The Aladdin story was added to the collection by a French translator, Antoine Galland, in the early eighteenth century. Although Galland heard the tale from an Arabian storyteller, the Aladdin story is firmly set in China (so not the Middle East at all, but the Far East).
3. Aladdin doesn't come from Agrabah. In the both Galland's text and Richard Burton's popular 1885 English translation, Aladdin lives “in a city of the cities in China.” Illustrations of the tales from the Victorian era depict the story and its characters as Chinese.
What's fascinating about the origins of this tale is that, even though 1001 Nights has been traditionally translated in English as Arabian Nights, the original story was set not in the Arab world, but in China. Early 19th and 20th-century versions of the story clearly show Aladdin as culturally Asian.
The original Aladdin story, although it is part of the 1001 Arabian Nights, takes place in China and Aladdin is actually Chinese. The Disney version shows the characters are being vaguely Persian, meaning either Irani or Iraqi, and people from that part of the world have complexions from faintly olive...
The tale of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” is internationally the most popular fairy tale of Middle Eastern origin. Dominated today by the overwhelming impact of the Disney animated feature film (1992) and its theatrical adaptations, the tale's appropriation by the Western audience dates back some three centuries.
In the original story, Aladdin is born to a poor tailor in “the capital of one of China's vast and wealthy kingdoms”. The Chinese setting of the story, however, has in most recent iterations, notably the Disney animated film of 1992, been almost entirely rewritten.
If Ritchie's film was based on the original story, the entire cast would be Chinese - apart from the sorcerer, who would be North African - but as it's said to be a faithful remake of Disney's animation, Aladdin and Princess Jasmine should really be Middle Eastern or South Asian, despite the film not being an authentic ...
While some claim Jasmine is Arab because the movie opens with a song called Arabian Nights, others believe that the architecture in Agrabah is clearly based on the Taj Mahal, making Jasmine Indian. It's a debate that has fueled speculation that in Hollywood, Indians and Arabs are interchangeable.
Her country of origin, for example, has been frequently disputed. While some claim Jasmine is Arab because the movie opens with a song called Arabian Nights, others believe that the architecture in Agrabah is clearly based on the Taj Mahal, making Jasmine Indian.
Mena Massoud (Aladdin) is Egyptian, Nasim Pedrad (Jasmine's handmaiden) and Navid Negahban (the Sultan) are Iranian and Marwan Kenzari (Jafar) is Tunisian.
Princess Jasmine, a fictional character from Disney's animated film "Aladdin," is not explicitly identified as Indian in the movie. Instead, she is depicted as a resident of the fictional city of Agrabah, which is often seen as a blend of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures and influences.
Aladdin is a young man from a Chinese/Cathay town tricked by a sorcerer from Maghreb (North Africa). While the setting is in China, most of the characters of the story are moslems, which suggests that the setting is probably in Turkestan (from Central Asia to Modern China's province of Xinjiang).
In the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (or The Arabian Nights), the story of Aladdin is set in China, of all places, although there's nothing particularly Chinese about anything in the story.
In the collection of tales recorded around the 15th century in Arabic, and which comprise "The Thousand and One Nights" or "Arabian Nights," Aladdin and Jasmine were actually residents of Baghdad, Iraq, a city widely considered a center for Arab culture and civilization.
And considering that Aladdin story supposedly set in the Arabic world this is not very accurate. He would be an Arabian in Disney. But he would be Chinese in the original story.
However, the first literary version of Aladdin can be traced back to a French author, Antoine Galland, who claimed to have heard the tale from a Syrian storyteller while on his travels.
The historical setting of the Ballad of Mulan is usually the Northern Wei's military campaigns against the nomadic Rouran. A later adaptation has Mulan active around the founding of the Tang Dynasty (circa 620 AD).
Hua Mulan (traditional Chinese: 花木蘭; simplified Chinese: 花木兰) is a legendary folk heroine from the Northern and Southern dynasties era (4th to 6th century CE) of Chinese history.
On Oct. 15, Disney Plus introduced a new disclaimer that appears before older films like Dumbo (1941) and Aladdin (1992), warning viewers that the films include harmful stereotypes. The new message replaces the one that came with the original launch of Disney Plus late last year.
Given the grand context of the narrative of the story, the cultural framework of the setting, the times for which the author wrote the story, and the name in of itself of Aladdin, it is a fair to assume that he like most of the fictional cast of The Arabian Nights is a Muslim.
I used to have this Ali Baba story book when I was a kid and all the buildings and characters in the book were drawn like East Asian, except for the leader of the 40 thieves, who was dark and South Asian looking.
