Sir Richard Burton 
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp 

The following text has been drawn from Sir Richard Burton’s exhaustive translation of ‘The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night’, more commonly known as ‘The Arabian Nights’. The story of Aladdin, likely the most famous of all the tales of ‘The Arabian Nights’, is the story of a poor young boy who is recruited by the sorcerer Maghreb to retrieve a wonderful oil lamp from a booby-trapped magic cave. When Aladdin is trapped in the cave he discovers the magical powers of a ring lent to him by the sorcerer and subsequently of the magical powers of the lamp, which brings him great fortune. ‘Aladdin and the Magic Lamp’ is presented here in this edition in Burton’s original and unexpurgated form.