Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

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His mother was overjoyed to see him. She gave him all the scraps of food she had and when she said she had no more Aladdin suggested selling the lamp to buy some food.

"I'll get a better price for it, if it's clean," she thought, and she rubbed the lamp with a cloth. In a flash the genie appeared. Aladdin's mother fainted in horror but Aladdin seized the lamp. When the genie saw him with the lamp it said:

"I am the genie of the lamp. What can I do for you, master?"

"Get me some food," ordered Aladdin.

By the time his mother had recovered there were twelve silver dishes of food and twelve silver cups on the table. Aladdin and his mother ate as they had never eaten before. They had enough for several days, and then Aladdin began to sell the silver dishes and cups. He and his mother lived comfortably in this way for some time.

Then it happened that Aladdin saw the sultan's daughter, Princess Badroulboudoir. Aladdin loved her at first sight and sent his mother to the sultan's court to ask the sultan permission for the princess to marry him. He told her to take as a gift the stone fruits he had brought from the cave.

It was several days before Aladdin's mother could speak with the sultan, but at last she was able to give him the stone fruits. The sultan was truly amazed.

"Your son has such fine jewels he would make a good husband for my daughter, I am sure," he told Aladdin's mother.

But the sultan's chief courtier was jealous. He wanted his son to marry the princess. Quickly, he advised the sultan to say he would decide on the marriage in three months' time. Aladdin was happy when he heard the news.

But at the palace, the chief courtier spoke against Aladdin and when Aladdin's mother returned in three months, the sultan asked her: "Can your son send me forty golden bowls full of jewels like the ones he sent before only this time carried by forty servants?"

Aladdin rubbed the lamp once more and before long forty servants each carrying a gold bowl filled with sparkling jewels were assembled in the courtyard of their little house.