Agrabah is the central location of the 1992 Disney animated feature film, Aladdin. It is a glimmering, bustling Arabian desert kingdom, currently under the rule of a kind-hearted Sultan and his daughter, Princess Jasmine.
Set in the fictional Arabian city of Agrabah, the story follows the familiar tale of a poor young man who is granted three wishes by a genie in a lamp, which he uses to woo a princess and to thwart the sultan's evil Grand Vizier. Aladdin premiered at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle in 2011.
The streets and markets of Agrabah is where the story of Aladdin starts, as it is the place where Aladdin and the disguised Princess Jasmine met (and fell in love) for the first time.
The palace is located at the end of Agrabah, and can be seen from anywhere in the town. The palace itself is surrounded by high walls, with a main gate granting entrance. A small area on the wall is outfitted for the Sultan to make speeches and announcements to the people.
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.
The reason we think of the story as one of the true-born Arabian Nights is that many of the characters in the tale of Aladdin are Arabian Muslims with Arabic names. But Aladdin is Chinese … at least, he is if you go back to the known origins of the story.
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.
No it is not a real place. But the city is based on the actual city of Baghdad. The tale of Aladin and the Magic Lamp is one among the many tales that form the Arabian Nights collection. A number of these tales are set in cities that were major power centers during the time the tales were written or first heard.
Massoud's return to Egypt fulfils a promise he made to Arab fans when Aladdin made him an international star. In 2019, he spoke to the The National about his desire to work on regional film projects and hoped the success of Aladdin, which was shot in Jordan, would result in more authentic films about the Arab world.
They were given an official number in the franchise line-up based on the chronological order in which their films were released, starting with Snow White as the first and original Disney Princess, with Cinderella being the second, followed by Aurora and so on.
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.
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.
Final Verdict. With everything we have to go off of, Aladdin is set in the 15th century in the Ottoman Empire. With Agrabah seemingly being in a desert, I initially set this movie in 1521 after the conquest of Cairo and the areas of Arabia that bordered the Red Sea.
1. The original Aladdin was actually Chinese. 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.
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.
In Disney's nearly 100-year history, there has been only one Black Disney princess — Princess Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog,” a 2009 animated feature starring Anika Noni Rose.
During the interview, Musker said that the movie's composers, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, had originally decided Aladdin would be set in Baghdad, Iraq, but they were forced to change that. “We kept it Baghdad in our first treatment, and then the Gulf War happened — the first Gulf War.
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.
The series picked up where The Return of Jafar left off, with Aladdin being engaged to Jasmine while still living on the streets of Agrabah, and having many adventures with his friends both in and outside of Agrabah.
Kida is over 8,800 years old. Fans have clamored for Kida to be included in the Disney Princess lineup for diversity purposes, but Disney executives had a feeling that Kida doesn't fit in, possibly because of the film's poor box office performance.
Roy Oliver Disney was, with his younger brother Walter Disney, the co-founder of what is now The Walt Disney Company. After Walt died, Roy became the chairman of the company.
