The origins of 'Aladdin' continue to fascinate scholars and readers of the tales. The story is believed to have first been written in French, by Antoine Galland, having been told to him in Paris in 1709 by Hanna Diyab - the author of this travel memoir. Written some five decades after this encounter, 'The Life and Times of Hanna Diyab' is part autobiography and part storytelling, a fascinating record of experiences, cultural observations, international relations, medicine, and hearsay. It traces a journey across land and sea from the author's home in Aleppo - through early eighteenth-century...