The Book of Travels: Volume One

by ?anna Diyab, Johannes Stephan (Editor), Elias Muhanna (Translator), Yasmine Seale (Foreword by)

Overview

The adventures of the man who created Aladdin

The Book of Travels is Ḥannā Diyāb’s remarkable first-person account of his travels as a young man from his hometown of Aleppo to the court of Versailles and back again, which forever linked him to one of the most popular pieces of world literature, the Thousand and One Nights.

Diyāb, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyāb and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, Ḥannā Diyāb met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of the Thousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyāb, including “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyāb at Louis XIV’s Royal Library, Diyāb returned to Aleppo. In his old age, he wrote this engaging account of his youthful adventures, from capture by pirates in the Mediterranean to quack medicine and near-death experiences.

Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Travels introduces readers to the young Syrian responsible for some of the most beloved stories from the Thousand and One Nights.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479892303
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Series:	Library of Arabic Literature , #71
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ḥannā Diyāb (Author)
Ḥannā Diyāb (b. ca. 1687) was a Syrian traveler originally from Aleppo. He is best known for his contributions to Antoine Galland’s translation of the Thousand and One Nights.


Johannes Stephan (Editor)
Johannes Stephan is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded project Kalīlah and Dimnah—AnonymClassic at the Freie Universityät Berlin. He studied Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in Halle an der Saale, Damascus, and Bern.

Yasmine Seale (Foreword by)
Yasmine Seale translates from Arabic and French. Her essays on books and art have appeared in Harper’s, The Nation, TLS, and elsewhere. She is the translator of The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights and Aladdin: A New Translation.

Elias Muhanna (Translator)
Elias Muhanna is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is the author of The World in a Book: al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition and translator of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī’s fourteenth-century Arabic compendium The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, which was chosen as a “Best Book of 2016” by NPR and The Guardian, and editor of The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies.

Table of Contents

Letter from the General Editor iii

Map: Hanna Diyab's Travels viii

Foreword Yasmine Seale xi

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction xvii

Note on the Text xxxiii

Notes to the Introduction xxxix

The Book of Travels, Volume One 1

Chapter 1 2

Chapter 2 My Departure from Tripoli in the Company of the Traveler Paul Lucas, in the Month of February 1707 of the Christian Era 30

Chapter 3 My First Time at Sea with Paul Lucas, in the Month of May 1707 42

Chapter 4 Our Voyage to Egypt and What Happened to Us in the Month of June 1707 56

Chapter 5 Our Travels to the Maghreb in the Year 1708 102

Chapter 6 Our Journey to the Lands of the Franks in the Year 1708 182

Chapter 7 Our Voyage to France 256

Chapter 8 Our Journey from Provence to France and the City of Paris 272

Notes 283

Glossary of Names and Terms 293

Bibliography 301

Further Reading 310

Index 314

About the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute 330

About the Typefaces 331

Titles Published by the Library of Arabic Literature 332

About the Editor 337

About the Translator 338

Editorial Reviews

"It is a joy to celebrate [Ḥannā Diyāb's] work in Elias Muhanna's vibrant translation."

Middle East Eye

"Diyab’s memoir of his Mediterranean adventures is a mixture of clear-eyed observation and wide-eyed innocence, nicely captured by Muhanna’s lucid yet folksy English version...Throughout The Book of Travels, realistic details are suffused with a sense of the marvelous."

New York Review of Books