Celestino Schiaparelli’s papers at the Library of the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies. A first survey

Celestino Schiaparelli’s papers, donated with his books to the Scuola Orientale of Sa- pienza University of Rome, and now housed at the Library of the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies, provide us with testimony of his study and research activity on Sicilian Arab poets like Ibn Ḥamdīs and al-Billanubi, on the King Roger’s Book of geographer Edrisi, but contains also transcription and translation, notes and works on some Arabic codices, some of which are unpublished like the Arabic Arithmetic text by Aḥmad b. Muḥ. Ibn al-Hā’im and studies on Egyptian financial administration. The reordering of Schiaparelli’s papers, the identification of manuscripts and their description will be able to help Orientalist scholars shed light on the studies of Arabic poetry and literature by a largely unknown 19th-century Arabist who greatly contributed to the study and knowledge of Sicilian Arabism.