A closer look
Everybody knows the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp, firmly cementing it as a foundational pillar of Middle Eastern folklore. Except it completely isn't. When French translator Antoine Galland was adapting "One Thousand and One Nights" in the early 18th century, he essentially ran out of source material but his publisher was screaming for more volumes. His brilliantly cynical solution was to just write "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba" himself, claiming he heard them from a Syrian storyteller. He permanently altered global perception of Arabic literature just to hit a quota.
