These stories ended up in volumes nine through 12 of Galland’s translation of the One Thousand and One Nights, completed in 1717.
IS THE VATICAN TAPES BASED ON A TRUE STORY SERIES
Over a series of one-on-one meetings, Diyab told Galland the story of Aladdin, in addition to other now-famous tales such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. When Galland asked the young Syrian if he knew any “Arabian Nights” stories, Diyab said he did.
IS THE VATICAN TAPES BASED ON A TRUE STORY FULL
Lucas’ apartment, full of his collections, had become a tourist destination in its own right, and it was there that Galland first met Diyab, who accompanied Lucas as a travel companion and interpreter, on Mar. Perhaps in search of more clues, Galland went to the apartment of his friend and rival Paul Lucas, a “tomb raider,” who traveled back and forth between Paris and the Middle East to satisfy Louis XIV’s taste for jewels and other precious objects from the region. “This angered Galland and prompted him to procure tales to fill out further volumes.”
“When Galland ran out of stories in his Arabic manuscript of the Nights, his publisher inserted stories from a Turkish collection into the eighth volume to meet the public demand for more tales,” says Horta. And, crucially, he was the first European translator of the Les mille et une nuits: Contes Arabes (“1001 Nights: Arabian tales”), sometimes known in English as One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights.īy 1709, Galland had translated all of the stories in the original incomplete manuscript he’d been working with, and was trying to find the others. He worked on Bibliothèque Orientale, a scholarly encyclopedia in French that would have been well known by anyone doing work related to the Middle East at the time. In the past, credit for telling the tale of Aladdin has often gone to Antoine Galland, a scholar and diplomat who served as a secretary to the French ambassador to Constantinople in the 17th century. Here’s what we know and don’t know about the history of the story, according to scholars who have studied the origins the Aladdin story: How old is the original story of Aladdin? And yet, some scholars say the central character could be partly inspired by a real person. The rags-to-riches story of a street urchin named Aladdin who asks a genie in a lamp to make him a prince is a work of fantasy. When the new live-action adaptation of Disney’s animated classic, Aladdin, hits theaters on Friday, it will be just the latest step in the very long history of the tale - one with surprising origins.