From Aleppo to Versailles

Hanna Diyab grew up in Aleppo, a city that was a crossroads of cultures, religions, and trade routes—a place that connected East and West long before his own journey would. A Maronite Christian, Diyab worked as a servant, translator, and storyteller—occupations that would later shape his encounters abroad.

In 1707, Diyab travelled to Paris, where he met Antoine Galland, the translator of The Thousand and One Nights. Diyab shared with Galland a collection of oral tales he had carried from Aleppo. Two of these would become famous around the world: Aladdin and the Magic Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

The Birth of Aladdin

Aladdin—a story of a poor young man discovering a magical world—was not an ancient Arabic tale, as the West long believed, but one Hanna Diyab himself helped shape. In many ways, it reflected his own journey: a young man from Aleppo navigating between cultures, learning to find his way through power, fortune, and survival.

When Galland published Aladdin, he presented it as an “authentic Oriental tale”, omitting any mention of Diyab. His name and authorship disappeared, obscured by the enchantment of The Arabian Nights.

Orientalism and Appropriation

For Europe, Diyab’s story fit perfectly into an Orientalist fantasy—a world of deserts, sultans, and genies. But this romanticized version erased the story’s local depth. What had begun as a reflection of Aleppine society became a mirror of how the West imagined “the East”. In Galland’s retelling, Aladdin shifted from a story about class struggle and human cunning, to a fable of the “mystical Orient”. Diyab’s erasure reflected a broader pattern: the East’s voice was absorbed, rewritten, and sold back to itself.

Between Two Worlds

Diyab’s memoirs—rediscovered centuries later—reveal a man caught between fascination and disappointment. He admired the grandeur of France but also saw its arrogance and appetite for exotic tales. At Versailles, he was dressed in costume and asked to identify animals from the Levant, turning him into an exotic spectacle for the French elite. But what happened at Versailles was only the beginning.


Storytelling and Power

After Versailles, Diyab’s words traveled far—and changed along the way. Through Galland’s pen, Aleppo became “the Orient”, a place of fantasy rather than reality. Yet Aleppo had always been a city alive with voices and stories, where merchants, travelers, and poets blended Arab, Persian, Armenian, and European influences. Diyab’s imagination was born from that rich, pluralistic world.
In many ways, Aladdin reflects the imagination of a storyteller shaped by Aleppo—then one of the most vibrant, cosmopolitan cities of the Ottoman world. Yet today, few in Aleppo or Syria recognize Aladdin as part of their own cultural heritage,

Reclaiming the Narrative

Today, scholars recognize Hanna Diyab as the true source of Aladdin and several other tales in The Thousand and One Nights. His forgotten authorship reminds us how stories are shaped by power: who gets to tell them, and who gets remembered.
To retell Aladdin today through Diyab’s eyes is to challenge the Orientalist lens that still colors how the Arab world is seen—and to insist that our stories belong, first and foremost, to us. Imagine Aladdin told from Aleppo, not Paris: what might change if the storyteller himself had the final word?