The Book of Travels: Volume One (Library of Arabic Literature)

The adventures of the man who created Aladdin

The Book of Travels is ?anna Diyab’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.

Diyab, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyab and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, ?anna Diyab met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of the Thousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyab, including “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyab at Louis XIV’s Royal Library, Diyab 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.

?anna Diyab (Author)
?anna Diyab (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 “Kalila and Dimna –AnonymClassic” at the Freie Universität 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, and her essays on books and art have appeared in Harper’s, The Nation, TLS, and elsewhere. Her first translated book, Aladdin, came out in 2018. She is currently working on a new translation of the Thousand and One Nights.

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, translator of Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri’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.

?anna Diyab (Author)
?anna Diyab (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 Kalilah and Dimnah—AnonymClassic at the Freie Universität 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 Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri’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.