When the new live-action adaptation of Disney’s animated classic, Aladdin, hits theaters on Friday, it will be just the latest step in the very long history of the tale — one with surprising origins.

The creators of the Disney children's musical "Aladdin, Jr." likely didn't mean for the hero to be upstaged by a whip-smart book worm of a young bride. And we're not even talking about his beloved, ...

The author of The Book of Travels (Kitāb al-Siyāḥah), Ḥannā Diyāb, became known to Western scholarship more than a century after his death, when his name was discovered in the diaries of Antoine ...