Part 1: The Treasure Hunt
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is an ancient story from a collection of middle-Easter folk tales known One Thousand and One Nights (or The Arabian Nights)
Ali Baba and Qassim, his elder brother, live in a small Persian city. When their father dies, they divide the little wealth he leaves behind, but it is soon depleted, and they both slide into poverty.
However, Qassim’s hard times don’t last long. He marries the daughter of a wealthy businessman, from whom he and she inherit a large fortune. It includes a big shop full of rare and expensive items as well as vast amounts of gold and silver. Most people say that Qassim is among the wealthiest people in the town.
Ali Baba, however, is not so fortunate. His only source of livelihood is three donkeys, which he uses to fetch firewood from a nearby forest and sell it at the town bazaar.
One day, while returning to town after fetching firewood, he notices a group of highway thieves riding their horses at high speed towards him. He fears they could kill him or steal his donkeys, so he hides the animals in a nearby bush and climbs up a tree where he is sure no one can see him. Shortly afterwards, he sees the thieves approach his hideout and fears that they might have discovered his whereabouts. There are 40 of them, and they look vicious. He is tempted to surrender but decides to take his chances by remaining motionless. Luckily, they ride past him and disembark next to a large rock nearby.
Their leader then shouts, "Open, oh Simsim," following which the rock swings open, revealing the entrance to a cave behind it. The robbers offload their boot, carry it inside the cave, and the rock closes the cave entrance behind them.
Just as Ali Baba is thinking of climbing down the tree and driving his donkeys away while the robbers are inside the cave, the rock swings open and they all come out. Their leader yells, "Close, oh Simsim," and the rock closes the cave entrance. They then ride away at high speed.
Ali Baba is curious. He wants to know what is inside the cave. When the robbers are out of sight, he climbs down from the tree, and yells "Open, oh Simsim," the magic words he had heard the robbers' leader utter. To his surprise, the rock opens, ushering him and his donkeys into the endless cave containing miles and miles of gold and silver packed in sacks, which he suspects to have been stolen from passing caravans over many years.
He removes the firewood from his donkey carts and replaces it with as many sacks of gold and silver as the donkeys can carry. He then shouts, "Open, oh Simsim," and the rock opens, allowing him and the donkeys to get out of the cave. Before he leaves, he shouts, “Close, oh Simsim,” and the rock closes.
Ali Baba returns home and pours the gold and silver from the sacks in front of his wife, telling her about his adventure but warning her not to tell anyone. She is so enthralled by the family's newfound fortune that she decides to weigh the gold and silver to see how much it is worth. Since she does not have a weighing scale of her own, she goes to Qassim's house to borrow one. Qassim is not at home, but his wife is.
"Please lend me your weighing scale for a moment," Ali Baba's wife says to her sister-in-law.
"Would you like the small one or the big one?" Qassim's wife inquires.
“Give me the big one,” she replies.
"Stay here while I get you what you want," Qassim's wife says, retreating into another room where she secretly smears wax on the scale's pan to help her determine what Ali Baba's wife wanted to weigh.
When Ali Baba’s wife returns the weighing scale, she does not notice that a gold coin is stuck on the wax her sister-in-law had applied to the scale.
When Qassim's wife sees the gold coin, she is envious and enraged, telling herself, "So she borrowed the scale to weigh gold. How did a poor man such as Ali Baba acquire so much gold that he needs a large scale to weigh it? He's probably one of the highway robbers terrorizing our town. He must have stolen it!"
When her husband returns, she mocks him. "So, you think you're a rich man," she says. "Your brother, Ali Baba, is far more prosperous than you. While you're here counting coins, he has such heaps of gold that he needs a large scale to weigh it."
"Where did you learn this?" he inquires, and his wife responds by telling him about the weighing scale and gold coin stuck on the wax.
Qassim does not sleep the entire night due to envy and jealousy and the next day he wakes up early to go to Ali Baba's house and says, "My brother, you look poor and humble, but in reality, you have so much gold that you need a large scale to weigh it."
“What are you talking about?” asks Ali Baba.
"Don't pretend you don't understand what I'm saying or try to deceive me," Qassim says as he shows him the gold coin his wife discovered on the weighing scale.
Ali Baba now realizes how his brother learned of his fortune and decides to tell him the truth about the bandits and how he discovered the treasure hidden in the cave. Qassim says he, too, wants to try his luck at the cave, so Ali Baba tells him where to find it and how to open its door.
When Qassim arrives at the cave, he yells, "Open, oh, Simsim," and the rock opens, allowing him and his five donkeys to enter, before closing behind them. He loads his donkey carts with sacks and sacks of gold and silver, and he is ecstatic about the extra prestige and fame this fortune will bring him. However, his excitement causes him to forget the magic words he needs to utter to open the door and exit. He tries hundreds of different word combinations, but it still won't open. Exhausted, he lies down and falls asleep.
