Editing Aladdin (section)

==Sources==
{{Further|Hanna Diyab}}

Known along with [[Ali Baba]] as one of the "orphan tales", the story was not part of the original ''Nights'' collection and has no authentic Arabic textual source, but was incorporated into the book ''[[Les mille et une nuits]]'' by its [[French language|French]] translator, [[Antoine Galland]].<ref>Allen (2005) pp.280–</ref>

[[John Payne (poet)|John Payne]] quotes passages from Galland's unpublished diary recording Galland's encounter with a [[Maronites|Maronite]] storyteller from [[Aleppo]], [[Hanna Diyab]].<ref name="razzaque"/> According to Galland's diary, he met with Hanna, who had travelled from Aleppo to [[Paris]] with celebrated French traveller [[Paul Lucas (traveller)|Paul Lucas]], on March 25, 1709. Galland's diary further reports that his transcription of "Aladdin" for publication occurred in the winter of 1709–10. It was included in his volumes ix and x of the ''Nights'', published in 1710, without any mention or published acknowledgment of Hanna's contribution.

Payne also records the discovery in the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France|Bibliothèque Nationale]] in Paris of two [[Arabic language|Arabic manuscripts]] containing ''Aladdin'' (with two more of the "interpolated" tales). One was written by a Syrian Christian priest living in Paris, named [[Dionysios Shawish]], alias Dom Denis Chavis. The other is supposed to be a copy Mikhail Sabbagh made of a manuscript written in [[Baghdad]] in 1703. It was purchased by the Bibliothèque Nationale at the end of the nineteenth century.<ref name=Payne1>Payne (1901) pp. 13-15</ref> As part of his work on the first critical edition of the ''Nights'', [[Iraq]]'s [[Muhsin Mahdi]] has shown<ref>Irwin (1994) pp. 57-58</ref> that both these manuscripts are "back-translations" of Galland's text into Arabic.<ref name=Mahdi1>Mahdi (1994) pp. 51-71</ref><ref>Dobie (2008) p.36</ref>

Ruth B. Bottigheimer<ref>Bottigheimer, Ruth B. "East Meets West" (2014).</ref> and Paulo Lemos Horta<ref name="Horta">{{cite book |last1=Horta |first1=Paulo Lemos |title=Aladdin: A New Translation |date=2018 |publisher=[[Liveright Publishing]] |isbn=9781631495175 |pages=8–10 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=im1SDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT8 |access-date=23 May 2019}}</ref><ref>Paulo Lemos Horta, ''Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 24-95.</ref> have argued that Hanna Diyab should be understood as the original author of some of the stories he supplied, and even that several of Diyab's stories (including ''Aladdin'') were partly inspired by Diyab's own life, as there are parallels with his autobiography.<ref name="Time">{{cite magazine |last1=Waxman |first1=Olivia B. |title=Was Aladdin Based on a Real Person? Here's Why Scholars Are Starting to Think So |url=https://time.com/5592303/aladdin-true-history/ |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=May 23, 2019 |access-date=3 February 2021}}</ref>