LITMIR.BIZ

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as بهريز (Bahrīz) and بهريس (Bahrīs), but rarely as the expected باريس (Bārīs).

As pronounced in Levantine dialects, imperfect verbs are often written with the prefix b-, as in بيدخل (“he enters”) and بيرتعب (“he is scared”); in some cases, bi- indicates the future. The particles عمال or عمالين are used to indicate simultaneous action, e.g., فراءنا عمالين منتغدا (“he saw us having lunch”). Traces of Diyāb’s Aleppan dialect include m- instead of b- for the first-person plural of the imperfect, as in منتغدا (“we eat lunch”), and the replacement of the initial yāʾ with bi-, as in بقول (“he says”).⁶² Demonstrative pronouns (هذا‎, هذه‎, هؤلاء) preceding the article contract with it to هل, which is written as an independent lexeme and is not to be confused with the interrogative هل‎.

Diyāb’s specific lexicon includes many frequently used verbs that differ from the standard in meaning or form, including the colloquial جاب (“to bring”), انبسط (“to be or become happy”), شاف (“to see”), حط (“to put”), and the partial auxiliary استقام (“to remain or continue”). In many cases, Diyāb prefers the fuṣḥā standard over the colloquial form.⁶³ He typically uses the standard Arabic verb مضي (“to walk or go”), for instance, instead of the typical Levantine راح or the standard ذهب, though these do appear.

Most of the syntactic peculiarities in The Book of Travels have to do with agreement between masculine and feminine or singular and plural. These peculiarities remain within the typical range of Middle Arabic.⁶⁴ Common deviations from standard Arabic include:

       indefinite adjectives following a definite noun, as in كنيسه الكبيره (instead of الكنيسة الكبيرة, “the big church”);

       genitive construction (iḍāfah) in which both nouns are occasionally definite, as in الربطات التتن (for ربطات التتن, “the bundles of tobacco”);

       inanimate plural nouns with a masculine singular or a plural form, as in شبابيك كبار (for شبابيك كبيرة, “large windows”);

       lack of agreement for demonstrative pronouns, such as هذه التجار (for هؤلاء التجّار, “these merchants”).

      This Translation

      Our aim has been to produce an English rendering of this work that captures the voice of Ḥannā Diyāb. The author’s gifts as a storyteller—only tantalizingly suggested by his famous involvement with the history of the Thousand and One Nights—are in evidence in The Book of Travels, where he documents his journey across the Mediterranean with dramatic flair. The linguistic register varies across the work between a conversational Levantine vernacular and more formal varieties of Arabic. We have attempted to approximate the vernacular quality of Diyāb’s language, particularly in the dialogues, without rendering it overfamiliar.

      In the interest of making the translation accessible, we avoid transliterating Arabic words. Only in rare cases do we retain a word without translating it, such as when Diyāb glosses a word he suspects might be unfamiliar to his readers. With some multivalent words, we refer readers to the Glossary while translating the term differently according to the context, for instance caravansary, hostel, inn, and market for khān. Indeed, we have not insisted on translating a word the same way each time it is used, for instance rendering bustān as garden, orchard, and meadow; sarāya as palace, pavilion, mansion, and embassy; and aghā as officer and commander. Likewise, we render the term al-sharq as “the Orient” when it is used by Lucas and other Frenchmen. In all other cases, we translate it as “the East.” We have also taken the liberty of rendering some of Diyāb’s formulas in slightly different ways, for the sake of variety. For example, his favorite narrative cue following a lengthy digression is the phrase “We now return to what we were discussing” (wa narjiʿ ilā mā naḥnu bi-ṣadadihi), which we render as “But let’s get back to our story,”“As I was saying,” and the like.

      We confine our endnotes to points of clarification. Readers interested in additional information are referred to the fine French translation by Paule Fahmé-Thiéry, Bernard Heyberger, and Jérôme Lentin, whose work has enriched our own.

      Notes to the Introduction

1 Since the first five folios of the MS of the work are lost, we based our choice of Kitāb al-Siyāḥah as the title on Diyāb’s frequent use of the word siyāḥah (on which, see below).

2 His full name is Ḥannā ibn Diyāb (Ḥannā son of Diyāb), but Ḥannā Diyāb has become current in English.

3 Zotenberg, “Notice sur quelques manuscrits des Mille et Une Nuits et la traduction de Galland,” 194.

4 The sole exception is Lentin, “Recherches sur l’histoire de la langue arabe au Proche-Orient à l’époque moderne,” 1:48–49. After Lentin’s discovery, the first comprehensive nonlinguistic studies of the text are Heyberger’s introduction to Dyâb, D’Alep à Paris, and, from a literary perspective, Stephan, “Von der Bezeugung zur Narrativen Vergegenwärtigung” and “Spuren fiktionaler Vergegenwärtigung im Osmanischen Aleppo,” both 2015.

5 Sbath, Bibliothèque de manuscrits: Catalogue, 1:122, previously published with a slightly different description in his “Les manuscrits orientaux de la bibliothèque du R.P. Paul Sbath (Suite),” 348. See also the reference to the travelogue in Graf, Geschichte, 3:467.

6 Notable are the recent works of Bottigheimer, “East meets West: Hannā Diyāb and The Thousand and One Nights”; Marzolph, “The Man Who Made the Nights Immortal”; and Horta, Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights.

7 Lucas, Troisième Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas dans le Levant, 101–2.

8 Heyberger, introduction to Dyab, D’Alep à Paris, 9, uncovers a source which reveals that in 1740, Diyāb was head of a household of twelve persons. A 1748 petition to the Maronite patriarch to protect the Aleppan monks has his signature as well as those of other family members (Fahd, Tārīkh al-rahbāniyyah, 147).

9 See Heyberger, introduction to Dyab, D’Alep à Paris, 9, on the father, who probably died when Diyāb was young.

10 See the concise overviews in Raymond, “An Expanding Community: The Christians of Aleppo in the Ottoman Era,” 84; Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism, chapters 3 and 4; and Patel, The Arab Nahḍah: The Making of the Intellectual and Humanist Movement, chapter 2. On the

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