Aladdin Central Messageboard

[Leaf]

Hello! I'm new here and thought I'd share something I've been ruminating on recently. That being, when does Aladdin actually take place?

So, I admit there probably can't be a definitive answer to this question. Aladdin is inherently one of the most difficult Disney films to try to date, as it has too many cartoonishly anachronistic elements and cultural amalgamations in it to assign it a definitive, indisputable time period. (There's even that infamous fan theory that it actually takes place in the far future, which I disagree with.) So, this is mostly just for fun, as I'm not claiming that my reading on when the series takes place is necessarily the correct one, nor do I claim to be an authority on anything. If anything, what I'm proposing is essentially akin to a fan theory. But, I do have some evidence to back it up.


All that said, I would like to argue that, permitting that the sequels and TV series are generally considered canon, then I believe Aladdin has to be set during the Bronze Age. I claim this due to the presence of characters and mythological creatures which are clearly from ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, such as Mirage (who seems to be a conceptual fusion of Sekhmet, Bastet, and Sutekh), as well as fellow Ancient Egypt-themed cat deity Chaos, Nefir and his fellow Ancient-Egyptian-clad imps, Mechanicles (who seems to be chasing the clout of other Ancient Greek philosophers and inventors), the Amazon-like Galifems, Osiris (even though "Osiris" is probably actually Horus or Ra, due to having a falcon head) and of course Hades and Hercules in the crossover episode with the Hercules TV series, "Hercules and the Arabian Night", if you want to count that. ...There is minor evidence in the original movie that supports this dating as well - namely the appearance of an Ancient Egyptian carving the Sphinx during the magic carpet ride scene.

Now for the sake of argument, there are plenty of anachronistic elements in the movie that go against my proposed Bronze Age dating as well, even beyond the Genie's modern pop-culture references (which we'll just chalk up to the Genie having an inherent degree of omniscience) - such as the Forbidden City and fireworks also being depicted in the magic carpet scene, the presence of baguettes, or Iago being a New World parrot, and llamas, a New World mammal, being shown during the Prince Ali song. Also, the earliest usage of scimitars seems to only go as far back as the 9th century, and the first usage of the term "sultan" to refer to a ruler seems to be the 10th century.

Lastly, I know some have cited the usage of "Allah" to refer to God to be evident that the characters must be Muslim, although all it actually proves is that the characters are speaking Arabic. As the Arabic language predates Islam, the usage of Arabic words and phrases doesn't actually help us narrow down the time period all that much. The earliest dating of the usage of the Arabic language seems to be the 1st millennium BCE.

Anachronisms and counter-points aside. Overall, I still believe there seems to be the most evidence pointing towards the Bronze Age dating when taking not only the original film but also the sequels and TV series into account, considering the cast of characters and mythical creatures actively present in them. If nothing else, it's hard to look at a character like Mirage or Mechanicles and think "ah yes, that looks like the 15th century."

...But alas, that's just my own personal theory. A film theory! Thanks for reading!
(Admittedly, I also just think it's fun to entertain the idea that Aladdin and Hercules not only take place within the same universe, but also take place at around the same time.)

...Thoughts?

[AladdinsGenie]

Hi, Leaf! If you want to make an official account, just let me know! Bots are kind of annoying here, so a lot of email domains are temporarily blocked to keep them from spamming the board.

I haven't thought about this in years and this honestly sounds pretty solid to me . This is the last discussion we had about it about a decade ago: http://ww.aladdincentral.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4434