TLS Review of Lyons - Geert Jan van Gelder

Review and comments about the review afterwards from the TLS deputy editor.

Review found at the TLS website and pasted below:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5561278.ece

From The Times Literary SupplementJanuary 21, 2009

Grand Arabian nights
Truly a work of world literature, The Arabian (or 1,001) Nights has been fully translated into English for the first time in over a century

So which Nights are they, the Arabian, or the Thousand and One? Both appear on the title page of this, the first full English translation since Richard Burton published his version well over a century ago. The dual title neatly illustrates the hybrid nature of the work: it is part of Arabic and European literature, it contains stories and motifs that may be traced to Sanskrit, Persian and Greek literature, it hovers between the oral and the written, the popular and the highbrow, the pious and the scabrous, realism and fantasy. “Arabian”, an epithet it acquired in Europe, is a misnomer, for it was neither conceived nor written in Arabia and the great majority of the stories are set in Iraq, Egypt or Persia rather than the Arabian Peninsula. The original Arabic title, Alf layla wa-layla, translates as “A Thousand and One Nights” – but one should be cautious using the term “original”, for the earliest mention in Arabic refers to a Persian book called Hazar afsana, “A Thousand Tales”. An Arabic version, including the frame story about the resourceful and eloquent Shahrazad and the murderous misogynist King Shahriyar (a story that may be of Indian origin, whereas the names are Persian), was around in the tenth century, but the text is not preserved, presumably because it was deemed to be “silly stuff”, in the words of a tenth-century scholar. It was anonymous, its language was not sufficiently polished, and it was too obviously fictional and fantastic in parts, all of which precluded its acceptance in highbrow circles. At the same time it was never as truly popular, in the sense of widespread among and beloved by the illiterate, as the monstrously lengthy and equally anonymous epic tales such as Sirat Antar or Sirat Bani Hilal.

Then, in Europe three centuries ago, the Nights rose to the pinnacle of critical esteem when Antoine Galland produced his French translation, which spawned numerous other European versions. The Nights came to belong to World Literature, loved by children, novelists, poets and the general reading public, in the process contributing much to the formation and malformation of the Middle East in Western eyes. Galland did more than merely translate: he shaped the text into what became a more or less canonical form; as a result the Nights are as much a part of Western literature as of Arabic. To Western readers, the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sindbad belong to the core of the Nights and are among the best-known tales; but they did not belong to the Arabic text until Galland added them. There is, in fact, no known Arabic text of the Aladdin and Ali Baba stories that predates Galland, and elements in the story of Aladdin suggest that it may have been a European fairy tale rather than an Arabic one. It would be unthinkable, however, to publish the complete Nights without its two most popular tales, which is why in the present work they have been translated, by Ursula Lyons, from Galland’s French, as is an alternative ending of a Sindbad story. It was only in the course of the twentieth century that the Arabs themselves, in the wake of the Westerners, came to consider the Nights as something to be proud of and to study seriously instead of enjoying it in secret as a guilty pleasure. Many reactionary Muslims still consider it an unedifying text that ought to be banned or at least expurgated; but on the alwaraq.com website, where a wealth of Arabic texts may be consulted and searched, the Nights have the highest number of hits (I should add that the Koran is not listed there).

Three English translations from the Arabic appeared in the course of the nineteenth century. Edward William Lane, a good Arabist, produced a version in 1839 that was acceptable to a Victorian readership, which meant that he had to omit a fair number of stories, passages and poems. More complete was the version by John Payne (1882–4), which was soon overshadowed, and to some extent plagiarized, by that of Richard Burton (1885–8), a translation as eccentric as Burton himself. His obsession with matters of sex and eroticism (he also put his name to a translation of the Kama Sutra – not “Karmasutra”, as in Robert Irwin’s introduction to Malcolm C. Lyons’s new translation) is obvious not only from his copious notes, but also from the translation itself; Burton’s wife Isobel saw to it that an expurgated version was published for a general readership. Burton’s language, too, is eccentric and pretty unreadable, such that a not unlikely title might be “The Shroff who Futtered his Cadette with the Two Coyntes” (I am making this up, but the words are Burton’s). Such words may be useful for players of Scrabble; modern readers deserve something better.

They had to wait a long time, in the meantime having to make do, for instance, with an English version of the perfumed travesty of J. C. Mardrus’s more French than Arabian Nights. Some partial translations from the Arabic were made in the intervening period. One of these, by N. J. Dawood, published in Penguin Classics more than half a century ago, is unsatisfactory, to put it mildly. What to think of a translator who decides to “ignore the divisions of the tales into nights” (to quote from the introduction), thereby casually ditching an essential structural device of the collection; who leaves out all the poems because “they tend to obstruct the natural flow of the narrative” and because “they are devoid of literary merit”; and who includes a couple of tales that do not even belong to the Nights, merely because “they are typical of the amusing short folk-tales still current in the Middle East”? The information given in Dawood’s introduction on the history and nature of the text is inadequate, and contrasts with the high standards set by the average Penguin Classics introduction. Much better are the more recent two volumes with translations by Husain Haddawy (1990, 1995), which are more readable and reliable.

By the time Haddawy produced his first volume, Muhsin Mahdi had published the first scholarly edition of an Arabic text, based on the oldest extant manuscript of the Nights available, which dates from the fifteenth century (Mahdi himself believed it was a century older). This text, also used by Galland as it happens, is fascinating because it is written in a lively Arabic that is much closer to the spoken language than the more polished versions offered by the uncritical editions produced in Cairo and Calcutta in the nineteenth century, which formed the basis for Lane, Burton and many other early translations. Unfortunately, the text of this manuscript is not complete, for it stops at night 282. Haddawy chose to translate this version, and so did various recent translators in other European languages, reverting to the Cairo or Calcutta texts for the remaining parts. The choice of Mahdi’s text has been justified on two grounds: it is lively and readable, and it offers a more “original”, more authentic and popular version, unmarred by the interference of meddling Arab or Arabist scholars and correctors who polished the language and the style of the texts for the nineteenth-century editions. The former argument is valid; the latter, advocated by Mahdi and followed by many others, is not, for it takes for granted, first, that there is something that can be called an “original” text of the Nights, and, second, that this pure original was “popular” until it fell into the defiling hands of highbrow pedants. Both assumptions are erroneous, for one cannot speak of an original text, and the polishing process was present from the earliest times. Many of the stories found in the Nights have a “highbrow” origin, and several of them are indeed found in Arabic polite literature, such as the extremely readable tenth-century collection al-Faraj ba’d al-shiddah (“Relief after Distress, or Happy Endings”) by al-Tanukhi – a work that deserves full translation into English, being rather more representative of classical Arabic literature than the two works best known to Western readers, the Nights and the Koran.

The choice between Mahdi’s text and a more traditional one was decided in favour of the latter by Malcolm Lyons in his new translation, with which Penguin Classics has made up in magnificent fashion for its former neglect of the Nights. Lyons, Emeritus Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge, is uniquely qualified, for he is equally at home in the popular and high-status traditions, having published a magisterial survey of the popular epics as well as important studies on poetry. His decision not to opt for the Mahdi text must therefore be taken seriously, and I believe it was the right one, especially since we already have an English version of Haddawy’s volume. Lyons used the text known as “Calcutta II”, which was published between 1839 and 1842, supervised by W. H. Macnaghten; one’s confidence in the latter’s competence as an Arabist is undermined by his inability, apparent from the title page, to distinguish between alif (the letter A) and alf (one thousand). Lyons’s translation does not contain the many additional stories that are found in yet other versions of the Nights, such as the “Breslau edition” or the Wortley-Montagu manuscript.

Robert Irwin, the author of The Arabian Nights: A companion, has provided three useful introductions to the three volumes, on the nature of the work, the history of the text, and the extraordinary impact of the Nights on world literature, art and film. He is also responsible for the annotation in footnotes, which is minimal but aided by a glossary printed at the end of each volume, as are maps of the Abbasid Caliphate and of the two major cities figuring in the stories: Baghdad and Cairo. The Nights must be among the most frequently illustrated works; but the images in the present translation are all of the textual kind and the reader will not be distracted by Oriental or Orientalist pictures.

The translation reads well. It is faithful to the original, preserving the formula that punctuates the text and marks the division into 1,001 nights: “Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the . . . th night, she continued: I have heard, O auspicious king . . .”. Incidentally, if the ploy of nightly tales with cliff-hanging breaks is taken literally, the storytelling sessions must have been short, since the average night spans only a few pages and sometimes barely more than one: either Shahrazad’s words were substantially curtailed, or she and her husband did other things in between. The rhymed prose used in the Arabic in this formula and on numerous other occasions, especially in flowery descriptions, has not been imitated, nor has rhyme been used for the many poems, unlike the practice of, for instance, Burton, Haddawy or Enno Littmann in his German translation. The Arabic monorhyme (only one rhyme, maintained throughout a poem) is difficult to imitate in English for obvious reasons, and even an easier rhyme scheme will often compel the translator to resort to padding or distortion. Blank verse, or at least verse in iambic or some other metre, is less difficult to produce, but Lyons has employed this only intermittently; consequently the poetry looks rather pedestrian at times. The translation does not suffer from the archaisms and highfalutin expressions that abound in many earlier translations, and to excess in Burton. Lyons’s English is relatively straightforward, just like the original Arabic.

Classical Arabic writers are generally not prudish, which posed a problem to Victorian and other translators. Lane’s solution was to omit bawdy tales altogether, while Burton revived old words or coined new ones for his purposes. Lyons occasionally resorts to another kind of prudishness, for instance when, shrinking from the correct, demotic English translation of hir, he uses the Latinate “vagina” in the tale of the Porter and the Three Ladies. This tale contains a passage on the naming of parts; the ladies are said to refer to the porter’s zubb or air: Lyons resorts to transliteration instead of translation. Some readers will be delighted to learn some naughty Arabic, but surely English has a profusion of equally vulgar words for the sexual organs. It should be stressed, however, that obscenities, Arabic equivalents of English four-letter words, are few and far between in the original, where sexual intercourse is often simply expressed as “lying with” or more elaborately by means of metaphors martial (“storming the fortress”) or religious (“circumambulating the Kaaba”, “putting the imam into the prayer niche”), with the mildly shocking profanity that was common in pre-modern Arabic.

One thing I missed was a paragraph with hints on pronunciation. A full scholarly transliteration of Arabic names and terms would have been out of place, but at least the correct stress could have been indicated. This would have been more useful than the pointless retention of the apostrophe indicating the pharyngeal sound called ’ayn, as in ’Abd, which few non-specialists or non-Arabs would know what to do with. Already I imagine, with horror, how the name of the beautiful Badi’ al-Jamal will be pronounced by future readers as if she had something to do with a camel (jamal, different from jamâl, “beauty”), or how the name of the slave girl Hubub would sound like “hubbub”: it should be stressed on the second syllable and rhyme with “boob”, and I believe the correct reading would actually be Habub. The general reading public is supposedly averse to diacritical signs, but I have personally never met a “general reader” who abhorred macrons or circumflexes, and “Habûb” cannot look too off-putting. On the subject of names, one wonders why Nur al-Din’s sash-making girlfriend has been given the Hebrew name Miriam. Mary would be more appropriate, since she turns out to be the daughter of the Frankish King; but the conventional Arabic form Maryam is surely best.

Robert Irwin justifies the minimalism of his annotation in the introduction to the third volume, by pointing out that the present translation has no “ethnographic agenda”, unlike those of Galland, Lane and Burton. Thus it is suggested that annotation is slightly suspect and may lead to accusations of “orientalism” in the Saidian sense. This is surely wrong. When, for instance, someone walks in one of the streets of al-Hira, the reader may want to know where that place is, but neither the maps nor the glossary will help. A reference to the “Abjad-Hawwaz alphabet” may suggest a secret or cryptic script; a note could have explained that it is the ordinary Arabic alphabet in the old “Semitic” order, as still used in Hebrew.

That I should resort to such minor quibbles is proof of the high quality of the translation, which ought to become the standard one for the present century. It is fitting that it appears in time for the 1,200th anniversary of the death of Harun al-Rashid (or Hârûn al-Rashîd, d.809), whose fictional persona appears in so many stories in the Nights.



THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
Tales of 1001 nights
Translated by Malcolm C. Lyons, with Ursula Lyons; introduced and annotated by Robert Irwin
Three volumes, 2,778pp. Penguin. £125.
978 1 84614 117 1



Geert Jan van Gelder is Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John’s College. His latest monograph is Close Relationships: Incest and inbreeding in classical Arabic Literature, 2005.

response from deputy editor of TLS:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5561124.ece

From The Times Literary SupplementJanuary 21, 2009

This week
A note from the Deputy Editor

Like many unusually gifted people threatened by boredom and depression, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was prodigiously creative: in fifty-two years producing twelve plays, a large body of dramatic and literary criticism and of verse, writings on classical art and literature and aesthetic theory, and “forays into theology and biblical criticism which mark a watershed in Protestant thinking”. An eighteenth-century output for a writer who was, as Ritchie Robertson says, the central author of the German Enlightenment, a figure of European stature, always ready to undermine accepted ideas – even Enlightened ones. He receives his due in an “unfailingly lucid” new study which, though written in English, has first appeared – a standing rebuke to English-language publishers – in German translation.

Lessing’s range of interests took in not just all the major European languages and literatures but also the world beyond Europe – especially that of Islam. Reviewing Malcolm C. Lyons’s new translation of The Arabian Nights – the first full translation into English since Richard Burton’s – Geert Jan van Gelder tells us not just how un-Arabian the book is but also how it was only in the twentieth century that Arabs came to consider the Nights as “something to be proud of rather than enjoying it in secret as a guilty pleasure”. Many nineteenth-century editions of the Nights were produced in Cairo, a place long associated with guilty pleasures in the Western imagination. Robert Irwin, the TLS’s Middle East editor, who has written the introductions and notes to the new Nights, looks back over the work of that city’s most famous modern chronicler, Naguib Mahfouz, while Oleg Grabar surveys a “beautiful and thoughtful” history of Cairo’s transformation by the Mamluks. Henri Astier describes an unlikely meeting of French minds – Michel Houellebecq’s and Bernard-Henri Lévy’s – and Rosemary Ashton a very English attempt to improve English ones, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

Alan Jenkins

original Burton editions

I received an email from someone who says they have copy number 500/1000 of Burton's original edition of the Nights.

That would be fascinating to see and I am hoping for pictures from the emailer but until then does anyone know where the other 999 copies are? Or some or at least one of them?

That would be interesting to find out.

Post your findings/answers as a reply to this post (you can even post anonymously).

Thanks!

call for papers - mla 2009

The MLA conference this year has a call for papers which mentions the Nights.

I'll see what I can cook up before the March 1 deadline although it centers on European Medieval Lit.

Here is the entire posting:

Subject: Call for Papers: Islamic Genealogies
Palimpsest: Islamic Genealogies of Medieval European Literature

Was Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles a late manifestation of Attar’s work, Boccaccio’s Decameron of One Thousand and One Nights , or Dante’s epic of Muhammad’s Mi`raj? Comparatist reevaluations of literary antecedents.

Abstracts by 1 Mar to ck50@columbia.edu

Arabian Nights (TV) - Movie Trailer

The trailer from the 2000 made for TV movie:

Alf Laila - Egyptian Film Poster

Alf Laila - Egyptian Movie Poster

(found this on the forums at http://egyfilm.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?p=712678 by searching the title in arabic in google images)

Bennie K - 1001 Nights song and video

2007 single from Japanese hiphop group Bennie K:

1001 Nights Restaurant China

1001 Nights CHINA:



It's a chain of restaurants around China with Arabic food.

Pop-up heavy but interesting site with menus in Chinese, English and Arabic:

http://www.1001nights.com.cn/



From their Beijing description:

Beijing has seen a handful of restaurants come and go but it is "1001 Nights Restaurant"which has stood the test of time. Being one of Beijing’s most celebrated restaurants , this elegant establishment has been pleasing patrons for over 5 years and it plans to dish it up for many more．

　　Decor of the restaurant reminiscent of the old Arabic culture. Entering our restaurant will drive you to a journey to the enchantment and wonder of the Middle East civilization.Traditional oven where seems to produce endless supplies of home-made pita bread for the clients. “1001 nights Restaurant”’ Executive Chef Hasan, has refined the art of the Syrian -Lebanese cuisine satisfying guests with an attractive resentation of authentic Middle East fares, which includes a wide variety of delicious appetizers, sumptuous portion of different grill dishes and drinks torelish. Begin with a flavorful dip such as Baba Ghanoug, or Humus or pair it with Tabouli Salad, Savory Shish Tawouk, and like all our other selections from our menu, each dish is spiced and served with a generous side dish, such as rice, potatoes or vegetables. Then complete your Lebanese dining experience with a sweet treat from our unique selection of traditional Arab desserts. Quality control is an integral feature of the restaurant. All meats, poultry, seafood, vegetables and fruits arrive daily.

　　Every day enjoy traditional Belly Dancing show. A variety of performers will delight your senses with their esthetic dance and will make sure that dining in our restaurant is an experience in excellence. Service and quality go hand in hand to provide guests with a well-deserved experience in fine dining.

　　Let “1001 nights Restaurant” take you on a journey through the Middle East that you never forget.　


WANT TO HAVE A PARTY THAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT?

“1001 Nights Restaurant” cordially invites you to join us for dinner, special　occasions and parties.

Your guest will enjoy the cozy setting and a touch of our Middle East hospitality and entertainment. A great opportunity to treat your local associates to an entertaining evening and introduce to them the delight of the Lebanese cuisine. 1001 Restaurant offering a full ranges of food and beverage facilities to cater the needs of 5 to 200 people. All the food we provide will be produced to the same high standards as our associated catering activities, with a range of additional

services provided to ensure that all Business Meals from “1001 Restaurant”exactly meets your requirements.All style of Lunch can be provided, from cold buffet through to an ethnic feast, with all the food freshly prepared for you. Catering
and banquet facilities are also available. As always, please contact us to discuss your individual requirements.

Canada Poster of Zimmerman Production

Scheherazade in popular culture

I am copying this from the wikipedia page "Scheherazade in popular culture" because they are going to delete it because it's not encyclopedic enough for them, but it's pretty interesting. Add what you want as a comment if you have any additions.

Scheherazade, Op. 35, is a symphonic suite composed by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888, and is based on The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.

Scheherazade (1902), is a set of three poems for voice and orchestra by the French composer Maurice Ravel.

Stephenie Meyer, in her novel New Moon, refers to Scheherazade when Bella Swan, the protagonist of her Twilight saga, says, "I hoped... I could buy a few more hours with him at some later time -- spin this out for another night, Scheherazade-style."[1]

Peter Cetera's 3rd solo album One More Story (1988) contains a song named Scheherazade. In the song, Cetera tells the story of an unhappy Arabian King who is bored with all his riches and harem of dancing girls but once he lays his eyes on Scheherazade, he suddenly becomes entranced by her and makes her his queen. Background vocals were performed by Madonna.

"The Magic of Scheherazade" is a 1989 video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) by Culture Brain, Inc.

Scheherazade and Other Stories is a 1975 album by the rock/folk group Renaissance.

The Riddles of Scheherazade is a book of logic puzzles by Raymond M. Smullyan.

The Magic: The Gathering card game features a card called Shahrazad, the art of which depicts the queen. The card's rules causes the players to play a game-within-a-game that extends the gameplay time, much like Scheherazade told stories-within-a-story to extend her lifetime.

In his novel Chimera, John Barth evokes Scheherazade and becomes her muse as she becomes his.

In Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the narrator repeatedly compares his own tales of his life to Scheherazade's, and mentions that he can't "count on having even a thousand nights and a night" (page 4) in which to tell them.

In the Vertigo graphic novel Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, Snow White takes the role of Scheherazade and tells background stories about the inhabitants of Fabletown in order to prevent her beheading at the hands of the Sultan. At the end of the book, Scheherazade makes an appearance, and Snow White tells her the secret to make sure the sultan doesn't have her executed. "He likes stories."

The protagonist of Stephen King's novel Misery, Paul Sheldon, frequently compares himself to Scheherazade as he writes a novel both for himself and to keep his captor from killing him.

Kamelot's song 'Nights of Arabia' from the album The Fourth Legacy describes the story of Scheherazade.

"Scheherazade" is the title of a poem in John Ashbery's book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.

"Scheherazade Sits" is the title of a song by filk artist Terence Chua.

Shadow Spinner is a book written by Susan Fletcher about Shahrazad's tale through the eyes of a harem girl named Marjan.

The Storyteller's Daughter is a novel that focuses specifically on the life of Scheherazade before and during her marriage to Shahryar

"Scherezade" is the name of a Guymelef (mechanised robot) in the anime Escaflowne
"Scheherazade" is the name of an unlockable bonus character in Soulcalibur IV. In battle she wields a rapier named "Alf Layla Wa Layla", the Arabic name meaning "One Thousand and One Nights".

"Cafe Scheherazade" by Melbournian author Arnold Zable is a collection of stories told around the tables in Acland St, St Kilda's (Australia) famous Cafe Scheherazade

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheherazade_in_popular_culture"

Arabic Storyteller at An-Nawfara Cafe Damascus Syria

Here is Arabic storyteller (Hakawati) Abu Shady, the last of his kind, telling a part of his nightly stories in the vein of the 1001 Nights at the famous An-Nawfara Cafe in the Old City of Damascus Syria.

Adam Shankman to direct new Sinbad Movie

Adam Shankman, director of Hairspray and Bedtime Stories (Adam Sandler 1001 Night-esque holiday flick), is set to direct Columbia's latest incarnation of the "Nights," The 8th Voyage of Sinbad:

http://www.animationmagazine.net/article/9364

copied and pasted from the above article:

Director Sets Sails for Sinbad
Thursday, December 18, 2008
By: Ryan Ball

After trolling the waters of development hell for a few years, Columbia Pictures’ new Sinbad movie appears closer to actually being made. The studio is in talks with Adam Shankman to develop and direct its fantasy epic The 8th Voyage of Sinbad, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Neal Moritz of Original Film is producing the movie, which will involve animated monsters and other mythical elements, much like the earlier Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films.

Inspired by the 1958 classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The 8th Voyage of Sinbad reportedly has the famous Persian sailor and crew marooned off the coast of China on a quest to find the Lamp of Aladdin when they cross paths with a beautiful princess afoul of a Chinese general with ill intent. The most recent version of the story was penned by screenwriters Cormac and Marianne Sellek Wibberley.

Directors John Singleton (Boyz in the Hood) and Rob Cohen (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) have each been attached to the project at one time, with actors Keanu Reeves and Vin Diesel ready to suit up in the title role. There’s no word on which actors Shankman is considering for Sinbad.

Shankman most recently directed the upcoming Adam Sandler family fantasy Bedtime Stories, which opens on Christmas Day. His previous efforts include the romantic comedy The Wedding Planner and the drama A Walk to Remember. He plans to also produce Sinbad with producing partner Jennifer Gibgot and Toby Jaffe.

The Arabian Nights Documentary

I've never heard of this documentary but here are the eight parts of it:

It's in English with Arabic subtitles and features interviews by Robert Irwin and others (though very Irwin heavy).

Seems like it was taped off of Arabic TV, probably from Kuwait (hence the subtitles).

Part 1



Part II



Part III



Part IV



Part V



Part VI



Part VII



Part VIII

aladdin's lamp videos and songs

Here's a whole slew of Aladdin's Lamp related stuff from youtube:

Teena Marie's song "Aladdin's Lamp" (an early 80's r&b type love ballad about a lost childhood love):



Gene Pitney's song "Aladdin's Lamp" (sort of a 1950s era rock-n-roll song):



Sesame Street - Kermit interviews Aladdin and the Genie in the Lamp

This segment features a joke/pun on the word Genie and the song Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair (which is later repeated in the Muppets epidsode featured below)

("Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" is an 1854 song by the American songwriter Stephen Foster. It was written for his wife, Jane McDowall.)



Cool 1977 Cartoon version of Aladdin (ala Speed Racer animation)



Bolek & Lolek (Polish cartoon characters) - Aladdin's Lamp Story



Kenner's 1962 "Red" #10 Give-a-Show Slides done up film form with a song




Sourpuss and Gandy - Old Cartoon with Aladdin Story set in China




Muppets show 518 - Starring Marty Feldman as the Genie



How To Assemble and Light an Aladdin's Lamp



Aladdin's Lamp Video Slot Machine - Playboy Casino




Restored Aladdin's Lamp Sign in Las Vegas



Aladdin's Lamp Float from an Australian Parade



Aladdin II Evolution Slot Machine



Popeye the Sailor - Aladdin's Lamp



Fractured Fairy Tales - Aladdin's Friendly Lamp-O-Rama



Aladdin's Lamp at Disneyland (50 cents!)




Steppenwolf - Magic Carpet Ride



Bata Dil Ke Khafas - Aladdin And The Wonderful Lamp [1952]

(Indian Musical)



Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (1970) - Part of a French Animated Film




Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (old cartoon)



Aladdin the Video Game



Faerie Tale Theatre: Aladdin (1986). Directed By Tim Burton




Shazzan! - 32 - Quest For The Magic Lamp




Tom & Jerry - Magic Lamp




No Doubt - Aladdin 1992 song



and for fun, the opening song of Aladdin



and for more fun...

genie in a bottle

(no embed allowed!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG_m6h-XvMo

Steel Pulse - Steppin Out

Speaking of 1001 Nights related music, there is a ton with references to it.

Steel Pulse's Steppin Out comes to mind, but apart from throwing in the words "Aladdin" and "genie" and "open sesame" not sure how it relates, although that seems par for the course (everything to do with the Nights seems just a matter of referencing its name).

Here's the song on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hdlPzBlil4&feature=related

And here are the lyrics:

Steel Pulse - Steppin Out

CHORUS
Steppin' out, steppin' out
Steppin' out, steppin' out
Open says a me, here comes Rasta man
Abracadabra me seh, catch me if you can

I know
You'll find it hard to believe that
I am
The genie of your lamp and
I can do anything you wish but
Right now I am commanding you to dance

CHORUS
Steppin' out, steppin' out
Invisible music
Beam me up to the cradle of sound
(riddle me this)
You cannot see it
Nowhere on Earth
Can this reggae be found

I know
You'll find it hard to believe that
l am
The genie of your lamp and
I can
Do anything you wish but
Right now
I am commanding you to dance
BRIMSTONE HURRICANE CYCLONE
Ask me this I tell you why
I know
You'll find it hard to believe that
I am
The genie of your lamp and
I can
Do anything you wish but
Right now
I am commanding you to dance

CHORUS

Steppin' out, steppin' out
Journey through the tunnel of love
Wisdom is respected hatred is rejected
On the planet dread it rains dub
Climb Alladin's ladder hotter reggae hot
Open says a me
Here comes Rasta man
Abracadabra me seh
Open says a me
Here comes Rasta man
Abracadabra
Catch me if you can hey
Steppin' out, says I'm steppin' out
I know I am I can right now I'm steppin
highest heights and hottest hot
Rasta this and Dreadlocks that
On the move I just can't stop
I'm in the groove and I just can't stop
Cause I'm
In love with JAH music
Invisible music.