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Antonio Banderas Plays Ahmad Ibn Fadlan

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Hollywood’s negative characterizations of Arabs and Muslims can be traced as far back as the popular black and white silent movies of Rudolph Valentino. It was in 1921 that the movie ``The Sheik’’ introduced audiences to the desert Arab womanizer. If one missed the movies, cartoons like Felix the Cat and Popeye were sure to reinforce the stereotype as could be seen in the 1926 episode of the Felix the Cat cartoon called ``Felix the Cat Shatters the Sheik.’’ For Arab and Muslim Americans who grew up watching Popeye, none could forget the episode where an Arab villain exclaims to Popeye, ``Abu Hassan will teach you a lesson.” Stereotypes were found even as recent as the 1992 Disney Movie ``Alladdin,’’ where the original lyrics to the song ``Arabian Nights’’ contained some racist lyrics which were eventually removed after repeated protests from Arabs and Muslims.

Several other movies throughout this century contained stereotypical depictions of Arabs and Muslims, aside from the aforementioned. However, on August 27th, Touchstone Pictures released ``The 13th Warrior,” based on Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel called “Eaters of the Dead’’ which the author originally wrote in 1976. The 13th Warrior includes one of the first positive roles of an Arab Muslim to make its way onto a major Hollywood film.

The movie is set in 922 A.D. and stars Antonio Banderas, as Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, an Arab Muslim who is sent off to a far away land as an emissary along with his servant Melchisidek, played by (Egyptian actor) Omar Sharif. During his travels, Ibn Fadlan comes across Norse Warriors whom he is both fascinated with and curious about. The Warriors enlist the uneager Ibn Fadlan to join them in fighting ``The Wendol,’’ who are mysterious creatures that surface in the dark mist of night to eat the flesh of any living thing that comes there way. The warriors are told that they will fail in destroying the creatures unless they are joined by a 13th warrior who is from a foreign land. As the 13th warrior, the coerced Ibn Fadlan must not only help the Norse Warriors conquer these creatures, but also conquer his own personal fears.

Crichton’s depiction of the story of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan was taken from surviving parts of an old Arabic manuscript of Ibn Fadlan’s observations of his contact with Viking society. Crichton combined them with the famous English poem called Beowulf, and his novel ``Eaters of the Dead’’ was thus born. The novel and the movie are loosely based on the observations of Ibn Fadlan and several translations of Ibn Fadlan's manuscript, but make for an interesting book and movie. The movie has already opened to mixed reviews, depending upon the moviegoers appetite for gore, violence, and bloodshed.

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