Francesca Bellino

In questo saggio magistrale, Tim Mackintosh-Smith ripercorre quasi tremila anni di storia, facendo rivivere davanti ai nostri occhi i popoli e le tribú della penisola arabica che hanno conquistato moltissime terre e diffuso la loro lingua in Asia e in Africa. Mackintosh-Smith fa risalire le origini di questo processo agli albori della stessa lingua araba, molto prima dell’avvento dell’islam, e fa dell’arabo, parlato e scritto, uno degli assi che definiscono l’identità culturale condivisa dagli arabi nel corso dei millenni. Risalendo alla poesia preislamica e ai conflitti tra i beduini e i popoli sedentari d’Arabia, l’autore descrive la nascita della scrittura araba, la vita di Muḥammad e le conquiste dell’islam, le crociate, le dinastie omayyadi e abbasidi, la magnificenza della Spagna islamica, il dominio turco, il colonialismo, l’ascesa e il declino del panarabismo, la moderna fioritura della lingua araba, le primavere arabe e il fondamentalismo. La storia dei popoli e della cultura araba nel corso di tre millenni, una storia epica in cui, piú attuali che mai, risuonano nel presente gli echi del passato, sia in Occidente che in Oriente.

This article is devoted to sounds, voices, calls and cries as defined and conceived in the early Arabic lexicographic tradition (8th-9th century). It discusses the first evidence for the use of the Arabic term ṣawt (pl. aṣwāt) in the Qurʾān and early lexicons. It then examines direct and indirect accounts of the transmission of the Kitāb al-aṣwāt-especially those attributed to Quṭrub (d. 206/821), al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 216/831) and Ibn al-Sikkīt (d. 244/858)-as well as some chapters devoted to the subject in coeval multi-thematic lexicographical works such as those of Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim ibn Sallām (d. 244/838) and of the later Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889). Taken together, the information that emerges from all these texts displays the many shades of meaning that the aṣwāt have taken at the beginning of Arab-Islamic cultural history.

This article is part of a broader research on sounds (aṣwāt, sing. ṣawt) as they were systematised in the context of early Arabic lexicography. It takes as a case study the multi-thematic lexicon al-Ġarīb al-Muṣannaf by Abū 'Ubayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224/838) and more specifically the three chapters respectively devoted to voices, tones of voices of people's speech and their modulation, and languages and words included within the opening book regarding the lexicon on human anatomy.

This paper was written to commemorate the scholar of the Hebrew Bible and the philologist Bruno Chiesa (1949-2015) at the conference on "The Arabic Literary Genizot beyond Denominational Borders" (held at IAS, Princeton, NJ April 20-21, 2017). During his career, Chiesa edited various Judeo-Arabic documentary sources, especially some missing works by al-Qirqisānī (active 1oth century), and investigated the Geniza works as part of his studies on the historical philology of the Hebrew Bible. In the last years of his life, Chiesa has been involved in the cataloguing of the Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts held at the National Library of Turin and in the studying of the documents preserved in the archive of Paul E. Kahle of the University of Turin.

This article frames the Kitāb al-Maʿārif of Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889) against the background of the evolution of the Abbasid historiography and the emergence of early forms of Islamic universal histories in particular. It also provides an analysis of the work in terms of its aim, recipients, structure, contents, sources, and style. It draws attention to the three main dimensions of chronology, genealogy and onomastics that so deeply characterize Ibn Qutayba’s general approach in his sketch of the outline of Islamic history. It shows that it is an adab work insofar as it offers a set of useful knowledge
needed by the non specialist reader, namely the non-historian, whether he is a kātib, an adīb, or any other figure working in the Abbasid bureaucracy. The final part of the article looks at the inclusion of materials related to the centuries preceding the rise of the Prophet Muḥammad and Islam as they are presented in the chapter on the mulūk.

This article provides an overview of the modalities of dissemination of legendary maġāzī literature in Africa. For this purpose, it focuses primarily on those narratives recounting the military expeditions of the Prophet Muḥammad and his companions (Ar. ġazawāt, sing. ġazwa) that have been transmitted in multiple Islamic languages (Arabic, including Maghrebi dialects, Berber, Swahili, and other African languages). It uses the concepts of narrative repertoire and socio-linguistic contact to outline modes of and actors in the complex processes of translation, adaptation and transmission across centuries and in different linguistic-cultural areas of the continent (Maghreb, Sub-Saharan and Eastern Africa).

“Gli animali selvaggi nel Kitāb al-wuḥūš di al-Asma‘ī”, Quaderni di Studi Arabi, n.s. 14 (2019), pp. 263-289.

Questo articolo indaga i termini e i modi con i quali la tradizione lessicografica araba più antica ha definito gli animali selvatici e selvaggi (wuḥūš, sing. waḥš)  e cerca di delineare i tratti salienti della loro dimensione di selvaggeria, ferocità e ferinità (tutt’altro che circoscritta alla sola sfera lessicale) . A tale scopo, prende in esame una delle prime opere monografiche su questa categoria animale, il Kitāb al-Wuḥūš (Libro degli animali selvatici) del filologo al-Aṣmaʿī (m. 213/828).

“Arabic Encyclopaedias and Encyclopaedism in the Ottoman Period: Forms, Functions and Intersections between Adab and Modernity”, in: Adab and Modernity. A « Civilising Process » ? (Sixteenth_Twenty-First Century), ed. by C. Mayeur-Jaouen, Leiden: Brill, 2019, pp. 123-167.

“I viaggi di Sindbād tra Oriente e Occidente, medioevo e modernità: materiali inediti e nuove prospettive di ricerca”, in: Linee storiografiche e nuove prospettive di ricerca. XI Colloquio Internazionale Medioevo romanzo e orientale (Roma, 27-28 febbraio 2018), a cura di F. Bellino, E. Caiozzo, A. Pioletti, Soveria Mannelli (Rubbettino Editore), 2019, pp. 141-167

This article aims at analyzing idolatry inasmuch it appears as a literary motif in legendary maġāzī literature, a large and varied corpus of narratives, spread mostly in the post-Classical period (15th–19th centuries), which recount in fictional way the early Muslim military expeditions that took place during Muḥammad's lifetime (Ar. ġazawāt, sing. ġazwa). Within this genre, it considers primarily those ġazawāt in which direct references to idolatry appear, either as references to the general concept or as references to individual idols. Regarding the latter, it provides an overview accompanied by textual examples of all the idols mentioned by name in the ġazawāt, divided into those that are also attested in the historical sources the fictitious ones invented by the narrators for narrative purposes.

Abstract
In the Futūḥ al-Yaman also known as Ghazwat Ra’s al-Ghūl (The Conquest of Yemen or the Expedition against Ra’s al-Ghūl), one of the most important long stories of the so-called Legendary Maghāzī Literature, ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib fights against a powerful idolatrous Yemeni tyrant Ra’s al-Ghūl (Demon’s head). The story, which is attributed to Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bakrī (13th cent.), had a great success and popularity during the Mamluk and the Ottoman period. Next to a rich and rather fluid textual tradition we indeed have even an iconographic representation of ‘Alī fighting against Ra’s al-Ghūl. In times closer to us (1971), another powerful archenemy, alike named Ras al-Ghul, reappears in the American series DC Comics as one of the most dangerous antagonists of Batman. Once again, we find duels and struggles between a creature coming from East and a superhero representing the West. During the last forty years, various comic artists have enriched the story of the supervillain Ras al-Ghul and his family, creating a sort of saga that has outstanding similarities with the Arabic popular romance. The aim of the present paper is to analyse a number of narrative and iconographical elements appearing from both cycles in order to highlight the ambiguities and the obscurities that pervades the stereotyped figure of Ra’s al-Ghūl.

A collection of Neo-Aramaic and Arabic mirabilia, preserved in the ms. London British Library Or. 9321, is here published with introduction and English translation. The first part of the collection contains short descriptions of wondrous buildings and monuments that are found in various regions of the world, including Alexandria, Egypt, al-Andalus, Syria, and the Caspian Sea. The second part describes wondrous rivers, wells and water streams in Syria, Anatolia, and the Arabian Peninsula. It is always possible to find Arabic geographical sources providing the data and kinds of information that this collection gives in abridged forms. The author of the collection or its Vorlage would appear to have been especially interested in the geographical notices that, in the works of classical Arabic geographers such as Ibn Rustah, Ibn Ḫurdādbah, Ibn al-Faqīh, or their later epigones, described wondrous buildings and intermittent rivers, as mentioned in the epic narratives about Alexander the Great. As for other prose texts preserved in the Berlin and London Sachau collections of Neo-Aramaic manuscripts, Sachau probably asked his informant to translate into his own Aramaic dialect Arabic texts that may reflect the literary and scientific interests of the German scholar.

This article presents a newly discovered manuscript containing a version of the story of the Seven Travels of Sindbād the Sailor (Ms Cleveland, Public Library, Q 385.3A P445H) that bears witness to a crucial phase of its transmission from East to West. The manuscript contains the Arabic text of the oldest version hitherto known (written in Aleppo in 1672), along with an interlinear Latin translation, and it is followed by an Arabic-Latin word list. It includes another version of the French translation attributed to François Pétis de la Croix (1653-1713), titled Histoire Arabe de Sindabad le Marin, also given in Ms Munich, Bavarian State Library, cod.gall. 799. The French translation of the story of Sindbād made by Pétis de la Croix and reproduced in these two manuscripts dates to four years earlier (1701) from when Antoine Galland (1646-1715) published his first alleged translation within the Mille et une Nuits (1705). The present article focuses on Ms Cleveland, Public Library, Q 385.3A P445H and examines it in comparison with Ms Munich, Bavarian State Library, cod.gall. 799 as a crucial witness of the earliest phase of the textual history of the Seven Travels of Sindbād the Sailor.

The textual history of the Travels of Sindbād the sailor is intimately linked to the textual history of the Thousand and One Nights. While independent in origin since the discovery of Antoine Galland (1646-1715) onwards, this narrative cycle has been later incorporated in the corpus of the Thousand and One Nights. The article aims to examine the textual history of the Travels of Sindbād in the light of the diverse and various interpretations that have been given.
The first chapter summarizes the main events of Travels, as they are present in two different recensions (M. Gerhard: A version of “Galland” and Langlès and version B “Zer” Bulaq, Calcutta II) and how they have been taken up in the various translations into different languages (A. Galland, EW Lane, Burton R., Payne, Mardrus, E. Littmann, F. Gabrieli). The second chapter examines in detail the various and conflicting theories that M. Gerhardt, F.J. Ghazoul, A. Kilito, P. Molan, A. Miquel, H. Moucannas-Mehio, J.-P. Picot have formulated the “structure” of Travels in the light of a different interpretation of its protagonist and the relationship of the work to frame the story of the Thousand and One Nights. The third chapter discusses the issue of their origin not so much in relation to (the character of) its protagonist, but rather in relation to the genres to which they belong (geographical literature and narratives of the maritime ‘aǧā’ib of the IX and X sec.). Taking a thesis already advanced by M.J. De Goeje, then supported by A. Zeky, A. Chauvin and M. Casanova, we will examine the exchange of letters between the king of Sarandīb and the Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd and the so-called embassy of Sindbād in the island narrated between sixth and seventh travel (Langlès Arabic text, Calcutta I, translated by A. Galland) as the possible original nucleus which over time the other travels were then attached.

This article aims at analyzing the representation of the plant kingdom in the Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, an Arabic encyclopaedia written by one the leading scholar of the Mamluk period, Šihāb al-Dīn Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-‘Umarī (1301-1349). The first part of the article offers an insight into the work of al-‘Umarī by presenting it in the framework of the encyclopaedic activities that characterize the fourteenth century. It also analyzes a number of special features of the Masālik al-abṣār and provides a detailed presentation of all its contents. The second part focuses on the plants (al-nabāt) which al-‘Umarī discusses along with the animals (al-ḥayawān) and the minerals (al-ma‘ādin). In drafting his encyclopedia, al-‘Umarī used various sources, ranging from Greek
authors, such as Dioscorides, to Ibn Sīnā’s Qānūn fī l-ṭibb, Ibn al-Bayṭār’s
Ǧāmi‘ and al-Qazwīnī’s ‘Aǧā’ib al-maḫlūqāt. Al-‘Umarī provided a new
organization of all the information previously known to botanists of his time. Hence, the plants are classified into three types, the trees (al-šaǧar), the herbs (al-a‘šāb) and the plants (al-nuǧūm), arranged alphabetically and distributed according to their region of provenance.

This article offers an insight into the work of Aḥmad b. Muṣṭafā Ṭāšköprüzāda (d. 968/1561), one of the most prolific Ottoman scholars of the sixteenthcentury, whose life has been barely studied as regards the author’s encyclopaedic production. The first part presents the main stages of his formation, as he himself outlined it in al-Šaqāʾiq al-Nuʿmāniyya. This profile provides a unique insight of an Ottoman polymath and literate at work in the various fields of the Islamic knowledge. His training finds a consistent continuity in his work as an author
and in the construction of the the Miftāḥ al-Saʿāda, in which he quoted a great number of works that he had studied. The second part of the article focuses  this work and the classification of sciences given in it. The appendix includes a
complete translation of the table of contents of the Miftāḥ al-Saʿāda, which provides a detailed description of its contents and shows its highly diversified structure. Finally, an excerpt from the Miftāḥ al-Saʿāda concerning the definition of “the science of divisions of sciences” is included.

The article examines the Ḫarīdat al-ʻajā’ib wa-farīdat al-ġarā’ib (The Pearl of Wonders and the Uniqueness of Strange Things), a fifteenth-century Arabic cosmography attributed to Sirāj al-Dīn Ibn al-Wardī (d. after 822/1419). The first part of the Ḫarīdat al-ʻajā’ib covers exclusively geographical topics. However, a longer redaction, which actually contains two further sections on early Arab history and eschatology, was prepared. As many other works of its genre, the Ḫarīdat al-ʻajā’ib is thus preserved in multiple versions and redactions as well as in various languages. The leading objective of this study is to investigate a series of philological problems that
are generated by the fluid and dynamic textual transmission of this work. Therefore it will touch issues concerning the structure and the arrangement of the contents within the Ḫarīdat al-ʻajā’ib and in relation to other Arabic cosmographies, the formation of multiple versions over the time, the presence of “erratic” parts inside the work, the use of sources and the nineteenth-century method of editing the work. The article also
addresses a few problems concerning Sirāj al-Dīn Ibn al-Wardī as “author” of the Ḫarīdat al-ʻajā’ib as well as some more general issues relating to “distributed” authorship and plagiarism in Arabic literature.

The present article aims to outline origin, transmission and circulation of a narrative of a conquest (in Ar. Ġazwa, pl. ġazawāt,) in the Arab literature of the post-classical period (XIII-XIX centuries). In particular, the expedition of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib against the king al-Ġiṭrīf describes a legendary battle set in the Wādī al-Saysabān which took place in an early unspecified Islamic period. This ġazwa has been particularly renowned as demonstrated by the fact that it has been preserved in various forms and with two major titles, Ġazwat wādī al-Saysabān and Ġazwat al-Ġiṭrīf. Several versions kept in manuscripts and popular printed editions, in prose and verses, in different languages (Arabic, Swahili, Berber and Malay) equally attest to the significance it had in the various areas in which it was transmitted. Besides, the circulation of a ġazwa in so many languages allows, for the first time, to formulate hypotheses on the areal diffusion of narratives belonging to the legendary maġāzī literature and their transmission even orally as shown by the (still unpublished) versions in Berber collected in Kabylie (Algeria) and Marocco.

In the present contribution we focus on the role played by the Muslim hero 'Ali b. Abi Talib in the legendary maghazi literature to give evidence of the powerful force displayed by him duelling against jinns, demons and dragons. In particular, we take into account a few legendary expeditions, i.e. the Expedition to Flag’s Well (Ghazwat Bi'r Dhatt al-'alam), the Expedition against the demon Wahsh al-Hindi (Ghazwat Wahsh al-Hindi) and the Expedition to the Golden Castle (Ghazwat Qasr al-dhahab).

This article analyses a series of studies on Arab epics published in recent years (2002-2008), in particular by C. Ott (2003), F. Doufikar-Aerts (2003), M. Gavillet Matar (2005), T.
Herzog (2006), and discusses the results in a broader perspective of research on Arabic literature of the post-classical period. After presenting the specific contents of these four studies, the article focuses on a range of research problems concerning philological questions (e.g. manuscript traditions, the origin of a tradition and a sīra, the sources, the narrative archetypes and the various versions and variants), but also the relationship between orality and literacy and modes of transmission and reception of texts in Arabic literature.

In the present contribution it is discussed the Muslim story of Moses, the hawk and the dove. Its motif has origin in Indian literature and in particular in the Buddhist tradition, where the protagonist is the king Sivi (the Buddha in former times). An important channel of transmission of the story to Islamic literary tradition has been the Persian anthology Tuti-nama. In its Turkish translation, Moses definitely becomes the protagonist. The versions in the Tanblh al-gafdin of Abu l-Layt al-Samarqandi (d.1002), in the Musibat-nama of Farid al-Din 'Attar (d. 1230) and in the Kitab al-Nawadir of al-Qalyubi (d. 1659) are evidence of a considerable spread of this story in the Islamic literature. Furthermore, the story is largely attested in numerous Arabic manuscripts mostly coming from Maghreb. The article discusses the content and the literary peculiarities of eight Arabic versions, compared to others versions attested in Aljamiado and Swahili literature. In some Arabic manuscript versions, it is evident a significant connection with the narratives about the Munagat Musa. Finally is translated the version of the story preserved in the Ms Alger 1919.

Some books are precious treasured books. Their preciousness lies not so much in their content (whose value can be absolute for anyone) as in the significance they have for the one who reads them at a particular time in his/her life (for whom the value may be relative but inestimable). Loss Sings had undoubtedly a special value to me. James E. Montgomery published the English translation of fifteen poems from the Dīwān by the seventh-century Arabic poet al-Ḫansā' , threnodies (riṯā') she composed on the death of two of her brothers, Ṣaḫr and Mu'āwiya. Montgomery selected only a few portions of the Arabic original texts which he translated between 2015 and 2017. The aim of their publication was not scholarly. The translated texts were literally immersed in the painful and agonizing journal that records fragments of the experience of supporting the illness of his son as a result of an incident and of accompanying him to death. These fragments of seventh-century laments are fragments of a devastating human experience, fragments of an intense work as a translator. In Loss Sings, the three asynchronous chronologies are intertwined and, painfully but lucidly, they give this work a unique, intimate perspective on presence and absence throughout life. The transformation of an emotional (personal) experience of loss and absence into a (shared) literary experience provides Montgomery with an opportunity to offer further and precious insights into this poet, into the timeless value of her poetry, the sense of her laments, belonging to an ancient genre in every sense of the word but perhaps for this reason never dormant, the significance of the literary translation in an absolute sense. The aim pursued by Montgomery, his real poetics, is presented in these few lines: "In its success, translation cannot conceal the presence of failure, the prevalence of loss. The poet, the poem, the text, the translation can live only on the condition that they will be always forever dead: in order that presence be achieved, absence must be recognized. In their jostlings, presence and absence may appear agonistic, and often are, but like memories they too are protean, forever changing shape and texture, in perpetual morphosis. In the mediations of translation, absence and presence vanish the moment they endure" (p. 33). The ability of the translator to reactivate the ancient vocabulary of death in the seventh-century keenings (marāṯī) of al-Ḫansā' dwells sadly on the experiences of loss he accumulated throughout his own life. These unique and unmistakable experiences give the translated words a vibrant sense to this poetical genre even for the reader, who reactivates, according to his/her own