The adventures of the man who created Aladdin

The Book of Travels is ann Diybs 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, theThousand and One Nights.

Diyb, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyb and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, ann Diyb met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of theThousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyb, including Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyb at Louis XIVs Royal Library, Diyb 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 Travelsintroduces readers to the young Syrian responsible for some of the most beloved stories from the Thousand and One Nights.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

ann Diyb (Author)
ann Diyb (b. ca. 1687) was a Syrian traveler originally from Aleppo. He is best known for his contributions to Antoine Gallands translation of theThousand and One Nights.


Johannes Stephan (Editor)
Johannes Stephan is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded projectKallah and DimnahAnonymClassic 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 inHarpers, The Nation,TLS,and elsewhere. She is the translator ofThe Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights andAladdin: A New Translation.

Elias Muhanna (Translator)
Elias Muhanna is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is the author ofThe World in a Book: al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Traditionand translator of Shihb al-Dn al-Nuwayrs fourteenth-century Arabic compendiumThe Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, which was chosen as a Best Book of 2016 by NPR andThe Guardian, and editor ofThe Digital Humanities and Islamic& Middle East Studies.