Харун әл-Рашид пен Карл Ұлыға сыйға берілген піл

Elephant sent as a gift from Harun al Rashid to Charlemagne
the historic elephant

Abul Abbas (c. 770s or 780s – 810) was an Asian elephant brought back to the Carolingian emperor Charlemagne by his diplomat Isaac the Jew. The gift was from the Abbasid caliph Harun al Rashid and symbolizes the beginning of Abbasid–Carolingian relations. The elephant's name and events from his life are recorded in the Carolingian Annales regni Francorum, and he is mentioned in Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni. However, no references to the gift or to interactions with Charlemagne have been found in Abbasid records.

Abul Abbas was probably born during the 770s or 780s (based on the average age of Asian elephant maturity) and was brought from Baghdad, the capital city of the Abbasid Caliphate, by Charlemagne's diplomat Isaac the Jew, who along with two other emissaries, Lantfrid and Sigimund, Charlemagne then ordered a man to Liguria (the province around Genoa) to commission a fleet of ships to carry the elephant and other goods. now in Tunisia) with Abul Abbas and traveled the remaining distance to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. At any rate, the strict reading of the historic text Annales regni Francorum is that "Isaac the Jew returned from Africa with the elephant" (Isaac Iudeus de Africa cum elefanto) and landed in Porto Venere (near Genoa) in October 801. Abul Abbas was a full grown adult elephant. On the tacit assumption that the Abul Abbas was with Charlemagne when he died, some modern commentators venture that the beast had been brought to serve as a war elephant.

The location of "Lippeham" is a matter of conjecture, (its confluence with the Rhine), in other words, somewhere near the city of Wesel. The claim dates at least as far back as 1746, (or 1735) and that a colossal bone unearthed from the area, in the possession of their affiliated museum, was plausibly a part of the remains of the elephant Abul Abbas. Another gigantic bone was found in the Lippe River among a catch of fish in the herrschaft of Gartrop [de] in early 1750, and it too was claimed to be a piece of Abul Abbas. One detractor to the claim is Richard Hodges who places it in Lüneburg Heath, which is nowhere near the Rhine.

The Annales regni Francorum contain only short reports about the transport of Abul Abbas (801), 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. 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".