The original version of Aladdin can be found in a collection of stories called The Arabian Nights Entertainment. The stories included in The Arabian Nights Entertainment were not created by the author, but instead were legends that had been passed down through the generations.
In fact, records show that the folktale on which Disney's Aladdin is based is originally set in China, and later mixed with a story set in Persia as told by a Syrian woman, then translated and added to 1001 Arabian Nights by a French man, adding to the layers of cultural conflation and Orientalism at play.
Ruth B. Bottigheimer and Paulo Lemos Horta have argued that Hanna Diyab should be understood as the original author of some of the stories he supplied, and even that several of Diyab's stories (including Aladdin) were partly inspired by Diyab's own life, as there are parallels with his autobiography.
For example, while the story is believed to be of Middle Eastern origin, the earliest Western versions were set in China and include allusions to India and Africa. With subsequent translations, however, many of the less “Arabic” references have slowly dropped out.
While the true origins of the tale of Aladdin cannot be completely verified, the story is often attributed to French writer Antoine Galland, who claimed a Syrian told him about a boy and a genie in China.
Film Theory: Aladdin's Mistake - How to Marry Jasmine in ONE Wish! (Disney Aladdin)
Is Princess Jasmine Arab or Indian?
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.
Aladdin is part of a centuries-old stories-within-a-story called The Thousand and One Nights (also called The Arabian Nights). The heroine, Scherherazade, is married to a murderous king, who kills his new wives one day after wedding them.
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 ...
The character of Aladdin originally taken from One Thousand and One Nights book, a famous collection of Middle Eastern folk tales between the 8th and 13th Century. The book was first translated into English over 400 years later and renamed the Arabian Nights. But, however, the story was actually set in China.
Aladdin (2019) Genie appears in the 2019 live-action adaptation of Aladdin, the Genie is portrayed by Will Smith, with his appearance alternating between his classic blue-skin and a human form of African ancestry as a disguise to blend in.
The original Arabic folk tale of Aladdin was originally set in China, specifically an Islamic city in China (most likely an Uyghur kingdom in the Xinjiang region). As revealed in "Do the Rat Thing", the Sultan rarely leaves the palace.
The Jafar of Disney's Aladdin plays essentially the same part as the character from the 1940 film, and is drawn with notable similarity to Veidt's looks. He is also loosely based on the real-life Abbasid vizier Ja'far ibn Yahya.
Supervising animator Glen Keane was inspired by various teen idols and movie actors in designing Aladdin's physique. The main inspiration for his appearance was originally Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, but later changed to Tom Cruise. Keane based the movement of Aladdin's loose pants on rapper MC Hammer.
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).
Nearly a year later, on Thursday, Disney said that after consulting with a council of organizations representing minorities, it's added a new disclaimer acknowledging the "harmful impact" of racist stereotypes in some of its older films.
Genie: A fictional character that appears in many stories who is servant to the person in possession of their lamp. The Genie in Aladdin is able to grant wishes. Heritage: A person or culture's background. In Aladdin, Jafar questions whether or not Aladdin, disguised as Prince Ali, was born into a royal family.
Princess Jasmine is the deuteragonist of Disney's 1992 animated feature film Aladdin. She is the independent and rebellious princess of Agrabah, a Middle Eastern kingdom ruled by her father, the Sultan. As the future Sultana, Jasmine has a strong sense of obligation to her kingdom.
Jasmine is a secular creation by a wealthy company. It is incidental that she is Arabic, and practically irrelevant that she is Muslim, as she has zero connection with Islam or actual Muslim women.
Moana as she appears in Moana (2016). Inspired by Polynesian mythology, Moana is depicted as the strong-willed daughter of a chief of a Polynesian village, who is chosen by the ocean itself to reunite a mystical relic with the goddess Te Fiti.
So it may come as a surprise to many to learn that Aladdin and his princess might actually be Chinese. In the original story, Aladdin is born to a poor tailor in “the capital of one of China's vast and wealthy kingdoms”.
Agrabah is a fictional sultanate that serves as the setting for the Aladdin franchise. Aladdin was initially intended to be set in the Iraqi city of Baghdad, but after the Gulf War happened, the name Agrabah was chosen as an approximate anagram of the name of the city of Baghdad.
