Castle in the Air

Castle in the Air draws on the stories of One Thousand and One Nights, also known as Tales from the Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights. This is a collection of stories that broadly originate from the Middle East and were collated in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. These folk tales were collected over a period of centuries by different writers and translators from a wide geographical area. Its influences may include ancient and medieval Arabic, Sanskrit, Persian, and Mesopotamian literature. The Abbasid and Mamluk eras are widely considered the most influential in these folk tales.

However, two of the most famous stories associated with One Thousand and One Nights were not actually found in any of the original Arabic collections. Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves have influenced global folk stories and are famous for tropes that are now commonly used in folk and fantasy, such as the genie in a lamp or the flying carpet. These first appear in a French language collection by Antoine Galland, who learned them from Hanna Diyab, a Syrian writer and storyteller. The emergence of these stories in a written European translation may explain the popularity of these tropes in European literature. These are the stories with the most direct influence on Castle in the Air, in which a flying carpet and a genie are prominent. 

The djinn characters use a widely used romanized spelling of jinn. The jinn are beings that feature in some Islamic lore and also pre-Islamic mythology. A range of ideas have existed about their nature; the figure of the genie is also sometimes connected to jinn. Diana Wynne Jones offers her own variation on this figure by creating a lore of Good Djinns and Bad Djinns. Her djinns exist in the same realm as angels, which may be inspired by the belief in some Islamic traditions that some jinn are pious and obey god, and others are wicked and do not.

Wynne Jones creates a generalized, non-specific impression of a Middle Eastern culture, offering her own interpretations of these stories and tropes. Her choice to focus on Middle Eastern folktales acknowledges the huge influence of these storytelling traditions on global culture. However, this rich literary context also exists alongside the historical context of European appropriation and exoticization of other cultures. 

In some ways, Castle in the Air fits into this framework. The book is set in a fictional land that offers a non-specific impression of a Middle Eastern culture. This depiction incorporates cultural stereotypes and generalizations, such as the idea of a society that is fundamentally more restrictive to women and cruel to animals. The world of the bazaar, with its incense, carpets, and untrustworthy merchants, is also a narrow trope commonly featured in Western literature, which is not balanced with other facets of life in this fictional culture. It is presented as poor and shabby to the rich material culture of the European-coded setting of Ingary, reflecting inaccurate Western narratives. Thus, Castle in the Air has a complex relationship with its Middle Eastern inspirations.