It is believed by some critics that this story was added to One Thousand and One Nights by one of its European translators , Antoine Galland , who is an 18th-century French orientalist who may have heard it in oral form from a Middle Eastern story-teller from Aleppo . Some critics believe that this story was added to One Thousand and One Nights by one of its European translators , Antoine Galland , an 18th-century French orientalist who may have heard it in oral form from a Middle Eastern story-teller from Aleppo .