The Book of Travels. Hannā Diyāb
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Название: The Book of Travels

Автор: Hannā Diyāb

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Историческая литература

Серия: Library of Arabic Literature

isbn: 9781479849475

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ But The Book of Travels is also significant in its own right. Among the topics it allows us to explore are Diyāb’s relationship to his French patron, Paul Lucas; different forms of oral storytelling proper to The Book of Travels; and the culture of Arabic writing in eighteenth-century Aleppo.

      The Aleppan Traveler and His French Patron

      For the most part, The Book of Travels centers on the relationship between an Aleppan working man and a French antiquarian, which began as a business agreement. In exchange for serving as a translator, Diyāb was offered the chance to accompany Lucas on a journey that would span three continents. The asymmetry of this master-servant arrangement reflects, in a way, the relationship between Catholic states in the West and the Ottoman Empire during the early and mid-eighteenth century, just as it portrays an ambivalent relationship between East and West. Diyāb’s relationship to his patron encompasses a combination of postures and affects, ranging from servitude, respect, and emulation to the occasional display of irony. For his part, Lucas, who also wrote an account of the voyage, does not mention Diyāb once.

      The experience at Saint Elishaʿ and his meeting with one of the founders, ʿAbdallāh Qarāʿalī (d. 1742), left a profound impression on Diyāb. He vividly portrays his reverence for the monks’ “angelic conduct” (§1.17) and for the orderly rhythms of monastic life. He soon came to feel, however, that he did not belong in the community. When at one point he fell ill, he received permission from the abbot to leave the monastery, under the pretext of convalescing in his hometown. Failing to find a job in Aleppo, he resigned himself to returning to the monastery. On his way back, he met Paul Lucas, a traveler “dispatched by the sultan of France,” and joined his entourage (§1.29).

      When they arrived in Paris, Diyāb lived with Lucas, from September 1708 to June 1709, waiting patiently to be hired into the position at the Royal Library, as he had been promised. When no such job materialized, Diyāb grew frustrated. In the meantime, he had made the acquaintance of Antoine Galland, whom he describes as an “old man who was assigned to oversee the library of Arabic books and could read Arabic well,” (Volume Two, §10.9). After Galland arranged for Diyāb to be hired by a member of the French court to work, like his former master, as a traveler dispatched by Louis XIV, he decided he would leave the French capital, but the offer of employment—like the library position he coveted—never came through. On his way home to Syria, he stopped for some time in Istanbul, where he worked as a valet and a housekeeper until he was urged by a friend to accompany him to Aleppo. Right after Diyāb’s return from his travels in June 1710, his brother ʿAbdallāh, with the help of an uncle, opened a textile shop for him. A few years later, Paul Lucas returned to Aleppo, sought out Diyāb, and reproached him for leaving Paris so rashly. After going on one last adventure together in the vicinity of Aleppo, the two men went their separate ways. Diyāb tells us that he worked as a textile merchant for twenty-two years, but gives no details about his life after he retired in his forties.

      The encounter with Lucas had a profound influence on Diyāb. It was common for Aleppan Christians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to work for (French) consuls, traders, missionaries, and travelers who formed part of the social fabric of the city. In fact, Lucas was not Diyāb’s first patron; like his brothers, Diyāb had worked for a dozen years, beginning before he was ten years old, as a domestic servant in the employ of various French merchants. His contact with Europeans helped him acquire a good knowledge of French, Italian, and Turkish. His association with Lucas also helped him to attain a prestigious position within his community. In the 1760s, when he wrote The Book of Travels, it was important to Diyāb to assert this prestige before his extended family and larger community. Lucas is accordingly mentioned in two of the book’s chapter headings. He doubtless also appeared in the now-lost first pages of the narrative, and perhaps even in the title of the book.

      In the first chapters of Diyāb’s travelogue, Lucas’s discoveries and his acquisition of artifacts—rare precious stones, coins, books, and a mummy, among other things—are the main focus of the narrative. Diyāb describes how Lucas offered to treat people’s illnesses in exchange for objects he wanted to acquire, something Lucas himself reports that he did. Diyāb mentions Lucas’s expertise in astronomy, geometry, СКАЧАТЬ