Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Cassim, Ali Baba's elder brother, in the cave by Maxfield Parrish (1909)
Folk tale
NameAli Baba and the Forty Thieves
Aarne–Thompson grouping
  • AaTh 676, "Open Sesame", + AaTh 954, "The Forty Thieves"
  • ATU 954, "The Forty Thieves"
RegionSWANA
Published inOne Thousand and One Nights, translated by Antoine Galland

"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" (Arabic: علي بابا والأربعون لصا) 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 (Arabic: عَلِيّ بَابَا, romanized: ʿAliyy Bābā) 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 (Arabic: قاسم Qāsim, sometimes spelled 'Kasim' or 'Qasim') tries to steal the treasure for himself, but Ali Baba’s faithful slave-girl Morgiana (Arabic: مرجانة Murjāna) 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. 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).

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. 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 Ulrich Marzolph [de] and Richard van Leewen suggest that, despite oral variants deriving from its literary source, an "independent strand" of tradition may have existed. 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).

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. Since its original printed appearance, the tale type has enjoyed "almost universal ... diffusion". 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.

Audio recordings and music

Audio readings/dramatizations include:

Stage

Poster for 40 Thieves at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 1886

Cinema

Live-action non-English language films

Live-action English-language films

Animation - USA

Animation - Europe, Asia and Oceania

  • Soviet puppet film of the same name (Russian: Али-Баба и сорок разбойников) directed by Grigory Lomidze, filmed in 1959 at the «Soyuzmultfilm» film studio.
  • Ali Baba is a 1973 Indian Bengali-language musical drama short animated film directed by Rohit Mohra.
  • Ali Baba appears as a protagonist in the 1975 anime series Arabian Nights: Sinbad's Adventures. This version is portrayed as a young desert raider who befriends Sinbad and accompanies him on his adventures.
  • Alibaba is a 2002 Indian 3-D animated adventure film by Usha Ganesarajah, produced by Pentamedia Graphics.
  • Alibaba and The Forty Thieves is a 2018 Indian 3D-animated film adaptation by V. Murugan.
  • Ali Baba was adapted as a children’s animated film in 1993 by the Australian Burbank Animation Studios. Several aspects of the story were changed to be more suitable for a younger audience, such as Morgiana being a genie that Ali Baba discovers in a lamp, and Morgiana transforming the head thief into a cat instead of killing him. Ali Baba’s wife also has a larger role in the story.

Television

Live-action

  • Indian TV series Alif Laila, based on the Arabian Nights, had a 14 episode segment on Alibaba and the Forty Thieves.
  • Princess Dollie Aur Uska Magic Bag (2004–2006), an Indian teen fantasy adventure television series on Star Plus where Vinod Singh portrays Ali Baba, one of the main characters in the show along with Sinbad and Hatim.
  • In the American/British television mini-series Arabian Nights (2000), the story is told faithfully with two major changes. The first is: when Morgiana discovers the thieves in the oil jars, she alerts Ali Baba and, together with a friend, they release the jars on a street with a steep incline that allows the jars to roll down and break open. Furthermore, the city guard is alerted and arrest the disoriented thieves as they emerge from their containers. Later, when Morgiana defeats the thief leader, Ali Baba, who is young and has no children, marries the heroine himself.
  • In the 2019 BBC/FX adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Ali Baba was portrayed by Kayvan Novak. This was an expansion from a reference to the character in the original novel.
  • This story was partially used in the 2022 Indian fantasy TV series Ali Baba (TV series) aired on Sony SAB, where Sheezan Mohammed Khan (season 1) and Abhishek Nigam (season 2) played the main character of Ali Baba.

Animation

  • Adventures of Ali Baba (2018–2019) is an Indian animated television series, produced by Shilpa Shetty Kundra, which aired on Colors Rishtey. A modern-day retelling of the folktale, it follows brothers Ali and Baba, who protect dungeons and fight evil forces with their supernatural powers.
  • Ali Baba Bunny (1957) is a Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short directed by Chuck Jones. Released on February 9, 1957, it features Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck stumbling upon a cave filled with treasure, guarded by a ruthless character named Hassan.

Video games

Military

At the United States Air Force Academy, Cadet Squadron 40 was originally nicknamed "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" before eventually changing its name to the "P-40 Warhawks".

The name "Ali Baba" was often used as derogatory slang by American and Iraqi soldiers and their allies in the Iraq War, to describe individuals suspected of a variety of offenses related to theft and looting. Additionally, British soldiers routinely used the term to refer to Iraqi civilians. In the subsequent occupation, it is used as a general term for the insurgents.

The Iraqis adopted the term "Ali Baba" to describe foreign troops suspected of looting.

Miscellaneous

Notes

  1. ↑ 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.
  2. ↑ Burton, R. F. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. Vol. III, fasc. 2. p. 369. (n.)
  3. ↑ MacDonald, Duncan Black (April 1910). "'Ali Baba and the forty thieves' in Arabic from a Bodleian MS". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland: 327–386. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00039575. JSTOR 25189681. S2CID 163708921.
  4. ↑ Mahdi, Muhsin (1994). "Galland's Successors". The Thousand and One Nights: From the Earliest Known Sources; Part 3, "Introduction and Indexes".
  5. ↑ 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.
  6. ↑ Marzolph, Ulrich; van Leewen, Richard. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. Vol. I. California: ABC-Clio. 2004. p. 91. ISBN 1-85109-640-X (e-book).
  7. ↑ Uther, Hans-Jörg (2011). The International Index. Vol. 1: Tales of Magic. Folklore Fellows’ Communications. Kalevala Society Foundation. pp. 593–594. ISBN 978-951-41-1054-2. ISSN 0014-5815.
  8. ↑ Marzolph, Ulrich (2020). 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition. Wayne State University Press. p. 237. ISBN 978-0-8143-4775-1. Project MUSE book 77103. Originally split up into two units, tale type AT 676: Open Sesame and tale type AT 954: The Forty Thieves, the two units were reunited in the third and most recent revision of the international tale-type index as tale type ATU 954: The Forty Thieves.
  9. ↑ Marzolph, Ulrich (2020). 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition. Wayne State University Press. p. 240. ISBN 978-0-8143-4775-1. Project MUSE book 77103. Although storytellers changed various details of the tale in their fanciful retellings, the tale's original structure was usually preserved, demonstrating the storytellers' indebtedness to Galland's highly influential early eighteenth-century publication and the oral performance of the Syrian storyteller to whom Galland owed the tale.
  10. ↑ Marzolph, Ulrich; van Leewen, Richard. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. Vol. I. California: ABC-Clio. 2004. p. 91. ISBN 1-85109-640-X (e-book).
  11. ↑ Marzolph, Ulrich (2020). 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition. Wayne State University Press. p. 237. ISBN 978-0-8143-4775-1. Project MUSE book 77103. Although the tale clearly owes its popularity to Galland's literary text, its original version as performed by Ḥannā Diyāb likely derives from an older oral tradition.
  12. ↑ 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.
  13. ↑ Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. pp. 68–69, 173. ISBN 0-520-03537-2.
  14. ↑ 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.
  15. ↑ 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
  16. ↑ Liungman, Waldemar (2022) [1961]. Die Schwedischen Volksmärchen: Herkunft und Geschichte (in German). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. p. 192. doi:10.1515/9783112618004-004.
  17. ↑ Herskovits, Melville; Herskovits, Frances (1998). Dahomean Narratives. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0810116504.
  18. ↑ Talbot, Percy (1912). In the Shadow of the Bush. George H. Doran Company. pp. 389–393.
  19. ↑ Frobenius, Leo (1922). Volksmärchen der Kabylen, Band II: Das Ungeheuerliche. Jena: Diederichs. pp. 115–121. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  20. ↑ McCarthy, William (2007). Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 137–141. ISBN 978-1-57806-959-0.
  21. ↑ Gardner, Emelyn (1937). Folklore from the Schoharie Hills New York. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp. 140–143.
  22. ↑ "| RSA". rsa.fau.edu. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
  23. ↑ Marvin Miller, Del Castillo / Lionel Barrymore - Dr. Seuss' Horton Hatches The Egg / Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves, 1966, retrieved 26 September 2026
  24. ↑ "A Bing Crosby Discography". BING magazine. International Club Crosby. Retrieved 4 October 2017.
  25. ↑ "Char Chand". Gaana.
  26. ↑ "Ali Babà | Zecchino d'Oro". Zecchino d'Oro. Retrieved 13 August 2026.
  27. ↑ "Ali Baba Ali Baba - Agneepath". Tips Official. 10 September 2020. Archived from the original on 13 November 2021.
  28. ↑ "Leading Dancers to Present Ali Baba". Cinema.com. Archived from the original on 29 December 2014. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
  29. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Rajadhyaksha, Ashish; Willemen, Paul (1999). Encyclopaedia of Indian cinema. British Film Institute. ISBN 9780851706696.
  30. ↑ Ganesh Anantharaman (January 2008). Bollywood Melodies: A History of the Hindi Film Song. Penguin Books India. p. 228. ISBN 978-0-14-306340-7.
  31. ↑ Sanjit Narwekar (1994). Directory of Indian film-makers and films. Flicks Books. ISBN 9780948911408.
  32. ↑ "Alibaba 1940". Alan Goble. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 20 September 2014.
  33. ↑ Spaas p.148
  34. ↑ Bali, Karan (2 January 2015). "Tamil Nadu's trailblazing Modern Theatres studio spun romances, period dramas and colour films". Scroll.in. Archived from the original on 6 September 2016. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  35. ↑ Sim Sim Margina (1958). MySwar.
  36. ↑ "Ali Baba 40 Dongalu (Banner)". Chitr.com. Archived from the original on 2 November 2020. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  37. ↑ "Ali Baba 40 Dongalu (Direction)". Filmiclub. Archived from the original on 1 April 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  38. ↑ "Alibabayum 41 kallanmaarum". malayalasangeetham.info. Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  39. ↑ Malhotra, A. P. S. (4 March 2017). "Alibaba Aur 40 Chor (1979)". The Hindu. Retrieved 11 May 2018.
  40. ↑ The Illustrated Weekly of India, Volume 101, Issues 18-34
  41. ↑ "Приключения Али-Бабы и сорока разбойников – в Багдаде все спокойно". Nashfilm. Archived from the original on 13 October 2007. Retrieved 13 October 2007.
  42. ↑ "A Li Ba Ba (1988)".
  43. ↑ Gautam, Savitha (25 January 2002). "Alibaba". The Hindu.
  44. ↑ "Alibaba and The Forty Thieves (2018)". Indiancine.ma.
  45. ↑ "Ali Baba". www.burbankanimation.com. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
  46. ↑ "Alif Laila: 1001 Nights - Vol. 1 to 20 (Episodes - 1 to 143) DVD". Amazon.in. December 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2018.
  47. ↑ Fienberg, Daniel (18 December 2019). "'A Christmas Carol': TV Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
  48. ↑ "Ali Baba Dastaan – e – Kabul | First Look | New Show - Coming Soon". Youtube.
  49. ↑ "Cadet Squadron 40". usafa.af.mil. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  50. ↑ Vasagar, Jeevan. "Court martial hears of drowned Iraqi's final moments". Retrieved 18 April 2007.
  51. ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard (21 September 2009). "Baha Mousa inquiry: 'rotten' UK military blamed for death in army camp". The Guardian.
  52. ↑ Fumento, Michael. "Back to Falluja: The Iraqi Army versus the Keystone Kops insurgency". Archived from the original on 6 May 2006. Retrieved 18 April 2007.
  53. ↑ Levin, Jerry (3 May 2003). "Will The Real Ali Baba Please Stand Up". CPT. Archived from the original on 11 April 2007. Retrieved 18 April 2007.
  54. ↑ "Alibaba's IPO Filing: Everything You Need to Know - Digits - WSJ". blogs.wsj.com. 7 May 2014. Retrieved 11 July 2014.
  55. ↑ Quisquater, Jean-Jacques; Guillou, Louis C.; Berson, Thomas A. (1990). "How to Explain Zero-Knowledge Protocols to Your Children" (PDF). Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO' 89 Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 435. pp. 628–631. doi:10.1007/0-387-34805-0_60. ISBN 978-0-387-97317-3.

Further reading