"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" () is a folk tale in Arabic added to the One Thousand and One Nights in the 18th century by its French translator Antoine Galland, who heard it from Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab. As one of the most popular Arabian Nights tales, it has been widely retold and performed in many media across the world, especially for children (for whom the more violent aspects of the story are often removed).
In the original version, Ali Baba () is a poor woodcutter and an honest person who discovers the secret treasure of a thieves' den, and enters with the magic phrase "open sesame". The thieves try to kill Ali Baba while his rich and greedy brother Cassim ( , sometimes spelled 'Kasim' or 'Qasim') tries to steal the treasure for himself, but Ali Baba’s faithful slave-girl Morgiana ( ) foils their plots. His son marries her, and Ali Baba keeps the secret of the treasure.
Textual history The tale was added to the story collection One Thousand and One Nights by one of its European translators, Antoine Galland, who called his volumes Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704–1717). Galland was an 18th-century French Orientalist who heard it in oral form from a Syrian Maronite story-teller called Hanna Diyab, who came from Aleppo in modern-day Syria and told the story in Paris.Goodman, John (17 Dec 2017). Marvellous Thieves adds a new chapter to Arabian Nights – Paulo Lemos Horta gives 'secret authors' their due in his study of the World Literature classic. North Shore News. In any case, the earliest known text of the story is Galland's French version. Richard F. Burton included it in the supplemental volumes (rather than the main collection of stories) of his translation (published as The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night). (n.)
The American Orientalist Duncan Black MacDonald discovered an Arabic-language manuscript of the story at the Bodleian Library; however, this was later found to be a counterfeit.
Story Ali Baba and his older brother Cassim are the sons of a merchant. After their father's death, the greedy Cassim marries a wealthy woman and becomes well-to-do, living lazily on their father's business and his wife's wealth. Ali Baba marries a poor woman and settles into the trade of a woodcutter. Cassim and his wife resent Ali Baba and his side of the family and do not share their wealth with them.
One day, Ali Baba is at work collecting and cutting firewood in the forest, when he happens to overhear a group of forty thieves visiting their stored treasure to load it up. The treasure is in a cave, the mouth of which is sealed by a huge rock. It opens on the magic words "open sesame" and seals itself on the words "close sesame". When the thieves are gone, Ali Baba enters the cave himself and although there is a vast amount of riches stashed inside, he modestly takes only a single bag of gold coins home.
Ali Baba and his wife borrow his sister-in-law's scales to weigh their new wealth. Unbeknownst to them, Cassim's wife puts a blob of wax in the scales to find out what Ali Baba is using them for, as she is curious to know what kind of grain her impoverished brother-in-law needs to measure.
To her shock, she finds a gold coin sticking to the scales and tells her husband. Under pressure from his brother, Ali Baba is forced to reveal the secret of the cave. Cassim goes to the cave, taking a donkeys with him to take as much treasure as possible. He enters the cave with the magic words. However, in his excited greed over the treasure, he forgets the words to get out again and ends up trapped. The thieves find him there and kill him. When his brother does not come back, Ali Baba goes to the cave to look for him, and finds the body quartered and with each piece displayed just inside the cave's entrance, as a warning to anyone else who might try to enter.
Ali Baba brings the corpse home where he entrusts Morgiana, a clever slave-girl from Cassim's household, with the task of making others believe that Cassim has died a natural death. First, Morgiana purchases medicines from an apothecary, telling him that Cassim is gravely ill. Then, she finds an old tailor known as Baba Mustafa whom she pays, blindfolds, and leads to Cassim's house. There, overnight, the tailor stitches the pieces of Cassim's body back together. Ali Baba and his family are able to give Cassim a proper burial without anyone suspecting anything. Cassim’s wife does not find out about the cave or treasure.
The thieves, finding the body gone, realize that another person must have known their secret, so they set out to track him down. One of the thieves goes down to the town and comes across Baba Mustafa, who mentions that he has just sewn the pieces of a corpse back together. Realizing the dead man must have been the thieves' victim, the thief asks Baba Mustafa to lead the way to the house where the deed was performed. The tailor is blindfolded again, and in this state he is able to retrace his steps and find the house.
The thief marks the door with a symbol so the other thieves can come back that night and kill everyone in the house. However, the thief has been seen by Morgiana who, loyal to her master, foils the thief's plan by marking all the houses in the neighborhood similarly. When the 40 thieves return that night, they cannot identify the correct house, and their leader kills the unsuccessful thief in a furious rage. The next day, another thief revisits Baba Mustafa and tries again. Only this time, a chunk is chipped out of the stone step at Ali Baba's front door. Again, Morgiana foils the plan by making similar chips in all the other doorsteps, and the second thief is killed for his failure as well. At last, the leader of the thieves goes and looks himself. This time, he memorizes every detail he can of the exterior of Ali Baba's house.
The leader of the thieves pretends to be an oil merchant in need of Ali Baba's hospitality, bringing with him mules loaded with 38 oil jars, one filled with oil, the other 37 hiding the other remaining thieves. Once Ali Baba is asleep, the thieves plan to kill him. Again, Morgiana discovers and foils the plan when her lamp runs out of oil and she has to get it from the merchant's jars; the thieves give themselves away one by one hearing her approach and mistaking her for their boss. After refilling her lamp, Morgiana kills the 37 thieves in their jars by pouring boiling oil on them one by one. When their leader comes to rouse his men, he discovers they are all dead and escapes. The next morning, Morgiana tells Ali Baba about the thieves in the jars. They bury them, and Ali Baba shows his gratitude by giving Morgiana her freedom. However, she continues living with Ali Baba and his family anyway.
To exact revenge, the leader of the thieves establishes himself as a merchant, befriends Ali Baba's son (who is now in charge of his late uncle Cassim's business), and is invited to dinner at Ali Baba's house. However, the thief is recognized by Morgiana, who performs a sword dance with a dagger for the diners and plunges it into the thief's heart, when he is off his guard. Ali Baba is at first angry with Morgiana, but when he finds out the thief wanted to kill him, he is extremely grateful and rewards Morgiana by marrying her to his son. Ali Baba is then left as the only one knowing the secret of the treasure in the cave and how to access it. Analysis Tale type The story was classified in the second revision of the international Aarne-Thompson Index (AT or AaTh) as a combination of two tale types: AaTh 676, "Open Sesame", and AaTh 954, "The Forty Thieves". In the first type, a poor man listens to the secret command uttered before a cave of robbers, enters it and steals the riches; his rich brother tries to replicate the sibling's success, but forgets the secret spell and is killed. In the second type, the robbers hide in oil casks and are brought to a house; the girl kills the robbers.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 237-238, 337-338.Marzolph, Ulrich; van Leewen, Richard. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. Vol. I. California: ABC-Clio. 2004. p. 91. (e-book). In the 2004 revision, by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, tale type AaTh 676 has been subsumed under a new indexing, ATU 954, "The Forty Thieves".
Scholars and Richard van Leewen suggest that, despite oral variants deriving from its literary source, an "independent strand" of tradition may have existed.Marzolph, Ulrich; van Leewen, Richard. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. Vol. I. California: ABC-Clio. 2004. p. 91. (e-book). In the same vein, Ton Dekker points to an Eastern origin for the story, based on its elements (the hidden treasure chamber, the magic formula to open up the mountain, carrying the thieves inside leather bags).Deker, Ton. "Ali Baba en de veertig rovers". In: Van Aladdin tot Zwaan kleef aan. Lexicon van sprookjes: ontstaan, ontwikkeling, variaties. 1ste druk. Ton Dekker & Jurjen van der Kooi & Theo Meder. Kritak: Sun. 1997. p. 43.
Variants According to Stith Thompson and Ton Dekker, the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves integrated into the oral tradition of "nearly every country" of Europe after the translation of The Arabian Nights.Deker, Ton. "Ali Baba en de veertig rovers". In: Van Aladdin tot Zwaan kleef aan. Lexicon van sprookjes: ontstaan, ontwikkeling, variaties. 1ste druk. Ton Dekker & Jurjen van der Kooi & Theo Meder. Kritak: Sun. 1997. pp. 42-43. Since its original printed appearance, the tale type has enjoyed "almost universal ... diffusion".Paulme, Denise. "Morphologie du conte africain". In: Cahiers d'études africaines, vol. 12, n°45, 1972. p. 153. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1972.2775]; http://www.persee.fr/doc/cea_0008-0055_1972_num_12_45_2775 Swedish scholar Waldemar Liungman noted its diffusion through the whole of Europe and in Africa, especially across the West Coast.
A West African version, named The Password: Outwitting Thieves, has been found.
Percy Amaury Talbot located a Nigerian variant, called The Treasure House in the Bush, from Ojong Akpan of Mfamosing.
“Die Schatzhöhle der Wuarssen” ("The Treasure Cave of the Wuarssen"), a variant from the Kabyle, was published by Leo Frobenius.
An American variant was collected by Elsie Clews Parsons from Cape Verde. Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner found another American version in New York.
In popular culture
Audio recordings and music Audio readings/dramatizations include: Dick Bentley played Ali Baba in a musical dramatization on Riverside Records (RLP 1451)/Golden Wonderland (GW 231). A 1947 audio recording narrated by Lionel Barrymore made by Leo the Lion records, which was often rereleased alongside Dr. Seuss's Horton Hatches the Egg, on vinyl and cassette. The story was dramatized for Tale Spinners for Children on United Artists Records (UAC 11018). Anthony Quayle narrated the story on Caedmon Records (TC 1251)/Fontana Records (SFL 14108). Martyn Green narrated the story on Arabian Nights' Entertainment (Riverside Records RLP 1405). Bing Crosby narrated and sang a version of the story for Simon & Schuster Records (A298:20)/Gala Records (GLP 351). Bing Crosby recorded the story on 25 April 1957, linking the narrative with songs. This was issued as an album Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in 1957. "1001 Nights (Alibaba)", a song by Pappy'ion on CBS Records (CBS 7849), mainly known for its Chinese adaptation, "阿里巴巴" by Peter Chen (陳彼得) on TONY東尼機構 Records (TONY LP-026) "Main Hoon Alibaba", a song from the 1953 Indian film Char Chand by Talat Mehmood and Premlata, it narrates the adventures of Ali Baba. "Alibaba Alibaba", a song by Asha Bhosle from Alibaba Aur 40 Chor, a 1966 Indian film. "Ali Babà", a song from the 14th edition of Zecchino d'Oro sung by Settimio Ferlisi and Paola Catellani in 1972.