He also appears in various comics and novels, and is featured in the Disney theme park attractions, the Indiana Jones Adventure and The Great Movie Ride.

He is a dedicated family man with a wife named Fayah and nine children, all of whom seem to have a fondness for Indiana (at one point they all surround him to save him from a group of Egyptian collaborators and SD agents who have their guns drawn on him).

His "original" self often sings, as depicted when the old imam indirectly reveals that the Nazis are digging in the wrong spot or when Indy and Marion leave Egypt on the Bantu Wind.

[2] Sallah appears in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), where he helps Jones decipher the inscription on the back of Marion Ravenwood's medallion by taking him to an old wise man (identified as "Old Imam") who is also a friend of his.

He makes a deal with the captain of the Bantu Wind, a tramp steamer, for bringing Jones, Marion, and the Ark back to the States, referring to the two of them as his family.

[5] In the film, Sallah is a taxi driver living in New York City with his family; it is explained that Indy helped relocate them to the United States during World War II.

Sallah drives Indy to John F. Kennedy International Airport for a flight to Tangier, and returns for the final scene of the film, in which Jones is reunited with his estranged wife Marion.

[10] 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".

[11] Kevork Malikyan, who played Kazim in Last Crusade, also expressed interest in the role, but a traffic jam caused him to miss his audition.

[2] When Rhys-Davies reprised his role for Last Crusade, he imagined Sallah had become richer since Raiders, leaving excavation in favor of selling antiques.

One is an extension of the scene where Sallah tosses the rope into the map room, after two Nazi soldiers demand help from him in freeing their truck from the sand.

[16] Empire named him their thirtieth favorite element of the films, citing "his indomitable spirit", a "lovely singing voice" and "a roguish streak to match Indy's own".