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Description
This is my interpretation of Aladdin, the famous protagonist of a Middle Eastern folktale recorded by the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab. In the 18th century, the Frenchman Antoine Galland appended Diyab's telling of the story to his own translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (better known as The Arabian Nights); before this, Aladdin's story was not actually part of that volume.

In Diyab's original recollection of the folktale, Aladdin was supposed to be from China. However, all other elements of the story (such as the characters' names and the presence of Islamic djinni) betray the story's Middle Eastern roots, so I chose to portray Aladdin as a typical lower-class individual from medieval Arabia. Besides, that's the interpretation I grew up with.

Description
This is my interpretation of Aladdin, the famous protagonist of a Middle Eastern folktale recorded by the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab. In the 18th century, the Frenchman Antoine Galland appended Diyab's telling of the story to his own translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (better known as The Arabian Nights); before this, Aladdin's story was not actually part of that volume.

In Diyab's original recollection of the folktale, Aladdin was supposed to be from China. However, all other elements of the story (such as the characters' names and the presence of Islamic djinni) betray the story's Middle Eastern roots, so I chose to portray Aladdin as a typical lower-class individual from medieval Arabia. Besides, that's the interpretation I grew up with.