Editing Abul-Abbas (section)

==Modern embellished accounts==

===Details of exhibition and death===
The ''Annales regni Francorum'' contain only short reports about the transport of Abul-Abbas (801),<ref name="ARF801-116"/> his delivery to the Emperor (802)<ref name="ARF802"/> and his death (810). But modern writers have given various embellished accounts. Some indicate that when Abul-Abbas arrived, he was marched through various towns in Germany to the astonishment of onlookers,<ref name="AiM"/> that he was shown in "[[Speyer]], [[Strassburg]], [[Verdun]], [[Augsburg]], and [[Paderborn]]" as ostentatious display of the emperor's might,<ref name="Dembeck264"/> and was eventually housed in [[Augsburg]] in what is now southern [[Bavaria]].<ref name="AiM"/>

Some added details about the elephant's death, stating he was in his forties and already suffering from [[rheumatism]] when he accompanied Charlemagne in the campaign across the Rhine heading to Friesland.<ref name="Dembeck264"/> According to these sources, in a spell of "cool rainy weather", Abul-Abbas developed a case of [[pneumonia]].<ref name="Dembeck264"/><ref name="AiM"/> His keepers were able to transport the beast as far as [[Münster]], where he collapsed and died.<ref name="Dembeck264"/>

===White elephant===
Some modern works indicate that Abul-Abbas was [[albino]] – literally a [[White elephant (animal)|white elephant]] – but the basis for the claim is wanting. An early example claiming that Abul-Abbas was a "white elephant" occurs in a title authored by Willis Mason West (1902).<ref>{{cite book|last=West|first=Willis Mason|title=Ancient history to the death of Charlemagne |publisher=Allyn and Bacon|year=1902|page=521n|url=https://archive.org/details/ancienthistoryt02westgoog}}</ref> In 1971, [[Peter Munz]] wrote a book intended for popular readership which repeated the same "white elephant" claim, but a reviewer flagged this as a "slip" given there was "no evidence" known to him to substantiate it.<ref>{{cite journal|author-link=H. E. J. Cowdrey|last=Cowdrey|first=H.E.J.|title=Review: Life in the Age of Charlemagne by Peter Munz|journal=The Journal of Ecclesiastical History|volume=21|number=1|date=January 1970|page=75|doi=10.1017/s0022046900048466|s2cid=164157979 }}, quote: "I know of no evidence that Harun al-Rashid's present to Charlemagne was literally a 'white' elephant."</ref> Mention of "white elephant" also misleadingly occurs in the title of the published catalog from the Aachen exhibition of 2003: ''Ex oriente : Isaak und der weisse Elefant'', however, in this publication is a contributing article by Grewe and Pohle that appends a question mark on it: "Among the famous gifts to Charlemagne was a (white?) elephant".<ref>{{Harvnb|Grewe|Pohle|2003|p=66}}: "Zu den für Karl den Großen bestimmten Geschenken gehörte ein (weißer?) Elefant, "</ref>

===Abul-Abbas' species===
[[File:Charlemagne's elephant.png|thumb|upright=1.25|The elephant in Paris, BnF lat. 2195]]
A number of authors assert that Abul-Abbas was an [[Indian elephant]],<ref name="Dembeck264"/> though others cast this as an open question with the [[African elephant]] being a distinct possibility.{{Refn|"We know very little about the elephant; some accounts say it was African, others an Indian beast."<ref name=war/>}} No primary source identifies his species directly.<ref name="sketchpad">{{cite web |url=https://salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2021/06/10/what-type-of-elephant-did-charlemagne-have/ |title=What Type of Elephant did Charlemagne Have? |last=Ottewill-Soulsby  |first=Sam |date=2021-06-10 |website=The Historian's Sketchpad |access-date=2022-12-26 }}</ref>

Arguments for Abul-Abbas having been an Indian elephant include that Abbasid sources such as [[al-Jahiz]] and [[al-Masudi]] record a belief that African elephants were not tamable.<ref name=sketchpad/> Another clue comes from the Irish monk [[Dicuil]] who mentions Abul-Abbas in his description of India in his geographic work ''[[De mensura orbis terrae]]'' ("Concerning the Measurement of the World") in 825.<ref name=sketchpad/>{{refn | group="lower-alpha" | ''De mensura orbis terrae'', 7.35: "But the same Iulius in speaking of Germany and its islands makes one mistake about elephants when he says that the elephant never lies down, for he certainly does lie down like an ox, as the people at large of the Frankish kingdom saw the elephant at the time of Emperor Charles...."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dicuil |author-link1= Dicuil |editor-last1=O'Driscoll |editor-first1=Liam |editor-last2=Färber |editor-first2=Beatrix |translator-last1= Tierney |translator-first1=James |date=2018-07-18 |orig-date=Work authored in 825. This translation first published in 1967 by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, ''Scriptores Latini Hiberniae'', No. 6 |title=Liber De Mensura Orbis Terrae |url= https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T090000-001.html |publication-place=Cork |publisher=CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts |id=Text ID Number: T090000-001 |access-date=2022-12-26 }}</ref> ("''Sed idem Julius nuntiando de Germania insulisque eius unum de elephantibus mentiens falso loquitur dicens, elephantem numquam iacere, dum ille sicut bos certissime iacet, ut populi communiter regni Francorum elephantem in tempore imperatoris Karoli viderunt....''"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dicuil |author-link1= Dicuil |editor-last1=Parthey |editor-first1=Gustave |date=1870 |orig-date=Work authored in 825 |title=Liber De Mensura Orbis Terrae |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=bCpYAAAAcAAJ |publication-place=Berlin |publisher=Friedrich Nicolai |access-date=2022-12-26 }}</ref>)}} An [[inhabited initial]] B from a copy of [[Cassiodorus]]' ''Commentary on the Psalms'' made at the [[Abbey of Saint-Denis]] in the first quarter of the ninth century (now Paris, BnF lat. 2195) incorporates an elephant's head.<ref>[[Rosamond McKitterick]], ''Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 286.</ref> The realistic portrayal of an Asian elephant suggests that the artist had seen Abul-Abbas.<ref>BnF Expositions, Trésors carolingiens, [http://expositions.bnf.fr/carolingiens/grand/028.htm Cassiodore, Commentaire sur les psaumes I-L, Initiale B ornée zoomorphe].</ref>

Evidence put forward for Abul-Abbas having been an African elephant includes the route by which he arrived in Europe, which was via Tunisia.<ref name=sketchpad/> Also, a Carolingian plaque survives which was manufactured from [[ivory]] from an African elephant and was from a contemporary source. Ivory was widely used in Carolingian art, but most of this material was re-purposed from Roman sources.<ref name=sketchpad/> This particular plaque, a depiction of the [[Virgin Mary]] is too large to have come from the tusk of an Indian elephant,<ref name=sketchpad/> measuring {{cvt|22|cm}} along its longest side.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/464454 |title=Plaque with the Virgin Mary as a Personification of the Church |author=The Metropolitan Museum of Art |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art |access-date=2022-12-26 }}</ref> [[Radio-carbon dating]] shows that the ivory in the plaque is not of ancient origin.<ref name=sketchpad/> For Carolingian artists to have access to new ivory is so unusual that it makes Abul-Abbas a possible source of the material.<ref name=sketchpad/>

A short story by the German-New Zealand author Norman Franke tells the biography of the elephant from his own point of view.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Franke |first=Norman |title=Abul Abbas' orthopedic shoes |publisher=Cloud Ink |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-473-57278-5 |location=Auckland, New Zealand |pages=50–54}}</ref>