Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Part One · The Rock in the Forest

In a town in Persia, long ago, there lived two brothers. The older one, Cassim, had married a rich woman and owned a shop full of fine cloth, and he believed that this made him more important than almost everybody. The younger one, Ali Baba, had married a poor woman, and he earned his living as a woodcutter. Every day he led his three donkeys into the forest, chopped firewood until his arms ached, and sold it in the market for a few coins. He was poor, but he was cheerful and honest, and he never complained about anything.

One day, while Ali Baba was chopping wood, he saw a great cloud of dust rising in the distance and heard the thunder of hooves. Forty horsemen were galloping toward him, armed with swords and carrying heavy, bulging saddlebags. Ali Baba was certain they were robbers, so he hid his donkeys in the bushes and scrambled up into a tall tree. The horsemen stopped right beneath him, in front of a steep wall of rock. Their leader, a man with a fierce black beard, strode up to the rock and shouted, "Open, Sesame!"

To Ali Baba's astonishment, a door in the solid rock swung open by itself. The thieves carried their saddlebags inside, and the door closed behind them. A long time later, they came out again, and the captain called, "Shut, Sesame!" The door closed so perfectly that not a single crack could be seen. Then the forty thieves mounted their horses and galloped away. Ali Baba stayed in his tree until the dust had settled and the forest was silent again, and then he climbed down, his heart thumping, and stood in front of the rock.

Part Two · Open, Sesame

"Open, Sesame!" whispered Ali Baba, and the door swung open. He stepped inside and gasped. He had expected a dark, gloomy cave, but this one was lit by a hole in the roof, and it was piled from floor to ceiling with treasure. There were silks and carpets, heaps of gold and silver coins, bags bulging with jewels, and chests overflowing with golden plates. The thieves had been stealing and hiding things here for many years. Ali Baba loaded his donkeys with as many bags of gold as they could carry, hid them under bundles of firewood, and said, "Shut, Sesame!"

When he emptied the bags at home, his wife clapped her hands over her mouth. There was entirely too much gold to count, so she decided to measure it instead, the way you would measure flour, and she ran to borrow a measuring cup from Cassim's wife. But Cassim's wife was curious and a little suspicious, because what could poor people possibly need to measure? So, before she handed it over, she secretly smeared some sticky wax in the bottom of the cup. When the cup came back, a golden coin was stuck to the bottom.

That night, Cassim came hammering on Ali Baba's door, holding up the coin. "You pretend to be poor," he snarled, "but you measure your gold by the cupful! Tell me where it came from, or I will report you to the judge." Ali Baba, who had nothing to hide from his own brother, told him everything, and even offered to share the treasure equally. But Cassim was too greedy to share anything. Early the next morning, before sunrise, he set off for the forest with ten mules and twenty empty chests, determined to carry away the entire treasure for himself.

Part Three · The Forgotten Word

Cassim found the rock and called, "Open, Sesame!" and the door opened and closed behind him. When he saw the treasure, he almost fainted with joy. He ran from one heap to another, stuffing gold into bags, until he had filled every chest he had brought. But when he turned to leave, his mind had become so full of gold that the magic word had fallen out of it. "Open, Barley!" he shouted at the door. Nothing happened. "Open, Wheat! Open, Rice! Open, Beans!" The door stayed shut, and Cassim was trapped.

At noon, the forty thieves came back. When they saw ten mules waiting outside with empty chests, they drew their swords, and when the door opened, there stood Cassim, shaking like a leaf, with gold coins falling out of his pockets. The thieves tied him up tightly with ropes and left him sitting in the dark among the treasure while they rode off to decide what to do with him. That evening, Ali Baba, worried because his brother had not come home, went to the forest to look for him and found him inside the cave, tied up and miserable.

Ali Baba cut the ropes, and the two brothers hurried home through the dark woods without taking a single coin. Cassim was so frightened, and so grateful to his younger brother, that he never went near the cave again, and from then on he was a little kinder and considerably less greedy. But when the thieves returned and found the ropes lying cut on the floor, the captain was furious. "Someone else knows our secret," he growled. "We must find that person, or our treasure will never be safe again."

Part Four · Clever Morgiana

The next day, one of the thieves went into town, disguised as a traveler, asking questions. An old shoemaker mentioned that he had seen two men creeping home through the streets long after midnight, and he pointed out the house they had gone into. It was Ali Baba's. The thief marked the door with white chalk and hurried back to the forest to tell the captain. But in Ali Baba's house lived a servant girl named Morgiana, who was brave, quick, and the most intelligent person in the whole town. When she went out for bread, she noticed the strange white mark on the door.

"Nobody marks a door for a good reason," thought Morgiana. She fetched a piece of white chalk and drew the very same mark on every single door in the street. That night, when the thieves crept into town, they found fifty doors with fifty marks, and they had no idea which one was right. The captain sent a second thief, who marked the door with red chalk, but the next morning Morgiana covered the whole street in red marks too. At last the captain came himself and studied the house carefully, until he could have found it with his eyes closed.

A few days later, at sunset, a merchant arrived at Ali Baba's door with nineteen mules, each carrying two enormous oil jars. "I am an oil merchant," he said, bowing, "and I have nowhere to sleep tonight." Ali Baba, who was always generous to travelers, invited him in for supper and had the jars placed in the courtyard. Only one of the jars was actually full of oil, however. Inside each of the other thirty-seven was a thief, crouched and silent, holding a sword and waiting for the captain's signal.

Part Five · The Jars and the Dance

Late that night, Morgiana's lamp ran out of oil, so she went to the courtyard to fill it from the merchant's jars. As she passed the first one, a voice whispered from inside, "Is it time?" Morgiana did not scream, and she did not drop her lamp. She simply whispered back in a deep voice, "Not yet." She went from jar to jar, and from every one but the last, a voice asked the same question. Quickly and quietly, she tied down every lid with strong rope, rolled heavy stones against them, and ran through the dark streets to wake the town's guards.

When the captain crept out at midnight and gave his signal, nothing happened. He tapped on the jars and found them all tied shut, and then he heard the guards marching up the street with their torches. He leaped over the garden wall and disappeared into the night. The guards loaded the jars onto carts, thieves and all, and rolled them straight off to prison. When Ali Baba heard what Morgiana had done, he could hardly speak. "You have saved my life, and my whole family," he said at last.

But the captain had not given up. Some months later, he returned disguised as a wealthy merchant, with an enormous beard and a different name, and he made friends with Ali Baba's son. One evening, he was invited to supper, but he refused to eat any food that had salt in it. Morgiana grew suspicious, because in that land, eating salt together meant you were friends, and a guest who refused it might be planning harm. When she peeked at him carefully, she noticed a dagger hidden under his robe, and she recognized the captain's eyes.

Part Six · The Captain Unmasked

After supper, Morgiana came in to entertain the guests, dressed as a dancer with a tambourine and a little silver dagger, which was part of the dance. She whirled and spun around the room, faster and faster, flashing the dagger in the candlelight, and everyone clapped. Then, as she spun past the merchant, she flicked his tall turban off with the point of the dagger, and his false beard came off with it. There sat the captain of the forty thieves, with his own fierce black beard, gaping in astonishment.

The captain jumped up and ran for the door, but this time Ali Baba's son and the servants were ready for him, and the guards, whom Morgiana had sent for before her dance, were waiting outside. They caught him in the street and carried him off to join the rest of his band in prison, and the town never saw the forty thieves again. Ali Baba took Morgiana's hands. "You are no longer our servant," he said. "From today, you are part of our family." Not long afterward, she married Ali Baba's son, and there was a joyful wedding feast for the whole street.

As for the cave, Ali Baba went back only when he needed to, and he never took more than he needed. He gave much of the treasure away to the poor people of the town, and he taught the secret word to his son, who taught it to his own children, and so on for many years. And whenever the family told the story at supper, they always agreed on one thing. Two magic words had opened the door to the treasure, but it was Morgiana's quick thinking that had kept them all safe.