Hanna Diyab


Antun Yusuf Hanna Diyab was a Maronite writer and storyteller. He is the origin of the famous tales of Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in the One Thousand and One Nights translated by Antoine Galland.
He was long known only from brief mentions in the diary of Antoine Galland, but the discovery of his manuscript autobiography in 1993 dramatically expanded knowledge about his life. Recent reassessments of Diyab's contribution to Les mille et une nuits, Galland's hugely influential version of the Arabic One Thousand and One Nights, have argued that his artistry is central to the literary history of such famous tales as Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, despite Diyab never being named in Galland's publications.
Paulo Lemos Horta, in particular, has argued that Diyab should be understood as the original author of some of the stories he supplied, and even that several of Diyab's stories were partly inspired by Diyab's own life, as there are parallels with his autobiography.

Life

Early life in Syria and journey to France

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. As he proceeded home, around the beginning of 1707, he met the Frenchman Paul Lucas, who was on an expedition in search of antiquities on behalf of Louis XIV of France. Lucas invited Diyab to return with him to France, working as a servant, assistant and interpreter, suggesting that he might find work at the Royal Library in Paris.
Leaving Aleppo in February 1707, they visited Tripoli, Sidon, Beirut, Cyprus, then to Egypt, from where they traveled to Libya, then Tunisia. From there he went to Corsica, Livorno, Genoa and Marseille, before reaching Paris early in 1708, where his stay culminated with his reception at Versailles in the apartments of Louis XIV. Diyab was received with some excitement in Paris, partly because Lucas had him wear national dress and carry a cage containing two jerboas from Tunisia. He met the King at Versailles. However, he tired of seeking preferment and returned to Aleppo in 1710.

Telling stories to Galland

While in Paris, Diyab first met the Orientalist Antoine Galland on Sunday, March 17, 1709. Galland's diary contains extended summaries of stories told by Diyab on March 25. Galland asked for more, and on May 5 received in written form Diyab's version of the story now known as Aladdin. Galland summarised more stories, apparently from oral telling, throughout May and into June that year. He went on to include these works as a continuation of his French translation of an incomplete Arabic manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights, and they include some of the stories that became the most popular and closely associated with the Thousand and One Nights in later world literature. It seems likely that Diyab told these stories in French.
Diyab's autobiography represents Lucas as having miraculous medical capabilities, but Diyab enjoyed less acknowledgement from his French associates: he received no credit in Galland's published work, nor any mention in the writing of Lucas. According to the autobiography, Galland was afraid that Diyab would gain a position at the Royal Library that he desired for himself and Galland conspired to send Diyab back to Aleppo.

Later life

After his return to Aleppo in 1710, Diyāb became a successful cloth merchant with the help of his brother Abdallah. He married in 1717 and had extensive progeny. By 1740, he lived in one of the community's largest households, alongside his mother and two elder brothers.
As well as writing his autobiography in 1763, Diyab seems to have copied another manuscript, Vatican Library, Sbath 108, containing Arabic translations of the Sefaretname travelogue by Ilyas ibn Hanna al-Mawsili concerning his own travels, Ilyas's history of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and an account by the Ottoman ambassador Yirmisekizzade Mehmed Said Pasha of his 1719 embassy to France.

Stories told by Diyab

As tabulated by Ulrich Marzolph, the tales told by Diyab to Galland, most of which appeared in Galland's Les mille et une nuits, were:
Date TitleATU tale typeNumber in GallandNumber in Chauvin
March 25'several very beautiful Arabic tales'
May 5Aladdin561Vol. 9.2No. 19
May 6Qamar al-dīn and Badr al-Budūr888
May 10The Caliph’s Night AdventuresFrame tale, containing the following threeVol. 10.1No. 209
May 10Blind Man Bābā ʿAbdallāh836F*Vol. 10.2No. 725
May 10Sīdī Nuʿmān449Vol. 10.3No. 371
May 10Alī al-ZaybaqShort mention only
May 13The Ebony Horse575Vol. 11.3No. 130
May 15The Golden City306
May 22Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Perī-Bānū653A+465Vol. 12.1No. 286
May 23The Sultan of Samarkand and His Three Sons550+301No. 181
May 25The Two Sisters Who Envied Their Cadette707Vol. 12.2No. 375
May 27The Ten Viziers875D*No. 48
May 27Ali Baba676+954Vol. 11.1No. 241
May 29Khawājā Hasan al-Habbāl945A*Vol. 10.4No. 202
May 29Alī Khawājā and the Merchant of Bagdad1617Vol. 11.2No. 26
May 31The Purse, the Dervish’s Horn, the Figs, and the Horns566
June 2Hasan the Seller of Herbal Tea

Though usually corresponding to widespread international tale-types and both presented by Galland and often still imagined today as traditional Arabic folk-tales, it is likely that Diyab's repertoire and narrative style reflects his education and literary reading, multilingualism, and extensive travels within and beyond the Arab world.

Works