Aladdin’s nemesis, Jafar, is one of the all-time great villains – ruthless, manipulative, terrifying. You might not be surprised to know he’s based on a real historical figure, but there’s a twist…
The real Jafar was the good guy.
History does not record whether he really had a parrot.
The story of Aladdin is one of many to filter into popular culture from the collection of Arab poems known as the 1001 nights. Sinbad is perhaps the most famous of the others. The narrator of the poems is a young queen, Scheherazade.
Scheherazade is the bride of a ruthless king, Shahryar, who has sworn to wed a new virgin every day and behead the previous day’s consort (charming, right?). To buy time, she tells him stories, and eventually they change his view on life, so he spares her. One of those tales is the story of Aladdin.
Shahryar looking distinctly hipster, Scheherazade rocking the pre-Raphaelite vibe.
The 1001 nights were compiled into books for western audiences in the 18th century, but the stories are much older. Much of the inspiration, & key characters like Jafar, come from a golden age in Arab history – the Abbasid Caliphate.
The Abbasid Caliphate was a vast empire stretching from the shores of North Africa to the borders of India. Its rulers claimed descent from the prophet Mohammed’s uncle. They were ruthless warriors, but they allowed non-muslims, known as Dhimmis, to practice their faiths.
It was Abbasid scholars who translated ancient Greek works of philosophy, science and medicine, preserving them for posterity. Without them, the knowledge could have been lost forever. The Renaissance, which was built on the rediscovery of these texts, might never have happened.
And it is from the height of the Abbasid empire that the story of Aladdin comes. The greatest Abbasid king, or Caliph, was Harun al-Rashid (AD786-809). He didn’t murder wives on the regular like the fictional Shahryar, but he was pretty brutal, and dedicated his life to war.
Emissaries from the Frankish emperor Charlemagne pay tribute to Harun.
His mentor was one of his father’s advisor’s, a formidable intellectual known as Yahya the Barmakid. Yahya was from eastern Persia, and had grown up Buddhist, but converted to Islam to serve the Abbasids. Yahya’s son became best friends with the young Harun.
Yahya’s son was called…
Jafar.
When Harun became Caliph, Yahya served as his vizier, a position of enormous power for a ruler who avoided public exposure.
Yahya the Barmakid holds court.
Harun preferred to walk incognito through the bazaars, accompanied only by Jafar and a bodyguard. As Yahya aged, Jafar naturally took on more of his father’s duties. Under the the guidance of the Barmakids, the empire flourished, but a disagreement with the Caliph threatened everything.
The Abbasids had many enemies. Their preferred approach for dealing with them was violent murder, but Yahya and Jafar could see this was spawning bloodfeuds which could last centuries, and attempted a policy of reconciliation with rebels & supporters of previous regimes.
This may have been the right thing to do, but it’s not a way to stay alive when you are the servant of a tyrant. In 803, Harun al-Rashid, incensed by his advisors walking in on him unannounced, ordered the executions of both Yahya and Jafar - mentor and best friend.
An honourable death was one in which no blood was shed.
At the end of the Aladdin movie, Jafar gets his comeuppance when he’s tricked into becoming a genie. His insatiable lust for power is his undoing. The King is just a friendly guy who had the wool pulled over his eyes by the evil manipulator.
Phenomenal cosmic power!
At a distance of 1000 years, it’s impossible to say what anyone was really like. From the facts we have, it looks an awful lot like the much-loved fairytale is a masterwork of political spin, portraying the oppressor as the victim.
Just, whatever you do, don't tell these guys…
A whole new world, built on the lies of your father, the mass murderer.