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Hanna Dyâb. D'Alep À Paris: Les Pérégrinations D'un Jeune Syrien Au Temps De Louis XIV

2017; Western States Folklore Society; Volume: 76; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2325-811X

Ruth B. Bottigheimer,

Culinary Culture and Tourism

Hanna Dyâb. D'Alep a Paris: Les Peregrinations d'un jeune Syrien au temps de Louis XIV Edited by Paule Fahme-Thiery, Bernard Heyberger, and Jerome Lentin. (Paris: Sindbad Actes Sud, 2015. Pp. 448, map, notes, acknowledgments, table of contents. euro28 paper.)This fascinating 1766 memoire of Hanna Dyâb, an extraordinarily ordinary young Aleppan who traveled to Paris in early years of eighteenth century, is gracefully translated and richly annotated. it delivers us directly into an emotional world dominated by fear and uncertainty, from which only patronage from powerful can protect. That this mental world is that of teller of best known tales in Arabian Nights (Aladdin and Magic Lamp, Ali Baba and Forty Thieves, et al.), which he brought to Antoine Galland in 1709 and thence to a worldwide audience, makes this book important, even though neither Galland (whom he refers to only as the old man) nor sixteen stories he told him are named here. Nonetheless, Dyâb's memoire convincingly details awakening awareness of eighteenth-century European world for and Orientals, like Dyâb himself, and accounts for volumes of Orientalized tales they composed, which made their way into popular culture throughout Europe and New World in nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. With Hanna Dyâb's tales among most often reproduced in West, a memoire by Dyâb himself is of intrinsic interest.During Dyâb's travels with his patron Paul Lucas from Aleppo to Alexandria, across North Africa, over Mediterranean to Livorno, and eventually through French countryside to Paris, he was thrown in with people from Paul Lucas's extended circle of acquaintances. On his own, Hanna Dyâb encountered fellow Maronite Christians, often from his native Aleppo. In a word, Orient was surprisingly present in Occident, with Dyâb himself a prime example. His identity, however, shimmered and shifted, because, like other Middle Easterners in France, Hanna Dyâb was constantly in process of self-presentation: for fellow Aleppans a compatriot; for most Frenchmen a representative Oriental; and for Ottoman officials often a French physician (!).Visiting Louis XlV's Versailles court, Dyâb wore bouffant red pants, colback (or kalpak) headgear prescribed for prominent Christians, and a long dress coat, and he carried a cage of gerbils to show king, Mme de Maintenon, and other high-ranking ladies.Hanna Dyâb's visit to offi ce of Cardinal de Noailles in Paris instances interpenetration of Orient and Occident. Dyâb had observed that a rich red velvet drapery in a religious procession was embroidered in gold with Muslim profession of faith: There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet. Received by someone he thought was Cardinal who questioned Dyâb in French, he was astonished when offi cial switched to Arabic and welcomed Dyâb as a compatriot. This was not Cardinal, but his First Deputy Christophe Maunier, none other than another Aleppan Maronite named Christoforo Chalabi, of well-known Aleppan merchant family. Dyâb encountered Arabic speakers everywhere, most of whom were Maronite Christians like himself, because Louis Xiv had placed Maronite Christians in Syria under special protection of French state in 1646. …