Istituto Italiano di Studi Orientali - ISO

In the year 1900, inside the Qubbat al-khazna (the Umayyad Great Mosque courtyard), an important discovery was made: there were found documents related to the very same mosque, certificates of pilgrimage to Mecca, Qur’anic fragments, Arabic and Turkish literary texts, parchment fragments in Latin language and script, as well as Latin fragments in Greek script, fragments in old French, Hebrew (also Samaritan texts), Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, as well as in Greek – attested both in Greek language and script and in Arabic language and Greek script. The entire ensemble of manuscripts dates back to the period spanning from the Late Antiquity to Modern times.
The aim of the paper is to shed light on the circumstances of this discovery – whose consistency and fate are often ignored or misread – and to offer a comprehensive outline of the materials found. In particular, some early Qur’anic fragments, which were a part of that find, will be presented and their palaeographical and codicological peculiarities highlighted.

NB: A new edition and translation of the Vat.ar. 368 is now available (see the section "Books").

"The manuscript Vaticano arabo 368, containing the text known as Hadith Bayad wa Riyad, is under many respect, an unicum. The text was first edited and translated in Spanish in 1941 by A.R. Nykl and then some of the 14 miniatures illustrating the text were often published as beautiful plates without paying any attention to the text.
The codex remained pratically unstudied for decades but various articles were recently devoted to it and a new English translation is now available. However the most recent studies dedicated to the manuscript miss a number of details, related both to its history and to the text, and givea questionable interpretation of its first illustration.
This paper aims, therefore, at reconsidering the whole manuscript. Through a codicological analysis of the codex and a careful examination of both text and images, new details are pointed out for dating the manuscript and understanding the context of its production. Last but not least this contribution intends to shed light on the disregarded history of the codex.""

More than 60 years ago, it was still possible to speak about Latin and Greek palaeographies
as the only fields in which palaeographical studies had reached scientific dignity.
Nowadays, it is important and urgent to review, reconsider and possibly enlarge the
boundaries of palaeography. The existence of palaeographical studies devoted to linguistic
contexts different from the Greek and Latin ones is more and more a reality that
cannot be ignored. The progressive recognition, and integration, of non-Classical manuscript
cultures can only strengthen palaeography as a field of research. Broadening
the field of palaeographical research will also contribute to create a new generation of
scholars more conscious of the object and the method of palaeography: some recent
publications dedicated to Arabic calligraphy show, for example, a basic misunderstanding
between the field of palaeography and calligraphy.

The paper focuses on the mint of Ta‘izz in Rasulid times (7th-9th c. AH/AD 13th-15th c.) and offers an updated review of the numismatic literature devoted to the activity of this mint. An anonymous Arabic source, not yet considered for the history of this mint, give hints on the process of cutting dies and striking new dirhams in connection with the accession to power of al-Ašraf (778-803 AH/AD 1363-1376). The parallel, made in some previous publications, between the mint of Tha‘bāt, where the Ta‘izz mint moved for some years, and Mabyan is questioned as well as the existence of moving mints in Rasulid Yemen.

The volume gathers the Proceedings of the Second International Symposium “Simone Assemani” on Islamic Numismatics (Trieste, 29-31 August 2008). The papers, by Italian and international scholars, deal with various domains of the Numismatic research covering a wide chronological and geographical span. Seals, coins from archaeological excavations, Arabic coins with Persian legends or with Chinese characters and contributions on Islamic coin collections in Italy are some of the themes of the fourteen papers published. Moreover these papers examine, among other topics, the Islamic and Norman Sicily, the coinage of the Mamluk and post-Ottoman conquest Egypt, the great export of silver from Europe to Islamic lands at the beginning of the XIIIth century.

"Kiev, June 1872. Ludovico Stanzani, an Italian architect, dies and bequest some hundreds of gems and his numismatic collection, consisting of 9.251 coins – circa half of which Islamic – to a certain “Archaeological Cabinet” of Rome. The acquisition of the Stanzani bequest by the Capitoline Museums, where the coin collection and the gems are currently kept, gave stimulus to the foundation of the Capitoline Coin Cabinet itself but it is just after more than a century of oblivion that the Stanzani Collection was rediscovered in 2003.
The contribution is intended to illustrate the history of this collection according to the documents found in Roman archives (Archivio Storico Capitolino, Pontificia Insigne Accademia di Belle Lettere e Arti dei Virtuosi al Pantheon Archives, Archives of the Accademia di San Luca, Vicariate of Rome Archives, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives) and to shed light on Ludovico Stanzani's biography"

Capitale politique du sultanat du Yémen à partir du XIIIe siècle, Ta‘izz ne devint que progressivement un centre religieux important du royaume, se dotant de monuments dont certains font encore aujourd’hui la gloire de la cité. Dans le prolongement de la première journée d’étude qui avait traité le 11 mars 2011 à Paris de « Ta‘izz et son territoire au Moyen Âge », la présente rencontre s’intéressera plus particulièrement la place des espaces religieux (mosquées, oratoires, mausolées, madrasas) au sein de la cité. Comment expliquer leur répartition au sein de la ville ? Dans quelle mesure ont-ils orienté son développement urbain ? Quelles pratiques et usages spécifiques se sont-ils développés autour de ces lieux ? Une attention toute particulière sera consacrée à l’étude de la madrasa Ashrafiyya, en confrontant données historiques et textuelles et les résultats de l’observation menée par l’équipe de restauration lors de travaux récents.

"The paper aims at illustrating the results of my latest researches on the life and
coin collection of Ludovico Stanzani. The recent discovery of a plaster bust
informs us, for example, about Stanzani’s affiliation to the Freemasonry and
gives a face to his name. Some handwritten tickets accompanying his coins give
evidence of the numismatic literature used to identify the pieces – probably by
Stanzani himself or by someone who had access to his collection.
In the Appendix figures the catalogue of a group of 150 specimens, among which
Golden Horde issues and anonymous Mongol coins."