10 Facts About Hanna Diyab

Antun Yusuf Hanna Diyab was a Syrian Maronite writer and storyteller.

Hanna Diyab 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.

Hanna Diyab was long known only from brief mentions in the diary of Antoine Galland, but the translation and publication of his manuscript autobiography in 2015 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.

Ruth B Bottigheimer and Paulo Lemos Horta have 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.

Hanna Diyab was born to a Maronite Christian family in Aleppo, Ottoman Syria, around 1688 and lost his father while still in his teens.

Hanna Diyab briefly joined a Maronite monastery on Mount Lebanon as a novice, but left.

Hanna 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.

Hanna Diyab 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.

Hanna Diyab's autobiography represents Lucas as having miraculous medical capabilities, but Hanna 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.