Is The Aristocats referencing Aladdin?

Question

In Disney's 1970 animated feature film the the Aristocats male lead, Thomas O'Malley, makes a reference to two characters riding on a magic carpet.

We shall fly to Paris on a magic carpet, side by side

In the context of the movie, this is a metaphor, rather than a literal magic carpet.

It would seem self evident that this is far too early to be referencing Disney's 1993 animated feature Aladdin, it's possible that it could be a reference to Aladdin and Princess Balroulbador riding on a magic carpet, in a later adaptions of the 1001 Nights source material, on which modern retellings of the story of Aladdin are based.

Is there any evidence, for example behind the scenes documentaries, or transcripts from panel events, that would confirm that a version of Aladdin was the inspiration for this, that it was down to something else?

Answer 1

This cannot be a reference to the original Aladdin story, because the original Aladdin story didn't actually have a magic carpet in it. There is a carpet, laid between Aladdin's palace and the Sultan's palace as an invitation to Princess Balroulbador, but it appears to be of the non-flying variety and closer in function to a red carpet. The magic carpet seen in the Disney film was their own invention.

Magic carpets were a fairly common literary trope even before Disney came along: the Biblical King Solomon had one, and another of the Arabian Nights stories, Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou, has one of the protagonists purchase a flying carpet. As Tetsujin noted in their answer, the Steppenwolf song "Magic Carpet Ride" was a big hit just two years before The Aristocats released, so the notion of a magic carpet would have been fresh in the minds of viewers at the time.

Answer 2

In the late 60s, the idea of 'flying off' from the world's troubles was a bit of a meme - probably closely linked to the hippy scene if not the drug scene directly.

1968 saw Steppenwolf actually use the 'magic carpet' idea directly. Others were more oblique.

Others used various flying machine references, silver machine, balloon, sun machine to name but a few off the top of my head [song links later if absolutely necessary]. There may be other direct references, but my memory is hazy that far back.

Bear in mind, long, long before Disney got hold of it, the world already knew of Aladdin, the 1001 nights & the tales of Scheherazade.
The first ever stage performance of Aladdin was in London, in 1788 & it has been performed as a pantomime for over 200 years. The story's actual origin is not clear, but it has been associated with the '1001 nights collection since the early 16th century.

See Wikipedia - Aladdin

Further research shows Disney likely merged two different 1001 nights stories, and took the magic carpet idea from Prince Husain and his magic carpet - Wikipedia - List of One Thousand and One Nights characters so the idea likely hadn't even been conceived at the time of The Aristocats.

Answer 3

As others have said, the original Aladdin never even had a flying carpet, and this was actually a surprise to me. But I do want to point out just how familiar the trope has always been. That idea has long been familiar in the same way (if not quite to the same degree) as the idea of witches riding broomsticks.