Hannā Diyāb (1688–1766): Early Life, French Fluency, and Storytelling

Abstract This article understands Hannā Diyāb’s father as a poor late seventeenth-century arrival in Aleppo, identifies his mother as a daughter of the wealthy Ghazālah family, positions Hannā Diyāb himself within his nuclear family, and introduces the friends of his childhood and youth. It accounts for Hannā Diyāb’s mastery of spoken and written French and describes his childhood employment from age 6 to 18, during some or all of which time he lived with his older brother Antūn. The article situates Hannā Diyāb within Aleppan commerce, Ottoman governance, histories of European fairy tales and the Arabian Nights , and the special status of Maronite Christians within late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Roman Catholic proselytization in the Eastern Mediterranean. Subjective descriptions inform Hannā Diyāb’s travel memoir, but little surviving information provides objective biographical detail about his personal life. Antoine Galland’s and Paul Lucas’s journals, secondary literature and forensic reading of Hannā Diyāb’s travel memoir augment available biographical information.