Hanna Diyab

Hanna Diyab was born to a Maronite Christian family in Aleppo, Ottoman Syria, around 1688 and lost his father while still in his teens. Working as a young man for French merchants in Syria, Diyab learned French and Italian; according to Galland, he also had a knowledge of Provençal and Turkish; it is also possible that, as a Maronite, he knew some Syriac. Diyab briefly joined a Maronite monastery on Mount Lebanon as a novice, but left. He then traveled to France with the French traveler Paul Lucas, who hired him as an interpreter and assistant. In Paris, he met Antoine Galland, a scholar and translator of the One Thousand and One Nights. Diyab told Galland several stories that he had heard or read in Arabic, including the tales of Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, which Galland added to his French version of the Nights. These stories became very popular and influential in Western literature and culture. Diyab returned to Aleppo in 1710 and married a woman named Maryam in 1717. He worked as a cloth merchant and continued to write stories and travelogues. He died sometime after 1763, when he finished his autobiography, The Book of Travels, which is the main source of information about his life.