For a good moment of WTF I invite you to check the wikipedia page on Aladdin. The story is actually not part of the 1001 Nights, it was added to it by the french translator in the 18th century, based on a tale by a Syrian storyteller. The only sources in arabic that mention Aladdin have been established to be forgeries or translation of the french text! To make things even more amusing, the main part of the story is set in China! That being said, the China of the tale has very little to do with the actual China of the time, so people suspect it's set in a western region of China that had mostly muslims (chinese turkestan) or simply that the tale was created with China used as a way to say "far away land" without knowing anything about it. Obviously, the Disney story is also a major re-imagination of the original tale, with key plot elements (like having only 3 wishes), not existing at all in the original.
