The Story of the Merchant and the Genius

From The Arabian Nights Entertainments, collected by Andrew Lang

This reader is drawn from The Arabian Nights Entertainments, a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales compiled over many centuries and introduced to Europe by Antoine Galland in the early eighteenth century. Andrew Lang published an English edition in the late nineteenth century. The frame story—Scheherazade telling tales to postpone her execution—surrounds hundreds of nested stories, of which the merchant and the genius is one of the earliest and best known. This text reflects its era; a few period terms have been modernised. The tale is worth a reader's time because it raises timeless questions about justice, intention, and the keeping of promises, wrapped in the vivid imagery and narrative structure that have made the Arabian Nights endure across cultures and centuries.

Band

Blue · Independent readers, confident, about 10 to 12

Length

long · about 1093 words in 5 sections · 2 pictures

Source

The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Andrew Lang · Project Gutenberg

First published

see the About page in the reader

Regions

Canada · United States

Included formats

• · Web reader and PDF
• · EPUB for e-readers
• · Home-print sheet
• · Folded booklet
• · Binder edition (8.5 × 11)
• · Worksheet
• · Quick Check (10 questions) with answer key
• · Read-aloud script

Readers are engineered from the original public-domain text with AI under HummingRead’s published canon and Content Philosophy, checked by automated audit and sampled by a person. Pictures are made with AI to HummingRead’s brief for each story. How a reader is made.