Fun fact about Arabian Nights: Some of the stories are only known from the French translation by Galland. By his own account he wrote them down (in French) based on narration from a Syrian Maronite storyteller who visited him in Paris. The well known story of Aladdin only exists in French - there is no known original in Arabic.
Borges suggested Galland might simply have made up the story of Aladdin on his own, others that is might be an original creation by the Maronite storyteller.
Folklorists have pointed out that the set of stories recorded from the storyteller have a number of story tropes more characteristic of European rather than Middle Eastern folk tales.
Wikipedia carefully states: "Aladdin is a folk tale most probably of Middle Eastern origin".
The storyteller did exist though. He even wrote a memoir! But he didn't write down his own stories. He narrated them for Galland, presumably in French, and Galland wrote them down... a few days later... from memory.
Sorry for being blunt but: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (of original texts in Arabic about Alaaddin that predate Galland etc).
A lot of the original stories may be verbal oral and not necessarily written, another lot may be lost (burn libraries etc) and this all happened from 400 to 1000 years ago, so not exactly yesterday.
Indeed, this is why I say "no known original in Arabic."
But it is also possible that the Maronite storyteller was from a somewhat different storytelling tradition. Maronites are a Christian minority in the Levant which was traditionally involved in maritime trade, so they might have different sources for stories. In the end it is all guesswork since Gallard is the only known source of the story.
At one point a manuscript was found with Aladdin in Arabic, but it turned out to be an Arabic translation from Gallard!
> Folklorists have pointed out that the set of stories recorded from the storyteller have a number of story tropes more characteristic of European rather than Middle Eastern folk tales.
Interesting, could you give us an example of these characteristics?
Islamic and European societies during the period of these stories were different in unique ways, and for that reason I'm not exactly sure how those characteristics were more similar to the one rather than the other.
So the crucial thing about story telling is that it’s not a literary genre. And that means that’s it’s often extemporaneous. In order to make up stories on the spot, storytellers use a body of elements (motifs, incidents, etc.) that they can dump in when they need them. Literary genres close to oral storytelling, like chivalric romance, the Sanskrit katha, and Arabian nights tales, usually keep this quality. (Btw, a good storyteller can do amazing things in this framework).
The issue with Alladin, Sinbad, and Ali baba, is that they lack most of the common motifs of Arabian nights tales (IE the slave whose mistake solves the problem, bedtricks, the sultan who solves everything, the discovered needed object) but do possess motifs very characteristic of 17 and 18th century French folktales (notably alladins rags to riches story, and the princesses cup trick). They also are less motif heavy in general! That doesn’t mean the translator made them up by the way... the resemblance to French folktales could be an accident, and they could be from another storytelling tradition, but they don’t seem like Arabian nights stories
Borges suggested Galland might simply have made up the story of Aladdin on his own, others that is might be an original creation by the Maronite storyteller.
Folklorists have pointed out that the set of stories recorded from the storyteller have a number of story tropes more characteristic of European rather than Middle Eastern folk tales.
Wikipedia carefully states: "Aladdin is a folk tale most probably of Middle Eastern origin".