The flying carpet is one of the most famous treasures in the treasures of oriental fairy tales. This type of artifact has a great connection with the magical stories of the Middle East but is also mentioned in a number of legends from many different civilizations in history.
The animated film ‘ Aladdin and the magic lamp’ produced by Walt Disney in 1992 brought the image of flying carpets around the world. The film is also misleading when making most people believe that the flying carpet comes from the world of the Thousand and One Nights.
The flying carpet in the 1992 Walt Disney film Aladdin.
According to the publication of the Institute of Archeology of Iran (the modern name of Persia), the Galland manuscript, the oldest set of texts containing 282 pristine stories of the Thousand and One Nights, does not mention much of the tapestry. fly.
Meanwhile, it is the stories of King Solomon’s reign that reveal more truths about the magical flying carpet mentioned in the fairy tale.
Through research and research, scholars have found at least one authentic recorded version of the magic carpet. It is a story written in the 13th century AD by the Jewish scholar Isaac Ben Sherira.
King Solomon is a historical figure in the ancient Jewish record. His wisdom, wealth, and flourishing reign were revered by the Jews as a legend. The king had a mistress, the queen of Sheba , who invested a great deal of money in the alchemists and academics of the country. She brought in top intellectuals and artisans to facilitate their creation of exotic items.
Legend of the love between King Solomon and the queen of Sheba.
One day, one of the maesters brought the queen a small brown carpet that could float low on the ground. The Queen and the servants in the palace were very interested in this invention. They wondered if humans could sit on this carpet and asked the maester to continue to find ways to improve this treasure even further.
Years later, the maester succeeded in placing humans on the carpet he invented. In the text, Issac Ben Sherira does not mention whether the carpet is movable or not, only mentioning that it can allow a person to lie or sit on it. When the queen attested to the good news, she made a miraculous carpet of blue silk, embroidered with gold and silver, and sent it to King Solomon as a gift of love.
But when the carpet was sent, King Solomon was too busy with the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem (the most important monument of the myth of Solomon). He did not directly accept the gift, but instead gave it to one of his courtiers.
It is possible that the flying carpet was once a well-founded invention of the ancient inventors.
When news of the cold reception reached the queen of Sheba, she was heartbroken and no longer wanted to think about inventions. Without royal patronage and investment, the academia could not afford to continue to create magical tapestries, and so esoteric knowledge gradually faded away.
There are many theories that some of the artisans of the royal scholar of Sheba had wandered to the Middle East. Holding part of the knowledge about creating flying carpets but not having enough resources, they could only create low-quality suspended carpets that still aroused the curiosity of the common people at that time.
This is considered the most true story about the origin of the invention of the flying carpet. In today’s modern world, many ancient knowledge is still kept in secret and many scientists have to give up in deciphering it. Is the secret of the flying carpet in the story of King Solomon and Queen Sherira among them?