 Many imitations were written, especially in France.Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba.However, no medieval Arabic source has been traced for Aladdin, 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.