Agrabah, “a city of mystery, of enchantment, and the finest merchandise this side of the River Jordan”, is the city in Arabia where Aladdin is from, according to the Disney film “Aladdin” (1992).
The city was completely made up by Disney: Google Maps has no Agrabah. Nor does the book that gave us Aladdin, “1,001 Nights”: its Aladdin comes from China (probably East Turkestan, aka Xinjiang).
Agrabah:
- Time: 1600s?
- Place: Arabia, in the middle of the Seven Deserts.
- Population: est. 500,000.
- Government: sultanate.
- Language: American English, spoken with American, British and East Indian accents.
- Religion: Islam, but belief in magic is also common.
- Education: the Royal Academy.
- Culture: Stereotypical Hollywood Arab, with a marked Indian influence in architecture, accents and street entertainment.
- Fashion: Women mostly dress like belly dancers. Men wear turbans, fezzes, robes and moustaches.
- Food: fresh fish (in the middle of seven deserts!), bananas, apples, pineapples, melons, pears, grapes, sugar dates, figs, pistachios.
- Livestock: sheep.
- Transport: horse, elephant, camel, magic carpet.
- Weaponry: large swords, no air power.
- Pets: parrots, monkeys, tigers.
- Level of civilization: barbaric (according to the opening song).
The city is probably named after Agra, India: the palace of Agrabah looks like Agra’s famous mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.
Agrabah is ruled by a sultan, who lives in a huge palace. His daughter Jasmine, though, is far more famous: she is a Disney princess. Her story, image and dolls are pumped out across the earth from Hollywood.
The city of Agrabah stretches out before the palace, violent and poor. Its marketplace, the Bazaar, sells overpriced, cheaply made goods brought across the Seven Deserts by camel.
Nearby in the desert is the Cave of Wonders. It is shaped like a tiger’s head. It contains riches and magical objects, like a flying carpet and a magic oil lamp. Only a person whose “worth lies far within”, a “diamond in the rough”, can hope to enter the cave and live.
Stereotypes: Arabs are shown as being cruel, violent, greedy, dishonest, using others for their own advantage. Good characters look or sound more like White Americans.
Agrabah and US foreign policy: Neither CNN nor the New York Times have reported any threats to US interests coming from Agrabah nor anyone fleeing the city. Despite that:
- Bombing: in December 2015, Public Policy Polling (PPP) found that 30% of Republican primary voters and 19% of Democrats support bombing Agrabah. It was opposed by 13% of Republicans and 36% of Democrats.
- Refugees: A week later, WPA Research reported that 44% of Democrats were in favour of the US accepting refugees from Agrabah, while 27% were opposed.
That same PPP poll found that 36% of Republican primary voters believe that “thousands of Arabs in New Jersey cheered when the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11.” Like Agrabah, that too is made up, though it is repeated by Donald Trump as the truth.
Among Republicans who support the bombing of Agrabah, less than half, only 45%, are for Trump.
– Abagond, 2015.
Sources: Mainly Disney Wiki, PPP, Guardian, Washington Post.
See also:
522
The voice of Aladdin is Steve from Full House.
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Thus is the state of GEOGRAPHY as taught in U.S. schools—that both Republicans and Democrats both have no idea that it does not exist on any map.
BTW, 1,001 Nights is quite a racist book, if you have read it.
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Not surprisingly trump got it backwards
http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/five-dancing-israelisarrested-9-11-1#axzz3vhx1VLaI
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Stop it, Ab.
The holidays must have you in a sardonic mood.
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I remember Abagond doing a post and calling this kind of thing Orientalism. I remember a man with wrote a book about this very thing this post is addressing. Stereotypes about people of Middle Eastern heritage. The cable television shows on Showtime Homeland and Sleeper Cell portray Muslims as terrorists.
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@ Pumpkin
It is not a joke.
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@ Mary
“Homeland” is textbook Islamophobia.
Orientalism:
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The most obvious use of made-up pseudo names is , of course, American liberal media depictions ofthe African continent. Specifically, the depiction of Black Africa. One need only look two of Marvel Comic’s most iconic black characters, Ororo Monroe (Storm), and T’Challa, the Black Panther. Of course, there are other fictional depiction s, such as N’Mani, for Metal Gear Revengeanance, the president of the usual African child soldier nursery of a nation, but he is only a plot device. But black Black Panther and Storm are not plot devices. They are a very a white person superimposing his (usually very old) stereotypes of Africa, or the Near East, as if they were facts.
So for example, we have the black American mutant Storm who is half Egyptian/half Kenyan, yet is usually drawn with Caucasian facial features, blue eyes, and straight white hair. During her time in Kenya, she was worshipped as a weather goddess (apparently no Christians or Muslims there), practiced nudism, while in America, she seemed curiously insulated from the goings-on of 1980’s era New York (crack epidemic anyone?)
People believing that a fictional depiction of a real setting is the real setting itself is nothing new. But the fact that someone couldn’t even as much as open a copy of the New York Times to find an actual East African name (T’Challa WTH) when writing a story indicates something else. That agenda seems to be the replacing of the real world with real issues, with a fake one , with fake issues. So, the real Baltimore , is replaced with Wire Baltimore. African women we can empathise with get replaced with Storm. Julius Nyrere and Kwame Nkrumah get replaced with T’Challa. And so on. The actual individual intentions may be different, but the result is the same – issues such as racism and sexism are covered up, if not outright removed.
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@Abagond; That was my first time watching the show ever, and I had to think to myself how Muslim-Americans are probably not happy about the way they are being depicted.
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Reblogged this on Boycott.
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!1!!!
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Come to think of it, these funny sounding fake names serve a similar purpose as Mock Ebonics. They give the non-native reader a false sense of knowledge through what can best be described as fake authenticity. Which is realer , Agrabah , or Abu Dhabi? Can a non-hip-hop fan know that Papoose and Talib Kweli are authentic black men, compared to a black faced version? After all , rappers aren’t supposed to use metaphors and allusions to historic events – they should be just screaming “Ugghhhh” and “Yeaahhhh!!!” like the actual rappers on Youtube!
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I have always wanted to visit Agrabah. I am disappointed that it doesn’t exist! Someone told me the shopping was great there!
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Nowhere o the level of Amazon. Except that Amazon doesn’t sell slaves. Use Alibaba.com for that. ProTIP: Sale on house slave girls . Coupon Code: SICKPERV2016. I thinkk they have a bunch of yard slave boys they couldn’t off load during Black Friday or Christmas. Economy and all that.
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I don’t think the time of the story is 1600, it’s more like 600 – before Islam. There is no praying for Allah, or referentes to Muhammed. There is no polygamy and Jasmine has a lot of freedom, unthinkable for an islamic princess
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@ Alberto Monteiro
Yeah, but they had not invented magic carpets by then.
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If Salomon – or should I say Suleyman – had a Magic carpet, then it was at least 1600 years older than Muhammed
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_carpet
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@ Alberto Monteiro
On a serious note, Agrabah has pineapples. Pineapples are native to South America. So it is at least 1493.
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The original Aladdin story was invented in 1700 and set in China with muslim characters. So Aladdin’s descendants are uighurs and now China is confining them to concentration camps
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin
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