The story of Aladdin is set in a city based on Baghdad, Iraq, but it contains aspects of multiple Middle Eastern and Asian cultures. The movie was originally intended to be set in Baghdad, but the outbreak of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s prompted the directors to set the story in the fictional city of Agrabah, an adaptation of Baghdad. However, the true origins of the tale of Aladdin cannot be completely verified, and the story is often attributed to French writer Antoine Galland, who claimed a Syrian told him about a boy and a genie in China. In the earliest version of the story, Aladdin is a poor youth living on the streets of China, and hes a native Chinese boy, not an Arabian youth whos ended up in China. The setting and the characters ethnicity begin to shift west to Arabia and the Middle East when the story is told on the big screen in the early 20th century. Therefore, while the story of Aladdin is often associated with the Middle East, it has roots in China and has been adapted to various cultural settings over time.