Stories from the Thousand and One Nights. The Harvard Classics.
190914. The Story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves IN former
days there lived in a town of Persia two brothers, one named
Kasim, and the other Ali Baba. Their father divided a small
inheritance equally between them. Kasim married a rich wife, and
became a wealthy merchant. Ali Baba married a woman as poor as
himself, and lived by cutting wood and bringing it upon three
asses into the town to sell. One day, when Ali Baba was in the
forest, and had just cut wood enough to load his asses, he saw
at a distance a great cloud of dust approaching him. He observed
it with attention, and distinguished soon after a body of
horsemen, whom he suspected to be robbers. He determined to
leave his asses in order to save himself; so climbed up a large
tree, planted on a high rock, the branches of which were thick
enough to conceal him, and yet enabled him to see all that
passed without being discovered. The troop, to the number of
forty, well mounted and armed,