No medieval Arabic source has been traced for the tale, which was incorporated into The Book of One Thousand and One Nights by its French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard it from an Arab Syrian Christian storyteller from Aleppo. Galland's diary (March 25, 1709) records that he met the Maronite scholar, by name Youhenna Diab ("Hanna"), who had been brought from Aleppo to Paris, France by Paul Lucas, a celebrated French traveller. Galland's diary also tells that his translation of "Aladdin" was made in the winter of 1709–10. It was included in his volumes ix and x of the Nights, published in 1710.
John Payne, Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp and Other Stories, (London 1901) gives details of Galland's encounter with the man he referred to as "Hanna" and the discovery in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris of two Arabic manuscripts containing Aladdin (with two more of the "interpolated" tales). One is a jumbled late 18th century Syrian version. The more interesting one, in a manuscript that belonged to the scholar M. Caussin de Perceval, is a copy of a manuscript made in Baghdad in 1703. It was purchased by the Bibliothèque Nationale at the end of the nineteenth century.
Note that although it is considered an Arabic tale either because of its source, or because it was included in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, the characters in the story are neither Arabs nor Persians, but rather are from the Far East. The Far Eastern country in the story is an Islamic country, where most people are Muslims. There is a Jewish community, regarded by others with a prejudice. There is no mention whatever of Buddhists or Confucians. Everybody in this Far Eastern Country bears an Arabic name and its King seems much more like an Arab ruler than like an actual Chinese emperor. The Country of the tale was a mythic far-off place, definitely eastwards.