The Book of Travels

“Diyab’s memoir of his Mediterranean adventures is a mixture of clear-eyed observation and wide-eyed innocence, nicely captured by Muhanna’s lucid yet folksy English version…Throughout The Book of Travels, realistic details are suffused with a sense of the marvelous.” (New York Review of Books) “It is a joy to celebrate [Ḥannā Diyāb’s] work in Elias Muhanna’s vibrant translation.” (Middle East Eye)

Ḥannā Diyāb (Author)

Ḥannā Diyāb (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 Kalīlah 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 Shihāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī’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.