Category:Early Islamic Studies--Italian

Early Islamic Studies in Italian / Italian Scholarship on Early Islam

See Early Islamic Scholars in Italy

Overview

In the 18th and 19th century the contribution of Italian authors to Early Islamic Studies was limited to the translation of a few works from the French, following the success of Voltaire's "Mahomet le prophet," which was translated into Italian by Melchiorre Cesarotti in 1762 and adapted as an opera to the stage by Felice Romani in 1817. There was room, however, for some important pieces of scholarship, such as the Saggio sull'origine, culto, letteratura e costumi degli arabi avanti il pseudoprofeta Maometto by Simone Assemani and above all, the "Dizionario storico degli autori arabi più celebri e delle principali loro opere" authored in 1807 by University of Parma Professor Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi.

At the beginning of the 20th century the works of Leone Caetani mark the rise of the Italian School of Early Islamic Studies. In the 1920s and 1930s, authors such as Giuseppe Sacco, Bruno Ducati, and others, published important contribution to the field. In 1929 Luigi Bonelli authored a new translation of the Qur'an as well as a critical edition of the Arabic text in 1937. Works by Émile Dermenghem and Tor Andræ were also translated into Italian.

The Italian School continued its work after the war with a new translation of the Qur'an by Alessandro Bausani in 1955. Great international acclaim gained in the 1960s the work of Francesco Gabrieli, which was translated into Spanish, English and German.

In the 1970s and 1980s the leading figure in the field was Sergio Noja. Two new translation of the Qur'an appeared, one by Federico Peirone in 1979 and one by Cherubino Mario Guzzetti in 1989.

In the 1990s and 2000s the growing Muslim presence in Italy has caused the emergence of an Italian Muslim Scholarship. In 1994 Hamza Roberto Blasone published the first Italian translation of the Qur'an authored by an Italian Muslim scholar. The work is still the "official" translation used by the majority of Muslims in Italy. Best known among Italian Muslim authors was Gabriele Mandel, whose work was widely translated in English, French, German, Spanish and other European languages. The tradition of Italian non-Muslim Arabists has been continued by Claudio Lo Jacono, Roberto Tottoli, Paolo Branca and Massimo Campanini. The growing public interest in the history, culture, and religion of Islam is testified in recent years by the increasing number of publications and translations of scholarly and fictional works in the field.