Middle Arabic texts vary widely, with some containing only minor spelling variation and others diverging markedly from normative orthography and grammar. Diyāb’s work falls at the furthest end of the spectrum from standard Arabic. A description of some of the distinctive features of Diyāb’s text follows.61
In the realm of orthography and phonetics, final a may be written with an alif (ا), a dotted alif maqṣūrah (ي), a tāʾ marbūṭah (ة), or its undotted form, ه. Certain lexemes are contracted: For example, the verb قال with a personal suffix frequently loses its alif (if it has one) and is written as one word, as in قلي (for قال لي, “he said to me”) and قلنا (for قال لنا, “he said to us”). In other cases, verbs receive an additional alifdue to vocalization, as in spoken colloquial, including احكالي (for حكى لي, “he told me”) and اتفرج (for تفرج, “to look at”). Second- and third-person plural imperfect forms appear without -ūn and are frequently written with an alif wiqāyah as if they were subjunctive forms, e.g., بتعرفوا (“you know”).
The tāʾ marbūṭah is used interchangeably with tāʿ maftūḥah in construct, as in the Ottoman-Turkish loanword ıskele: اسكلت صيدا (“the port of Sidon”), and strikingly when tāʾ marbūṭah is used for the suffixes of third-person and occasionally first-person perfect verb forms, e.g., استقامة for استقامت (“stayed”). In several cases, a hamzah appears where standard orthography does not call for it, e.g., اباء (for أبى, “to refuse”), and sometimes فرنساء (“France”), among other names. As they are repeated several times, these must be hypercorrections rather than arbitrary additions.
Another feature specific to Middle Arabic is the partial or full interchangeability of dental sounds, which may be pronounced and spelled differently from the fuṣḥā standard. This interchangeability may be, but is not necessarily, the result of interference from colloquial. However, other deviations from fuṣḥā require writing an entirely different letter and are therefore more likely to reflect colloquial forms. For example, the letter ṣ (ص) is often replaced by z (ز), as in زغير (conforming to the Levantine pronunciation of صغير, “small”).
The characters p (پ) and ç (چ), used to write Ottoman Turkish, occur a few times in the text, e.g., الپاپا (“the pope”) and چوخدريه (“valets” or “servants”). To spell loanwords containing those sounds, Diyāb prefers to use the characters b (ب) and j (ج); j (ج) is interchangeable with z (ز), as is the case in spoken Arabic when both sounds occur in one word, e.g., يجوزه (for يزوّجه, “he marries him off”). In any event, the spelling of loanwords and names is highly variable. For example, Diyāb renders Paris as بهريز (Bahrīz) and بهريس (Bahrīs), but rarely as the expected باريس (Bārīs).
As pronounced in Levantine dialects, imperfect verbs are often written with the prefix b-, as in بيدخل (“he enters”) and بيرتعب (“he is scared”); in some cases, bi- indicates the future. The particles عمال or عمالين are used to indicate simultaneous action, e.g., فراءنا عمالين منتغدا (“he saw us having lunch”). Traces of Diyāb’s Aleppan dialect include m- instead of b- for the first-person plural of the imperfect, as in منتغدا (“we eat lunch”), and the replacement of the initial yāʾ with bi-, as in بقول (“he says”).62 Demonstrative pronouns (هذا, هذه, هؤلاء) preceding the article contract with it to هل, which is written as an independent lexeme and is not to be confused with the interrogative هل.
Diyāb’s specific lexicon includes many frequently used verbs that differ from the standard in meaning or form, including the colloquial جاب (“to bring”), انبسط (“to be or become happy”), شاف (“to see”), حط (“to put”), and the partial auxiliary استقام (“to remain or continue”). In many cases, Diyāb prefers the fuṣḥā standard over the colloquial form.63 He typically uses the standard Arabic verb مضي (“to walk or go”), for instance, instead of the typical Levantine راح or the standard ذهب, though these do appear.
Most of the syntactic peculiarities in The Book of Travels have to do with agreement between masculine and feminine or singular and plural. These peculiarities remain within the typical range of Middle Arabic.64 Common deviations from standard Arabic include:
indefinite adjectives following a definite noun, as in كنيسه الكبيره (instead of الكنيسة الكبيرة, “the big church”);
genitive construction (iḍāfah) in which both nouns are occasionally definite, as in الربطات التتن (for ربطات التتن, “the bundles of tobacco”);
inanimate plural nouns with a masculine singular or a plural form, as in شبابيك كبار (for شبابيك كبيرة, “large windows”);
lack of agreement for demonstrative pronouns, such as هذه التجار (for هؤلاء التجّار, “these merchants”).
This Translation
Our aim has been to produce an English rendering of this work that captures the voice of Ḥannā Diyāb. The author’s gifts as a storyteller—only tantalizingly suggested by his famous involvement with the history of the Thousand and One Nights—are in evidence in The Book of Travels, where he documents his journey across the Mediterranean with dramatic flair. The linguistic register varies across the work between a conversational Levantine vernacular and more formal varieties of Arabic. We have attempted to approximate the vernacular quality of Diyāb’s language, particularly in the dialogues, without rendering it overfamiliar.
In the interest of making the translation accessible, we avoid transliterating Arabic words. Only in rare cases do we retain a word without translating it, such as when Diyāb glosses a word he suspects might be unfamiliar to his readers. With some multivalent words, we refer readers to the Glossary while translating the term differently according to the context, for instance caravansary, hostel, inn, and market for khān. Indeed, we have not insisted on translating a word the same way each time it is used, for instance rendering bustān as garden, orchard, and meadow; sarāya as palace, pavilion, mansion, and embassy; and aghā as officer and commander. Likewise, we render the term al-sharq as “the Orient” when it is used by Lucas and other Frenchmen. In all other cases, we translate it as “the East.” We have also taken the liberty of rendering some of Diyāb’s formulas in slightly different ways, for the sake of variety. For example, his favorite narrative cue following a lengthy digression is the phrase “We now return to what we were discussing” (wa narjiʿ ilā mā naḥnu bi-ṣadadihi), which we render as “But let’s get back to our story,”“As I was saying,” and the like.
We confine our endnotes to points of clarification. Readers interested in additional information are referred to the fine French translation by Paule Fahmé-Thiéry, Bernard Heyberger, and Jérôme Lentin, whose work has enriched our own.
Notes to the Introduction
