhere other than on her way into the bathhouse. I must say how glad I am that Disney has Aladdin fall in love with Jasmine without knowing either 1) that she's the princess and marrying her could help him get out of his terrible life situation, or 2) that she normally goes around in tiny crop tops that expose her midriff. But it could have been worse. At least Aladdin did not actually watch Bedrulbudour bathing. In spite of this less-than-ideal setting choice, I still felt that Aladdin's love for Bedrulbudour was done well at first, at least by the standards of this story's writing style. At this point I was sympathetic to his feelings and thought they should at least be allowed to meet properly if he feels so strongly about her. (Aladdin calls Bedrulbudour the “darling of his heart”, and now I need that expression to become part of common modern-day speech.) What I felt could have been better done was their description of Bedrulbudour and what made her so appealing. She's said to have beauty and grace, and her face shines like the sun or a pearl, apparently, which is a pretty generic beauty standard and doesn't really tell us anything about the character. The text even says that part of the reason Aladdin is so fascinated is because he's never seen a young, attractive woman before, and thought they all looked like his mother (described earlier on as “an old woman”)! Maybe I'm nitpicking here, but I would have liked to see something in Bedrulbudour's appearance to help explain who this beautiful woman is that will soon be a much bigger part of Aladdin's story – especially as this is all we are to know of Bedrulbudour for a long time to come. I can't help but remember that by the time Disney's Aladdin started talking about marrying Jasmine, he'd already spent some time with her and talked with her and was able to describe her to Genie as “smart and fun” before going on to talk about her appearance. Not to mention, we've spent enough screen time with Jasmine to get a proper sense of who she is and why she and Aladdin would be perfect for each other. Anyway, Aladdin and his mother talk about whether or not his mother should go to the Sultan and ask on behalf of her son for the princess's hand in marriage. It's a pretty repetitive conversation, with the mother insisting that the Sultan will never allow the match and will probably have both of them put to death, and Aladdin insisting that he will surely die if he does not get to marry Princess Bedrulbudour. But it's one of the story's more interesting repetitive moments, and besides it is pretty realistic for both of them to just repeat the same points over and over, even if that isn't the best writing choice. Unlike in the Disney movie, by the way, there's no mention of Bedrulbudour having to get married by a certain time, or even that her father is trying to find a suitor for her. The closest we get is Aladdin's mother's statement that the Sultan would not give his daughter to even a mighty King if he were less in rank than the Sultan himself – which ties into the law Jasmine has looming over her stating that she can only marry a prince. That means Aladdin of the original story will have an easier time than his Disney counterpart believing he could be a worthy suitor for a princess, but it also means Bedrulbudour doesn't get to have a negative opinion of any former suitors, which could then be used to show us why Aladdin is a better option. Not, I think, that they would have given her an opinion anyway.
In the end Aladdin does convince his mother to go to the Sultan, bringing some of the incredibly rare and valuable precious jewels he collected from the cave as a kind of engagement gift. I guess in this way there might be some significance in Aladdin's not knowing how precious they were before, because if he had known he might have sold them long before this, although I still say telling us once that he didn't know their value would have sufficed. Here we meet the Sultan, who initially seems like a nice guy, and the Royal Vizier, who is not the same character as the evil sorcerer but who will become the main antagonist for this part of the story, and did kind of remind me of Jafar. Aladdin's mother has to wait a week before she finally gets an audience with the Sultan, and then she proceeds to explain to him in great detail how her son saw the Sultan's daughter enter the bathhouse, and once again we hear every word of this explanation even though we've already seen this happen for ourselves and heard Aladdin describe the incident to his mother. I'm also not sure why Aladdin's mother thought it would do her son any favours to tell the Sultan that he disobeyed his wishes and snuck a peek at his daughter – especially on her way into a bathhouse? It doesn't do any harm, though; for some reason the Sultan is not mad, and when Aladdin's mother shows him the jewels from the cave, he agrees to the match. Without consulting his daughter, I might add. He doesn't even say Aladdin and Bedrulbudour can meet to see if they get along; he just decides they're going to be married. I started to root for the match a little bit less.
But the Royal Vizier is not happy – he was hoping his son would marry the princess. (You can see the parallel here to the part in the Disney movie where Jafar decides to marry Jasmine and become Sultan that way, and then finds his plans threatened when Aladdin, disguised as Prince Ali, shows up. This is where that moment originally came from!) He convinces the Sultan to delay the marriage three months, his plan being to use the time to change the Sultan's mind and get him to give the princess to his son instead. Aladdin's mother is even worried that the Vizier might do something to change the Sultan's mind – she tells Aladdin so and adds that the Vizier appeared to have “an evil disposition”. (Something you could definitely say about Jafar!) And Aladdin's mother is quite right to worry – two months of the three have gone by when she hears tell, and only hears it secondhand I might add, that this is the night the Royal Vizier's son will marry the Princess Bedrulbudour. She may have blamed the Vizier for it, but I think it's pretty low of the Sultan to make a promise to Aladdin and his mother and then go back on it – and without even having the decency to tell them! I mean, no matter what the Vizier might have said about it, it's still the Sultan's decision. It's not like this Royal Vizier has a staff he uses to hypnotize the Sultan into doing whatever he wants! Anyway, however badly the Sultan and the Royal Vizier behaved here, it's nothing compared to Aladdin, who decides to deal with this by sending the genie to kidnap Bedrulbudour and the Vizier's son on their wedding night and prevent them from consummating. He forces the Vizier's son to spend the night in the draught-house (I had to look that word up; it means an outhouse, apparently, so that's lovely) and essentially tells Bedrulbudour not to worry because he doesn't intend to rape her, just to stop her sleeping with another man so that he can have her all to himself. Then he sleeps in her bed, with a sword between them to prove he's not going to rape her, I guess. Honestly, that doesn't earn Aladdin too many virtue points in my book, since he's already kidnapped and traumatized the poor girl! This happens two nights in a row until the Vizier's son decides he can't take another night in the outhouse and calls off the marriage. I get the idea we're supposed to treat his uncomfortable nights as a bit of a joke, but this character hasn't done a single thing to make us dislike him – other than quite inadvertently getting in the way of Aladdin having what he wants – so there's no reason to not care about the Vizier's son's well-being or to laugh at his misfortunes. The Vizier's son actually implies that he is in love with Bedrulbudour (at least I think he does; it can be a little hard to understand the old-English writing style sometimes), and absolutely nothing happens to establish him as a bad match for the princess or Aladdin as a better one. As for Bedrulbudour, the only reaction we get from her is that she is (quite understandably!) terrified, too terrified to tell her father what happened to her until he threatens her with a sword(!) We know that she didn't like Aladdin's poor dwelling and described it as “foul”, understandable as she's used to living in a palace and was also kind of kidnapped and forced to be there, and yet I can't help but think of Jasmine, and when she first sees Aladdin's home in the marketplace (fully consenting to let him take her there I might add) and describes his lifestyle as “fabulous”. Of course, I'm not sure Jasmine would still say that if she really knew the whole scope of what Aladdin's going through, and yet I have to wonder – is this girl who can't stand being inside a poor dwelling and notices how unpleasant the place is even under those traumatic conditions really the right match for a commoner? Even if I could still root for these two at all when they've effectively become a kidnapper and his victim... And the story never treats Aladdin's behaviour like a problem, either. It's like we're supposed to see his actions as admirable, or at least completely understandable. Just try telling this part of the story from another perspective, and Aladdin would come across as the villain for treating that innocent couple this way! Talk about protagonist-centred morality....
Other than fear and trauma, we get absolutely no sense of Bedrulbudour's actual feelings about the whole marriage business. Did she love the Vizier's son or not? We get no sense of relief from her at the marriage being annulled – although she does get over him awfully quickly – and no sense of disappointment, either. What's more, the story never treats this like a problem. She just seems to genuinely not have an opinion, and the impression I get is that they expect us to think it's perfectly normal that she wouldn't, that she would be completely passive while the Sultan, the Royal Vizier, and Aladdin all stand around deciding her future... sound familiar? If this sequence was not the inspiration for Jasmine's iconic “I am not a prize to be won!” speech, delivered to the exact same three characters who decide Bedrulbudour's fate without consulting her in the original, I will be very surprised. Knowing about this sequence, it now feels like this speech of Jasmine's was in a way directed at the original story, subtly calling it out for expecting us to believe the heroine would have no personal opinions and no desire for free will.
Back in the original story, Aladdin, if we still care what he does at this point, waits until the day the Sultan initially said he could marry Bedrulbudour – to teach the Sultan a lesson, I guess – and then sends his mother again to remind the Sultan of his promise. The Sultan apparently doesn't want his daughter marrying a commoner, but feels a King cannot go back on his word – so why did he agree to the match in the first place, that's what I'd like to know – and Aladdin's mother continues to blame the Royal Vizier for changing the Sultan's mind. I get the sense we're supposed to agree with her, and yet the text makes it quite clear the Sultan doesn't want Aladdin to marry Bedrulbudour any more than the Royal Vizier does. Perhaps the people who adapted the story for the Disney movie noticed this too, because that features a Sultan who is actually a good guy being controlled by his Royal Vizier – hypnotized by him, in fact. The Vizier suggests the Sultan ask Aladdin to bring him impossible treasures and slaves before he will allow the match. Of course Aladdin is able to do this because he has the genie. The Sultan brings the gifts to Bedrulbudour, who is so pleased by these presents she abruptly decides she wants to marry whoever sent them, all signs of her trauma mysteriously gone. I wonder what she would say if she ever knew it was her kidnapper who sent the presents... I doubt that she ever will, since it was night when Aladdin brought her to his place and she probably never saw his face in the dark. Anyway, Bedrulbudour is being so shallow in her choice of husband that I couldn't really like her anymore either. By now the Royal Vizier's son is the only character who hasn't done a single thing to lessen my opinion of him (except the genies, who don't count because they clearly have no free will whatsoever), and he's the one we're supposed to be treating as someone to laugh at and not really care about. So anyway, Aladdin wishes for the genie to give him some princely clothes and a procession to go to the palace with, and we get the forerunner to the Prince Ali sequence, complete with Aladdin throwing gold into the crowd. If only he, like the Disney Aladdin, had been established as being the sort of person who likes to share what he has with the less fortunate before this....
Aladdin then impresses the Sultan with his eloquence (apparently worthy of someone raised in kings' courts) and Bedrulbudour with his talent on horseback (outshining everyone else there). This despite the fact that Aladdin has never been mentioned before now as having any talent with either, or given any backstory that could explain where he learned those skills. There isn't even any indication that he asked the genie to give him these talents! I get the sense that Aladdin is the best at everything he does simply because he's the hero and we're not supposed to need any other reason, which is made even less convincing by the lack of any proper character development since the beginning when we were told he was a lazy, useless good-for-nothing. The only change we're told about is that since coming back from the cave, he'd started hanging out with the grown-up merchants instead of the “vagabond” boys, learning from them about buying and selling and the value of goods. I don't see how he could have learned eloquence or equestrian skills from any of that, but okay... By the way, while watching Aladdin's sudden equestrian talents, Bedrulbudour finally falls in love with him, which is... good, I... guess? They still haven't spoken to each other or met face-to-face since the kidnapping incident....
There's this whole sequence where Aladdin has the genie build him a splendid palace where he and Bedrulbudour can live, and the genie completes it in one night. Once he does this, Aladdin asks the genie for a carpet, and I thought, “Yes! Finally! We're going to get something actually romantic in this story!” But no. The carpet Aladdin asks for was so Bedrulbudour could walk from her father's palace to Aladdin's without her feet touching the earth. I cannot begin to tell you how disappointing that was. I mean, I knew this would be different from the Disney movie, but the magic carpet ride is as iconic as the genie lamp! How could it not have been a part of the story since the very beginning?!
At this point, the story gets very repetitive and descriptive and quite honestly boring. There are at least two or three separate occasions where the Sultan asks the Royal Vizier if he doesn't think Aladdin's worthy now, see all this splendour he has in his palace, and the Vizier replies that no mortal could do work like this and Aladdin must have used magic. Then the Sultan tells him he's just jealous and refuses to listen – until, a few paragraphs later, he begins the conversation all over again. And granted, the Royal Vizier is jealous of Aladdin, but he's right! What's the Sultan's explanation for how the palace came up out of nowhere in one night?? What's weirder is that absolutely nobody in the entire city seems to question it either. Somehow all the people have decided that they love Aladdin and that he is worthy – I'm not sure what made them think that at first, although by this point, his habit of showering them with gold every time he goes outside probably has something to do with it. They probably don't know their hero is a kidnapper. The story also tells us that Aladdin is very good to the poor of the city, giving them alms from his own hand, which is something I can one hundred percent see Disney's Aladdin doing, and would honestly be more surprised if he didn't. But what made this lazy, basically selfish character decide to be so generous suddenly? Actually, this story has cleared up something I've been wondering about the Disney movie for quite some time. The Disney Aladdin is one of my all-time favourite movies ever, but I could never understand why they didn't allow him to be able to take treasure from the Cave of Wonders, like he can in the original. Doesn't he deserve it? But now I think I see. In the original story, Aladdin takes treasure from the cave and wishes for countless amounts from the genie. But his access to this treasure – which really has nothing to do with him – seems to be the story's sole explanation for why he is suddenly worthy. It's the only reason we have why the Sultan decides he likes him, why Bedrulbudour decides she loves him, why all the people decide he's worthy, and why the text suddenly decides he's a hero instead of someone useless. In the Disney movie, the splendid parade and prince outfit Genie gives Aladdin are really only a means to an end – they can get him in the door, but in order to win Jasmine's love and show he is worthy of marrying her, he must use what he has on the inside. Aladdin is ultimately worthy because of who he is; the Aladdin of the original story is only worthy because of what he has. But all that said, I must give points to this story for portraying money as having a positive impact on someone's life.
I am still not sure, speaking of which, if Aladdin has told Bedrulbudour and the Sultan anything about his background, or if we've got a Prince Ali situation going here and he's pretending he's been rich the entire time. I almost get the sense it's the latter, because if he told them the truth, they might start wondering where all this wealth came from and wonder if the Royal Vizier was right about him after all. But the Sultan has seen Aladdin's mother and knows she was a poor woman, so how could he believe Aladdin was always rich? So maybe he does know the truth? I don't know. Maybe Aladdin just kept his past ambiguous and his wife and father-in-law never realized in all that time that they knew nothing about him, and then Disney altered this part of the story to make it clearer and to give Aladdin's actions realistic consequences (like the trouble he has keeping up the charade and his eventual feelings of overwhelming guilt).
After several long, boring paragraphs about the splendour of Aladdin's palace and the such, there's one brief paragraph about Aladdin being chosen to lead an army against the Sultan's enemies and winning – now he's skilled on the battlefield too; I'm not even going to ask – and then it's time to hear from the evil sorcerer again, who disappeared from the story ever since he bungled things so terribly at the cave. (I wish he had an Iago to scold him about that!) He comes back into the story just after the Royal Vizier stops being relevant, and it's exciting to see how these two separate characters can be rolled together into one amazingly wicked villain named Jafar. By representing both of these characters at once, Jafar can be a much more memorable presence throughout the story and never needs to stop working towards his villainous goal of taking over Agrabah. This is especially important for a Disney villain, who needs as much time as possible on screen to show off his deliciously evil nature! It's interesting, once you know the original story where Disney got their inspiration from, to look at the movie and see exactly where the divisions come, when Jafar goes from representing the Evil Sorcerer to the Royal Vizier and then back to the Evil Sorcerer again. After he loses the lamp at the Cave (through a twist of events that doesn't make him look stupid) all seems lost until Iago suggests he marry the princess to become Sultan, and Jafar's methods to achieve his ends start to parallel the Royal Vizier of the original. Instead of wanting his son to marry the princess, Jafar wants to marry her himself; instead of simply wanting to raise his social standing, he's plotting an evil takeover. Jafar, as a truly evil villain rather than simply a jealous Vizier, is also far better able to defend his desired place as Jasmine's bridegroom, and can use far more diabolical means to do it. This in turn makes for a more exciting story, and makes it far easier to know why we're supposed to be rooting for or against certain outcomes. When Jafar's plan to get rid of Prince Ali backfires and he gets caught, he seems defeated for good – until he spots Genie's lamp resting in Prince Ali's turban. This is the moment when he begins once more to act as the Evil Sorcerer, and to parallel his evil schemes while bringing the story to its climax. In this case, the Sorcerer finds out Aladdin is still alive and using the lamp to create a wonderful life for himself through a scrying spell, which he decides to perform to check and see that Aladdin really is dead. I don't know why he waited so long to check on him, if he had his doubts. I don't know why he thought Aladdin could possibly be dead, trapped in that cave fully conscious with two magical objects containing genies... He's furious when he finds out Aladdin isn't, and his main motivation for being so angry is the thought that Aladdin got the lamp and its powers without having to work for it at all, while the sorcerer worked hard to find the lamp and never even got his hands on it. He decides to go and find Aladdin and see that he ends up dead. This is where the story becomes as close as it ever gets to exciting, although his plan doesn't involve him actually doing anything directly to Aladdin like Jafar's does. The sorcerer finds Aladdin's palace and thinks up a ruse to get the genie lamp for himself. He disguises himself as a lamp peddler and goes around the town shouting, “New lamps for old!” and making the people think he must be mad. He takes his wares up to Aladdin's palace, where Bedrulbudour hears him and asks her slave-girl what's going on. The slave-girl tells her the exact same thing the narrator just told us, although when it's a short sentence and not an entire scene, having a character repeat what the narrator just said works better, coming across as funny rather than unnecessary. The slave-girl had seen Aladdin's lamp, which he forgot to lock up in his treasury that day, and suggests they trade that old lamp to the disguised sorcerer to see if he really will give them a new lamp in exchange. I would have liked it to be Bedrulbudour's own idea to trade lamps – the girl's made few enough decisions for herself as it is. But Bedrulbudour agrees to the joke and sends her eunuch to make the trade. It might have had more dramatic impact for Bedrulbudour to make the trade herself, especially if then the sorcerer had revealed himself to her immediately afterward, but of course it wouldn't be realistic to have her do that. So the sorcerer's ruse was successful, and I can even understand why Aladdin never told his wife what that lamp really was, not with magic having the stigma it does in this story and with the Royal Vizier already trying to discredit him by saying he must be performing magic. If the Disney Aladdin were in this scenario, I don't think he'd tell Jasmine the truth about the lamp either. It's interesting how the original story with its vastly different Aladdin actually has a clear parallel to the part of the Disney movie where Aladdin inadvertently gives Jafar a chance to steal the lamp because he doesn't want to tell Jasmine the truth about who he is. I could actually see this scene working with the Disney characters, Jafar perhaps in his creepy old man disguise trying this ruse on Jasmine and succeeding, although in her case I think she would agree to trade lamps because she feels sorry for him, what with all the townspeople calling him mad and laughing at him. That said, while the sorcerer's plan was mostly clever, there are still a couple parts that were left a little too much up to chance – how did the sorcerer know that Aladdin had just happened to leave his lamp lying around that day? How did he know Bedrulbudour wouldn't just order him to leave the palace grounds and stop disturbing them, or that she wouldn't just ignore him, or that she wouldn't trade him a different old lamp instead of the one he wanted? How did he know Aladdin hadn't told her what the genie lamp really was?
Anyway, the sorcerer waits until nightfall and rubs the lamp, and orders the genie to take Aladdin's palace and everyone in it – including Bedrulbudour – back to his own country. Unlike in the Disney movie, the genie has no reaction to seeing an entirely new master, and one who orders him to work against his old one at that. It was like he didn't even notice.
When the Sultan wakes up in the morning and finds his daughter gone and the entire palace with her, he immediately decides that the thing to do is to execute Aladdin. I'm not entirely sure why Bedrulbudour's disappearance is automatically Aladdin's fault... He's only just stopped from killing Aladdin by the angry people threatening to storm the palace and kill everyone inside if Aladdin is harmed. (He's become quite a favourite of theirs, if you remember.) So then the Sultan talks to Aladdin and tells him what happened with his palace and Bedrulbudour, which if you ask me should have happened before the Sultan passed sentence, and Aladdin asks for forty days' grace to try and find Bedrulbudour, and if he doesn't find her in that time, he will come back and let the Sultan cut off his head. However, after four days Aladdin gives up and almost decides to commit suicide, without even really trying. I mean, I'm not saying it can't work for the hero to have no idea how to accomplish his goal or to be on the verge of giving up. I've seen it work very well in most cases, but here it just feels like Aladdin isn't a very good hero. I mean, once he makes the decision to go and rescue his wife, shouldn't he at least try? At least he should keep trying for Bedrulbudour's sake even if he's ready to give up on himself! He only gets anywhere once he – inadvertently, once again – rubs the magical ring with that elusive other genie inside, and asks the other genie to help him find his missing wife. I suppose in a way that was a clever way to tie in that superfluous other genie, but to me it read more like a cop-out so that Aladdin wouldn't have to do anything for himself to help the story progress – including remember that he has a second genie! I'm honestly not sure why the people admire him so much... Just take a moment and contrast that with the Disney Aladdin at the corresponding point in the story, where Jafar banishes him to the ends of the earth. I swear Aladdin was ready to walk back to Agrabah before he found out the Magic Carpet had come along! And for some reason, once the superfluous other genie brings Aladdin to his palace that the sorcerer stole, he doesn't just go inside to find his wife; they have to wait until her handmaid, by a “lucky chance”, opens the curtains in the morning and sees Aladdin there. This is a really small detail of the story, but I still wanted to point it out because – Aladdin knew Bedrulbudour was in there. Why did they have to wait for a lucky chance that someone else would see him and tell her about it?? Surely he would have just gone in and she would have seen him then....
But that's it for our heroes being inactive, because Aladdin hatches a plan to get rid of the sorcerer and take back the lamp, which the sorcerer keeps on him at all times. The sorcerer has been pressuring Bedrulbudour to forget Aladdin, whom he thinks must surely have been executed by now, and marry him – the parallel for Jafar still wanting to marry Jasmine even after he doesn't need to anymore to become Sultan. I begin to think that this sorcerer is not a particularly clever or dangerous villain, because he's got this all-powerful genie lamp in his possession and can use it to do or have absolutely anything in the entire world – and all he ever does with it is try to woo his rival's wife. We never hear of any other goals he has or anything else he accomplishes after he gets the lamp. At this point he seems less like a dangerous villain and more like a desperate lovesick fool. Anyway, Bedrulbudour has been refusing him, but Aladdin now tells her to pretend that she has accepted him and trick him into drinking a glass of drugged wine. You can see where the inspiration for the climax of the Disney movie came from, only with the small but very significant change that Jasmine made the decision to flirt with Jafar on her own, and Aladdin never asked her to do something so repulsive and uncomfortable. Bedrulbudour is apparently very good at flirting and seducing men, which is the first thing she's had in common with Jasmine apart from external things like rank and beauty. But then, this is also only her second or third personality trait – loyalty to her husband does not count. I think it would be possible to make a well-rounded, interesting character using the traits “shallow”, “likes to have the best”, and “flirty”, but she'd need a lot more work.
Also unlike the Disney movie, and making the sorcerer seem less threatening yet again, the scheme is successful. The sorcerer is fooled and never finds out Aladdin is there or that Bedrulbudour is tricking him, and there's no dramatic confrontation in which he very nearly succeeds in killing and/or eternally imprisoning everyone. There's never even any tense moment where he almost discovers their trick. He drinks the drugged wine and Aladdin steals the lamp back, and cuts off the sorcerer's head. Having the sorcerer defenseless made me feel a little sorry for him, which is not the effect you want during a villain defeat scene. Much like with the Cave of Wonders scene, at first I had assumed Disney's changes were only for dramatic effect, but after reading this telling of the story I can see other motivations too, like making their Aladdin much more likeable by not having him murder an unconscious and defenseless man – even if that man was Jafar, I'm not sure Aladdin could be entirely excused for that. The only time Disney's Aladdin attacks Jafar with a sword is, of course, face-to-face when Jafar was already attacking him. In that context, I think Aladdin would have been justified if he had cut off Jafar's head in combat – but that would have robbed us of seeing him use his particular talents of silver-tongued trickery to defeat Jafar. I also think it was slightly more believable the way Disney actually did it, since it's pretty clear when Aladdin is battling Jafar that Jafar has all the advantage power-wise. If Aladdin had simply beaten him in combat it would have raised the question, much like the original tale does with its lack of proper character development, of what made him powerful enough to do that, or what made Jafar unable to block him. As it is, we get a clever ending that works with the characters' existing talents and personalities, and still serves the same purpose of ridding our heroes of the threat of Jafar.
So Aladdin and Bedrulbudour have a happy romantic night together and go back home, where Bedrulbudour has a joyful reunion with her father, who had missed her very much. (The tale doesn't seem to think much of the Sultan missing his daughter, though; it tells us he wept for her “like a woman” and I'm not sure if saying that is more insulting to women or to men.) Bedrulbudour and Aladdin explain to the Sultan what happened and once again we hear every word of the explanation even though we've already seen the entire thing. I feel like here it works a little better because now we're sort of getting Bedrulbudour's feelings about what happened and not just a copy of a previous scene... So I guess the Sultan and Bedrulbudour must know about the lamp now? Maybe? That part is really unclear – Bedrulbudour knew about the powerful lamp the sorcerer stole and presumably she knew what made it powerful, and I thought she saw Aladdin wish for the genie to bring them back home – but later on Aladdin talks to her about his power to bring her anything she desires and it sounds like he's still avoiding telling her where that power comes from... I don't know. Anyway, the Sultan then apologizes to Aladdin for trying to kill him before with the weirdest apology I've ever heard – he actually tells Aladdin that he, the Sultan, was blameless for trying to kill him because he missed his daughter so much. Aladdin then forgives the Sultan by saying he, Aladdin, was blameless too. Imagine being able to apologize like that and get away with it!
I was pretty sure that this would be the end of the story, because at this point in the Disney movie there's only two more scenes, only one of which is full-length, and everything that gets resolved in that scene has either already been resolved here (like whether Aladdin is allowed to marry the princess) or isn't important in this story (like whether the Genie gets to be freed). Perhaps Disney decided the climax had already come and anything else would be superfluous, and besides, it would be a terrible writing choice to introduce a new villain out of nowhere just to make the movie longer, or even to reintroduce Jafar out of nowhere. The original, however, is an episodic tale with multiple antagonists, and if any kind of story can get away with that sort of thing, this one can. So the story's final section features the evil sorcerer's brother who is also an evil sorcerer finding out about the first sorcerer's death at Aladdin's hands, and coming to get revenge. My first thought when I read this was, “Oh, how original”, but then maybe this idea was original back when this story was first told. Once in town, the sorcerer (he's honestly referred to in text the exact same way the first sorcerer was, as if they were the same person – it was almost like whoever first told this part of the tale regretted the first sorcerer getting killed off too soon and so recreated the same character!) hears of this wondrous holy woman named Fatimeh, who is renowned for her religious devotion and ability to heal people with prayers, and whom virtually everyone in this land has apparently heard of. Why, if everyone's supposed to have heard of her and she's important to the story, we're only just hearing of her now is anyone's guess... Anyway, the second sorcerer decides to go see Fatimeh at night and threatens to kill her if she does not help him to dress up like her and copy her mannerisms, effectively disguising himself as her. He promises her that if she does do this, he won't kill her, but then as soon as she finishes he goes back on his word and murders her. Finally one of our villains has done something truly villainous, that doesn't directly involve antagonizing Aladdin! Now I know why I should be rooting against this man....
The sorcerer, disguised as Fatimeh, goes to the palace, where Bedrulbudour lets him in to say some prayers for her, and is so impressed with him that she offers him a place to live at the palace. I begin to think maybe Bedrulbudour isn't the best person to decide who and what comes into the palace... This invitation is apparently what the sorcerer was hoping for, although I have no idea how he could have predicted that Bedrulbudour would either let “Fatimeh” in or give her houseroom, and if Bedrulbudour had had any intention of inviting Fatimeh in or giving her houseroom, why hadn't she ever done it before now? These sorcerers' plans do seem to centre a lot on Bedrulbudour doing things they have absolutely no way of knowing she would do. Although Disney never used either of these particular plans in their movie, they would actually have an advantage over the original story here if they had chosen to, because Jafar already knows Jasmine and is in a much better position to predict what she might do than these sorcerers who have never met or heard of Bedrulbudour before.
The sorcerer's plan is this: when Bedrulbudour shows him his new living quarters, he tells her they are beautiful but not quite perfect, and that they could be improved by decorating the place with the egg of a Roc, which is apparently a large bird that carries off large prey such as camels, and would probably be disastrous to hatch in a palace full of people. Bedrulbudour is upset when she hears the palace isn't as pretty as it could be, and tells Aladdin that it needs a Roc's egg for decoration. I am impressed at how Bedrulbudour's reaction actually ties in to the tiny bit we've seen of her character before – I honestly didn't think they would give her as much personality as they did. Aladdin promises to give Bedrulbudour whatever will make her happy, and goes to the genie (the one in the lamp) to ask for a Roc's egg. But here, at the very end of the tale, the genie is finally able to do something other than blindly obey his master, to resist a direct order, and to express an opinion. He gets angry at Aladdin for wishing for this, and explains to him about the evil sorcerer disguised as Fatimeh. He doesn't say why wishing for a Roc's egg is a bad idea, but I'm guessing the sorcerer intended the Roc's egg to hatch in the palace and for the baby Roc to carry off and kill Aladdin. I wonder why Bedrulbudour didn't think of that when the sorcerer told her the Roc was a giant predatory bird. I wonder why the genie is suddenly able to have a mind of his own at this point in the story when he never did before. I think I would have liked him better if he had been acting this way the entire time – for one, he would probably have shown some resistance to working for the sorcerer and against Aladdin. But honestly, despite a number of inevitable flaws, I thought the ending was kind of good.
So, the ending: Aladdin pretends to have a headache and asks Bedrulbudour to send him Fatimeh to help heal him. The sorcerer comes, intending to stab Aladdin while pretending to heal him. I don't know how he intended to get away with that, since Aladdin would have shown very clear signs of having been stabbed to death, and there must be hundreds of people in that palace, slaves and eunuchs and guards and such, who could arrest him and stop him from leaving. Maybe he had some magic that would enable him to vanish on the spot like Jafar does; maybe he was just so desperate to be rid of Aladdin that he didn't think things through. Anyway, he never gets that far. Aladdin grabs the sorcerer's hand when he gets out his knife and Aladdin stabs the sorcerer instead. Bedrulbudour is horrified until Aladdin explains everything to her. The couple then has a nice romantic moment together. It's almost enough to make one forget the whole kidnapping business (no, I'm not going to let up about that...) If I picture them as Aladdin and Jasmine having this scene together, I can make it work. The only part of this whole climax that bothered me was why Aladdin couldn't have explained to Bedrulbudour about the sorcerer before calling him in and stabbing him, so she would have been aware of the danger and wouldn't be so horrified when Aladdin seemed to murder their esteemed guest unprovoked. I don't think the sorcerer was anywhere he could hear them, so why not just – I don't know – let his wife in on what he knows and is about to do?!
So they all live happily ever after, and eventually Aladdin takes over as Sultan and rules justly and well. Did I like this story? It's hard to say. I'm certainly not sorry I read it. I enjoyed seeing what events inspired the Disney version, but at the same time I maintain that almost every change Disney made could only be considered an improvement. I liked this story mostly as the inspiration for the Disney movie. I don't think I liked or disliked the story itself so much as I just found it very strange. A lot of the complaints I had could have been cleared up with a better writing style, and as this was a translation of a tale passed down word-of-mouth, that isn't any reflection on the tale itself. It's possible some plot consistency was lost over the years before this was written down. Other flaws I think were probably genuine reflections of how the original target audience would have seen the world at that point. I do think the Disney version basically improved the story, giving us a tighter, more engaging plot and vivid, loveable characters. You can probably see now why I said it was very hard to picture the characters from the Disney movie filling their roles in this story. Jafar is far more clever and threatening than any of the villains from this tale – excepting possibly the sorcerer's brother – and actually has personal motivations that have nothing to do with Aladdin. He is also way too smart to trap a fully conscious and not-in-immediate-danger-of-dying Aladdin in a cave with two objects that he knows perfectly well contain genies. Aladdin himself takes a far more active role in the Disney movie and his character arc is more believable – not to mention he's just a genuinely likeable person who never kidnaps Jasmine. (Never thought I'd be using that as a compliment for Aladdin....) Aladdin's mother isn't present or talked about in the Disney movie and we have no idea what she might have been like. The Disney Sultan could actually work with the original character's constant back-and-forth between nice and not nice, what with Jafar constantly hypnotizing him. Jasmine actually has opinions of her own that have nothing to do with what her father or Aladdin told her to think, plus a fully developed personality that does not include “shallow”. Genie – I kept forgetting the genies in the original story were there at all, so enough said. Abu, Rajah, Iago, and the Magic Carpet have no parallels here at all. I suppose I did realize there probably wouldn't be any animal sidekicks since that is very much a Disney trait, but not having the magic carpet in the story was an almost unforgivable disappointment, even though I do know that it probably just wasn't invented yet and it's not like anyone was deliberately leaving it out. Besides, at this point, not even The Carpet Ride would have been enough to salvage the lack of romance – although it might have helped, if only the tiniest bit.
If you don't mind complicated old English and some highly prejudiced viewpoints, this story is worth a read – if nothing else as an interesting comparison to the beloved Disney classic.
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