I know next to nothing about this kind of literature, but I got the new Prince of Persia video game, and the antagonist is a maharajah’s vizier who reminds me a lot of Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin (1992). Then I remember that the bad guy in the original Prince of Persia game (1989) was also a vizier named Jaffar, and this got me thinking.
So I read Arabian Nights for the first time (the Burton edition, found at arabiannights.org). It’s really fascinating, and it seems like it would make great bedtime stories. I think my favorite is the story of the Greek king and the physician Douban, and the story of the dead hunchback is pretty funny. And the story of Prince Camaralzaman and Princess Badoura was great too.
Anyway, a lot of the tales do have a vizier as a character, which makes sense as Scheherazade was a vizier’s daughter. Some are good and some are evil, inasmuch as anyone is good or evil in these stories. The story of Aladdin has a vizier, but he’s not magical or named. (It makes a lot of sense for Disney to have combined the characters of the vizier and the African magician.) In particular a few stories feature the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid and his vizier named… well, this translation gives it as “Giafar”. It looks like another one gives it as “Ja’afar”. By all accounts Giafar was a good and loyal friend of the Caliph.
It seems Harun al-Rashid was indeed a real Caliph, but what about this Giafar? Was he real? Are there other clues to this sly sidekick whence the Disney villain apparently gets his name? (I understand the version I read is not complete - in particular, there was no tale of Ali Baba.) Also, any thoughts on Arabian Nights at all that you have are most welcome.
Transliteration of Arabic words into Roman letters is tricky. That’s what you see so many different spellings – Jafar, Jaafar, Djafar, Giafar, etc.
Jafar is a very old name; it’s in the 11th century Futuwwah. If I’m not mistaken, it means “little stream”. Doesn’t seem too devious to me. My hunch is that someone over at Disney was reading Arabian Nights, noticed the vizier named Jafar, and thought, Say…
Yeah, TERRA’s right; Disney does seem to let its movies stray quite far from the literature. Let us not forget Tarzan, where a male ape antagonist named Terkoz, who once tried to kidnap Jane Porter, became a female ape sidekick named Terk, voiced by Rosie O’Donnell, who had her very own song.
Yahya ibn Khalid of the powerful Barmakid family, 786-803
Fadl ibn Rabi ( 803-809 )
To a very substantial extent, they ran the Caliphate for Harun, who essentially abdicated serious adminstrative functions to them ( while still otherwise retaining control over the state ).
The Ja’far of the Arabian Nights is Yahya’s son, who wasn’t chief vizier, but rather a lesser ( but still very high-ranked ) administrator/vizier in Harun’s Caliphate ( as was Yahya’s other son, Fadl, who is not the same as the one listed above ), who was also the Caliph’s closest buddy. It was he that appears to have had a falling out with the Caliph over the Caliph’s sister ( but more to the point politically, there was increasing uneasiness over the enormous power and wealth of the Barmakids, who had come to hold a virtually dynastic grip on the office of the vizier ), which led to the downfall of the Barmakids, the execution of Ja’far and the imprisonment until death of Yahya and his other son, Fadl.
I might also add that Yahya ibn Khalid was vizier under the earlier Caliphates of al-Mansur and al-Mahdi ( then was very briefly deposed during the short reign Harun’s brother Muhammed al-Hadi ) and had been the tutor of the young Harun. Yahya’s father, Khalid ibn Barmak, had been finance minister under the first Abbasid Caliph, Abu al-Abbas, and governor of a few provinces and vizier before his son under al-Mansur. With Yahya’s sons also wielding enormous power and influence it is easy to see why the Barmakid family came to be regarded as a threat in certain quarters.
The story of Aladdin in my Burton translation of the Arabian Nights, by the way, is set in China. The Evil Magician is not a vizier and not named Jafar, and he’s from Morocco (that’s a helluva long walk). The story is worth reading, because it’s ctually very good, and rather complex. Aladdin isnt noble at the start – he really is a “street rat” would didn’t follow his father into business nd now is literally a good-for-nothing, supported by his mother. The story is as much about his redempotion and transformation into a dutiful son, using his wits as much as the genies (there’s one in the ring, too) to overcome obstacles. Well worth reading.
and IIRC, it’s not even in he “Arabian Nights” proper, but in a kind of Arabian Nights Apocrypha that Burton called th “Supplemental Nights”.
Thank you so much for the historical information Nichol_storm and Tamerlane. That’s exactly the kind of trivia I was looking for. I never would have guessed that there actually was a well-known vizier named Ja’far.
As for Disney changing the Aladdin story, I actually think they did a really good job. The story as it is doesn’t really make for a movie plot. As with many of the tales, it’s more about fantastic voyages and wondrous spectacle than overcoming an obstacle. (Though I can see what CalMeacham is saying about the redemption and transformation.) I think they kept all of the important elements. There may not be any parrots in the Middle East, but one of the stories has a magical “Talking Bird”, so it’s not so out of place. Oh, and speaking of which, Iago is just the perfect name for him. Heh.
And a lot of changes to the story simply had to be made. Like before he falls in love with the Princess, Aladdin has two genies at his disposal, with no limit on wishes, and he lives in his mom’s basement for “many years” wishing for food every now and then, and selling the plates it comes on. Yeah. Right.
Also, when Aladdin first gets with the princess, he’s such a jerk. The princess marries the vizier’s son, and on their wedding night the jealous Aladdin has the genie abduct the groom, and transport the bed with the princess in it to Aladdin’s chamber. The story then says: “the princess was too frightened to speak, and passed the most miserable night of her life, while Aladdin lay down beside her and slept soundly.” He’s not exactly protagonist material here.
I never would have guessed that there actually was a well-known vizier named Ja’far.
