Jafar
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Jafar is a fictional character, voiced by Jonathan Freeman, in the Disney film Aladdin and its sequel, The Return of Jafar. He was mentioned occasionally in the Aladdin animated series, and was a recurring antagonist on House of Mouse. He is an evil sorceror and the former Grand Vizier of the Sultan of Agrabah.
Jafar is tall and thin, and almost always depicted in flowing robes of black, dark red and other moody colors. Jafar has a pet parrot named Iago, who turned good in The Return of Jafar. Jafar carried a cobra-head staff that he uses for his sorcery. He tried to use Genie's powers to take over Agrabah. Jafar had transformed himself into a giant cobra to kill Aladdin, but just as Jafar was squeezing him to death, Aladdin tricked Jafar into using his third and final wish to become a genie himself. In Western culture, genies are almost always portrayed as being confined to small oil lamps until they are released to do a human's bidding; Jafar was therefore trapped by his own selfish wish for power. In The Return of Jafar, the now-genie Jafar was released and tried to do away with the heroes, but (with help from a reformed Iago) was utterly destroyed when his lamp was melted in a pit of lava.
Jafar later made one more attempt at revenge in an episode ("Hercules and the Arabian Night") of Disney's Hercules TV-show spinoff, where he was temporarily revived by Hercules' arch-enemy, Hades. The two villains teamed up to get rid of Aladdin and Hercules by having them fight against each other, but their plan failed and Jafar ended up dead again, and has not at this point made any reappearences. Jafar also had a recurring role on Disney's House of Mouse, and in all three Kingdom Hearts video games, which follow the movies' plots.
The villain in the 1989 computer game Prince of Persia is also a vizier, but his name is spelled "Jaffar" .
The name Jafar seems to be derived from character named Jafar or Giafar in tales of the Arabian Nights, who is the Vizier to Caliph Harun al-Rashid; this character in turn was based on a real-life official, the son of a Vizier who was killed for supposedly having an affair with Harun al-Rashid's sister. Harun was the hero of many stories in Arabian Nights.