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The Book of Travels: Volume Two - Hardcover | Diverse Reads

The Book of Travels: Volume Two

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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.

ISBN-13: 9781479806300

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: New York University Press

Publication Date: 05-04-2021

Pages: 340

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Series: Library of Arabic Literature

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 Universität Berlin. He studied Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in Halle an der Saale, Damascus, and Bern. 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

The Book of Travels, Volume Two 1

Chapter 9 Our Arrival in Paris, in October 1708 2

Chapter 10 The Last Days of 1708 102

Chapter 11 In the Lands of the East 152

Afterword: Hanna Diyab and the Thousand and One Nights 263

Notes 279

Glossary of Names and Terms 288

Bibliography 296

Further Reading 305

Index 309

About the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute 322

About the Typefaces 323

Titles Published by the Library of Arabic Literature 324

About the Editor 329

About the Translator 330