Sallah - Concept and Creation

Concept and Creation

The script specified Sallah as a thin 5'2" Bedouin, while Steven Spielberg envisioned him as "a small creature from the Star Wars cantina in an earthbound adventure film". He offered the role to Danny DeVito, who passed because of his commitment to Taxi. Spielberg saw John Rhys-Davies in Shōgun, and changed the role accordingly, advising the actor portray Sallah as a cross between his role in Shōgun and Falstaff. Kevork Malikyan, who played Kazim in Last Crusade, also expressed interest in the role, but a traffic jam meant he missed his audition.

When Davies reprised his role for Last Crusade, he imagined Sallah had become richer since Raiders, leaving excavation in favor of selling antiques. He wanted to convey that Sallah "has gotten older and a little fatter. This time, we see him without the appurtenances of his wife and children. He's a little more resolute now, and he's more ready to have a physical go at the Germans himself. But other than that, he's still the same old Sallah".

There are two scenes deleted during filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark featuring Sallah. One is an extension of the scene where Sallah loses the rope into the map room, after two Nazi soldiers demand help from him in freeing their truck from the sand. The entire scene also involved several Nazi soldiers demanding to be served water, while Sallah panics and spills water on their uniforms. The scene was supposed to have smoke in the background, but tires used in the scene made it too dark. Spielberg cut the scene to avoid spending half a day reshooting. The other scene depicted Sallah's fate after Jones and Marion's entrapment with the asps. The Germans decide to execute Sallah, but a young soldier put in charge of the operation has second thoughts.

There were also two scenes featuring Sallah cut from the finished cut of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. During the scene where Sallah fends off the German kidnappers, he hits a camel which spits mucus over the Nazis, and another shot with Sallah fighting the Nazis. The other depicts Indy and his father meeting Sallah at the İskenderun train station. It was deleted because of showing a minor transitional plot element.