What is Ali Baba?
[[File:Cassim by Maxfield Parrish, 1909.jpg|thumb|Ali Baba, by Maxfield Parrish (1909).]] '''Ali Baba''' ({{lang-ar|علي بابا}}, ''ʿAli Bāba'') is a [[fictional character]], who is described in the adventure [[Folktale|tale]] of ''[[Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves]]''. It is believed by some [[critic]]s that this story was added to ''[[The Book of One Thousand and One Nights|One Thousand and One Nights]]'' by one of its European translators, Antoine Galland, who is an 18th-century [[France|French]] orientalist who may have heard it in oral form from a [[Middle East]]ern story-teller from [[Aleppo]]. However, another writer and scholar Sir [[Richard Francis Burton]] said it was a part of the original ''One Thousand and One Nights''. Most [[Arab]] and [[Persian people|Persian]] (Irani) scholars seem to also agree with Burton.<ref>See Al-Jubari, Dr AH, 'The Arabian Nights:Sources, Origins' Cairo, 1958; Noori Hamad, A. Al-Khalifa, 'Some notes on Burton's Arabian Nights', London, 1974; and Alizadeh, SHA 'The Arabian Nights, a Series of Oriental Tales of Diverse Backgrounds, analysis' (Persian text monograph), Teheran, 1991</ref> ==References== {{reflist}} ==Other websites== *[http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/alibaba.html Pitt education] {{Commonscat|Ali Baba}} {{lit-stub}} [[Category:Characters in written fiction]] [[Category:One Thousand and One Nights]]