56-600: Forty Thieves or 40 Thieves may refer to: the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves Groups of people [ edit ] the Forty Thieves (New York gang) , an 18th-century New York street gang The Forty Thieves (New York City Common Council 1852–1853) the Forty Elephants , an all-female London criminal gang The nickname for
112-570: A 1944 Hopalong Cassidy Western film. Music [ edit ] "40 Thieves" (A Loss for Words song) redirect Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Forty Thieves . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Forty_Thieves&oldid=1140062611 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
168-611: 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
224-628: A cave filled with treasure, guarded by a ruthless character named Hassan. 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
280-483: A chance to dishonor him. Eventually the Vizier (Wazir), whose duty it is to provide them, cannot find any more virgins. Scheherazade , the vizier's daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear
336-458: 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
392-547: A few hundred nights of storytelling, while others include 1001 or more. The bulk of the text is in prose , although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains , although some are longer. Some of the stories commonly associated with the Arabian Nights —particularly " Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp " and " Ali Baba and
448-451: A group of travellers on an archaeological expedition across the Sahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon once used to trap a jinn , and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen, petrified inhabitants, life-like humanoid robots and automata , seductive marionettes dancing without strings, and a brass horseman robot who directs
504-425: 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
560-470: A richly layered narrative texture. Versions differ, at least in detail, as to final endings (in some Scheherazade asks for a pardon, in some the king sees their children and decides not to execute his wife, in some other things happen that make the king distracted) but they all end with the king giving his wife a pardon and sparing her life. The narrator's standards for what constitutes a cliffhanger seem broader than in modern literature. While in many cases
616-467: A small group of historical figures from ninth-century Baghdad, including the caliph Harun al-Rashid (died 809), his vizier Jafar al-Barmaki (d. 803) and the licentious poet Abu Nuwas (d. c. 813). Another cluster is a body of stories from late medieval Cairo in which are mentioned persons and places that date to as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Two main Arabic manuscript traditions of
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#1732772684327672-432: A story is cut off with the hero in danger of losing their life or another kind of deep trouble, in some parts of the full text Scheherazade stops her narration in the middle of an exposition of abstract philosophical principles or complex points of Islamic philosophy , and in one case during a detailed description of human anatomy according to Galen —and in all of these cases she turns out to be justified in her belief that
728-840: 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. Malays adopted the term "Ali Baba" to describe anyone wearing a fez . One Thousand and One Nights Features Types Types Features Clothing Genres Art music Folk Prose Islamic Poetry Genres Forms Arabic prosody National literatures of Arab States Concepts Texts Fictional Arab people South Arabian deities One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabic : أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ , Alf Laylah wa-Laylah )
784-825: Is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age . It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights , from the first English-language edition ( c. 1706–1721 ), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment . The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West Asia , Central Asia , South Asia , and North Africa . Some tales trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic , Sanskrit , Persian , and Mesopotamian literature. Most tales, however, were originally folk stories from
840-428: 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
896-422: 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 donkey with him to take as much treasure as possible. He enters the cave with the magic words. However, in his excited greed over
952-548: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Ali Baba " 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
1008-459: 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. The story has been classified in
1064-729: Is represented in the Nights by certain animal stories, which reflect influence from ancient Sanskrit fables . The influence of the Panchatantra and Baital Pachisi is particularly notable. It is possible that the influence of the Panchatantra is via a Sanskrit adaptation called the Tantropakhyana . Only fragments of the original Sanskrit form of the Tantropakhyana survive, but translations or adaptations exist in Tamil, Lao, Thai, and Old Javanese . The frame story follows
1120-579: The Hezār Afsān has survived, so its exact relationship with the existing later Arabic versions remains a mystery. Apart from the Scheherazade frame story, several other tales have Persian origins, although it is unclear how they entered the collection. These stories include the cycle of "King Jali'ad and his Wazir Shimas" and "The Ten Wazirs or the History of King Azadbakht and his Son" (derived from
1176-742: The Abbasid and Mamluk eras , while others, especially the frame story, are probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān ( Persian : هزار افسان , lit. ' A Thousand Tales ' ), which in turn may be translations of older Indian texts . Common to all the editions of the Nights is the framing device of the story of the ruler Shahryar being narrated the tales by his wife Scheherazade , with one tale told over each night of storytelling. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while some are self-contained. Some editions contain only
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#17327726843271232-455: The Nights is extremely complex and modern scholars have made many attempts to untangle the story of how the collection as it currently exists came about. Robert Irwin summarises their findings: In the 1880s and 1890s a lot of work was done on the Nights by Zotenberg and others, in the course of which a consensus view of the history of the text emerged. Most scholars agreed that the Nights
1288-536: The 'Leiden edition' (1984). The Leiden Edition, prepared by Muhsin Mahdi , is the only critical edition of 1001 Nights to date, believed to be most stylistically faithful representation of medieval Arabic versions currently available. Texts of the Egyptian tradition emerge later and contain many more tales of much more varied content; a much larger number of originally independent tales have been incorporated into
1344-618: The Aarne–Thompson-Uther classification system as ATU 954 , "The Forty Thieves". The tale type enjoys "almost universal ... diffusion". 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. An American variant was collected by Elsie Clews Parsons from Cape Verde . Audio readings/dramatizations include: • Adventures of Ali Baba (2018–2019)
1400-529: The Caliph Harun al-Rashid . Also, perhaps from the tenth century onwards, previously independent sagas and story cycles were added to the compilation [...] Then, from the 13th century onwards, a further layer of stories was added in Syria and Egypt, many of these showing a preoccupation with sex, magic or low life. In the early modern period yet more stories were added to the Egyptian collections so as to swell
1456-494: The Forty Thieves "—were not part of the collection in the original Arabic versions, but were instead added to the collection by French translator Antoine Galland after he heard them from Syrian writer Hanna Diyab during the latter's visit to Paris . Other stories, such as " The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor ", had an independent existence before being added to the collection. The main frame story concerns Shahryār, whom
1512-552: The Nights are known: the Syrian and the Egyptian. The Syrian tradition is primarily represented by the earliest extensive manuscript of the Nights , a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Syrian manuscript now known as the Galland Manuscript . It and surviving copies of it are much shorter and include fewer tales than the Egyptian tradition. It is represented in print by the so-called Calcutta I (1814–1818) and most notably by
1568-495: The Persian Hezār Afsān , explaining the frame story it employs: a bloodthirsty king kills off a succession of wives after their wedding night. Eventually one has the intelligence to save herself by telling him a story every evening, leaving each tale unfinished until the next night so that the king will delay her execution. However, according to al-Nadim, the book contains only 200 stories. He also writes disparagingly of
1624-477: The broad outline of a concubine telling stories in order to maintain the interest and favour of a king—although the basis of the collection of stories is from the Panchatantra —with its original Indian setting. The Panchatantra and various tales from Jatakas were first translated into Persian by Borzūya in 570 CE; they were later translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa in 750 CE. The Arabic version
1680-506: The bulk of the text sufficiently to bring its length up to the full 1,001 nights of storytelling promised by the book's title. Devices found in Sanskrit literature such as frame stories and animal fables are seen by some scholars as lying at the root of the conception of the Nights . The motif of the wise young woman who delays and finally removes an impending danger by telling stories has been traced back to Indian sources. Indian folklore
1736-457: The collection over the centuries, most of them after the Galland manuscript was written, and were being included as late as in the 18th and 19th centuries. All extant substantial versions of both recensions share a small common core of tales: The texts of the Syrian recension do not contain much beside that core. It is debated which of the Arabic recensions is more "authentic" and closer to
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1792-425: The collection's literary quality, observing that "it is truly a coarse book, without warmth in the telling". In the same century Al-Masudi also refers to the Hezār Afsān , saying the Arabic translation is called Alf Khurafa ('A Thousand Entertaining Tales'), but is generally known as Alf Layla ('A Thousand Nights'). He mentions the characters Shirāzd (Scheherazade) and Dināzād. No physical evidence of
1848-612: The conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins another one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion of that tale as well, postpones her execution once again. This goes on for one thousand and one nights, hence the name. The tales vary widely: they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques , and various forms of erotica . Numerous stories depict jinn , ghouls , ape people, sorcerers , magicians , and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. Common protagonists include
1904-503: The historical Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid , his Grand Vizier , Jafar al-Barmaki , and the famous poet Abu Nuwas , despite the fact that these figures lived some 200 years after the fall of the Sassanid Empire , in which the frame tale of Scheherazade is set. Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of their own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in
1960-631: The king's curiosity about the sequel would buy her another day of life. A number of stories within the One Thousand and One Nights also feature science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam , and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction; along
2016-530: The mid-20th century, the scholar Nabia Abbott found a document with a few lines of an Arabic work with the title The Book of the Tale of a Thousand Nights , dating from the ninth century. This is the earliest known surviving fragment of the Nights . The first reference to the Arabic version under its full title The One Thousand and One Nights appears in Cairo in the 12th century. Professor Dwight Reynolds describes
2072-405: The narrator calls a " Sasanian king" ruling in "India and China". Shahryār is shocked to learn that his brother's wife is unfaithful. Discovering that his own wife's infidelity has been even more flagrant, he has her killed. In his bitterness and grief, he decides that all women are the same. Shahryār begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning, before she has
2128-416: The original: the Egyptian ones have been modified more extensively and more recently, and scholars such as Muhsin Mahdi have suspected that this was caused in part by European demand for a "complete version"; but it appears that this type of modification has been common throughout the history of the collection, and independent tales have always been added to it. The first printed Arabic-language edition of
2184-402: 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
2240-552: 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
2296-550: The participants in the 1921 Cairo Conference Games [ edit ] Forty Thieves (card game) Ships [ edit ] The Vengeur -class ships of the line , whose notoriously poor construction caused them to become known as the "forty thieves." Theatre, film and television [ edit ] The Forty Thieves , an 1878 British pantomime version of the Ali Baba story. The Forty Thieves , an 1869 burlesque performed on Broadway Forty Thieves ,
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2352-450: The party towards the ancient city. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun, while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny boatman . "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction. The history of
2408-513: The seventh-century Persian Bakhtiyārnāma ). In the 1950s, the Iraqi scholar Safa Khulusi suggested (on internal rather than historical evidence) that the Persian writer Ibn al-Muqaffa' was responsible for the first Arabic translation of the frame story and some of the Persian stories later incorporated into the Nights. This would place genesis of the collection in the eighth century. In
2464-489: The story at the Bodleian Library ; however, this was later found to be a counterfeit. Ali Baba and his older brother, Cassim ( Arabic : قاسم Qāsim , sometimes spelled Kasim), 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
2520-434: The subsequent transformations of the Arabic version: Some of the earlier Persian tales may have survived within the Arabic tradition altered such that Arabic Muslim names and new locations were substituted for pre-Islamic Persian ones, but it is also clear that whole cycles of Arabic tales were eventually added to the collection and apparently replaced most of the Persian materials. One such cycle of Arabic tales centres around
2576-429: 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
2632-403: 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
2688-407: 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
2744-430: 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 40 thieves visiting their stored treasure. Their 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
2800-424: The treasure for himself, but Ali Baba’s faithful slave-girl foils their plots. His son marries her, and Ali Baba keeps the secret of the treasure. 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
2856-439: 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 ( Arabic : مرجانة Murjāna ),
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#17327726843272912-712: The way, he encounters societies of jinns , mermaids , talking serpents , talking trees , and other forms of life. In another Arabian Nights tale, the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them. "The City of Brass" features
2968-410: 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
3024-413: The world, especially for children (for whom the more violent aspects of the story are often removed). In the original version, Ali Baba ( Arabic : علي بابا ʿAlī 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, and his rich and greedy brother Cassim tries to steal
3080-519: Was a composite work and that the earliest tales in it came from India and Persia. At some time, probably in the early eighth century, these tales were translated into Arabic under the title Alf Layla , or 'The Thousand Nights'. This collection then formed the basis of The Thousand and One Nights . The original core of stories was quite small. Then, in Iraq in the ninth or tenth century, this original core had Arab stories added to it—among them some tales about
3136-584: Was translated into several languages, including Syriac, Greek, Hebrew and Spanish. The earliest mentions of the Nights refer to it as an Arabic translation from a Persian book, Hezār Afsān (also known as Afsaneh or Afsana ), meaning 'The Thousand Stories'. In the tenth century, Ibn al-Nadim compiled a catalogue of books (the " Fihrist ") in Baghdad. He noted that the Sassanid kings of Iran enjoyed "evening tales and fables". Al-Nadim then writes about
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