Hanna Diyab

Hanna Diyab
Born
Antun Yusuf Hanna Diyab

c. 1688 (1688)
Aleppo, Ottoman Syria
Diedafter 1763
Other namesYouhanna Diab
Occupations
  • Writer
  • storyteller
  • cloth merchant
Notable workThe Book of Travels

Antun Yusuf Hanna Diyab (Arabic: اَنْطون يوسُف حَنّا دِياب, romanized: Anṭūn Yūsuf Ḥannā Diyāb; born circa 1688) was a Syrian Maronite writer and storyteller. He originated the best-known versions of the tales of Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves which have been added to the One Thousand and One Nights since French orientalist Antoine Galland translated and included them, after which they soon became popular across the West.[1]

Diyab was long known only from brief mentions in the diary of Antoine Galland, but the translation and publication of his Arabic manuscript autobiography in 2015 expanded knowledge about his life. Reassessments of Diyab's contribution to Les mille et une nuits, Galland's widely influential version of the oriental stories of One Thousand and One Nights, have argued that Diyab is central to the literary history of such famous tales as Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, despite Diyab only having been named as "Hanna from Aleppo" in Galland's diary.[2]

Literary scholars Ruth B. Bottigheimer[3] and Paulo Lemos Horta have argued that Diyab should be understood as the original author of some of the stories published by Galland, and even that several of these stories, including Aladdin, were partly inspired by Diyab's own life, as there are parallels with his autobiography.[4][5]

Further, scholars have argued that the travelogue provides an oriental outsider's view of Paris in 1708–1709, as well as extensive glimpses into other aspects of Diyab's world. Though it may not always reflect Diyab's eye-witness experiences, his autobiography also provides information about the places and cultures he encountered, and his identity as an accomplished oriental raconteur.[6]

14th-century Arabic manuscript of Arabian nights
  1. ^ Waxman, Olivia B. (May 23, 2019). "Was Aladdin Based on a Real Person? Here's Why Scholars Are Starting to Think So". Time. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  2. ^ Razzaque, Arafat A. (2017-09-14). "Who "wrote" Aladdin? The Forgotten Syrian Storyteller". Ajam Media Collective. Retrieved 2023-12-02.
  3. ^ Bottigheimer, Ruth B. “East Meets West” (2014).
  4. ^ Horta, Paulo Lemos (2018). Aladdin: A New Translation. Liveright Publishing. pp. 8–10. ISBN 9781631495175. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
  5. ^ Paulo Lemos Horta, Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 24-95.
  6. ^ John-Paul Ghobrial, review of Hanna Dyâb, D’Alep à Paris: Les pérégrinations d’un jeune syrien au temps de Louis XIV, ed. and trans. by Paule Fahmé-Thiéry, Bernard Heyberger, and Jérôme Lentin (Sindbad, 2015), The English Historical Review, volume 132, issue 554 (February 2017), 147–49, doi:10.1093/ehr/cew417.