Favole allegoriche dal Manoscritto Vaticano Arabo 594

Abstract

Abstract Scrolling through Elenco dei manoscritti arabi islamici della Biblioteca vaticana (The List of Islamic Arabic manuscripts in the Vatican Library) by Giorgio Levi Della Vida (1935, p. 65), I was intrigued by manuscript Vat. Ar. 594, entitled Riwāyāt ḍiḥkiyya (Humorous Tales), dating back to the 17th century. After examining its content, I was attracted to: a) its predominant use of Egyptian; b) its avant-garde intent to teach (what’s more, in Italy), the vernacular rather than classic or standard Arabic for communication purposes; c) I was amused by the ironic, moral and satirical nature of the text and its dialogue reworkings; d) I was struck by the originality of the description of its protagonists that unfold and end with sui generis moral advice. For these reasons, I decided to study his fables (143r-187v), setting myself three main objectives: to illustrate a) the representations of the protagonists; b) some characteristic linguistic elements of 17th century Egyptian; c) Italian-inspired avant-garde use of colloquial neo-Arabic for language teaching purposes, found in the works written in Rome at San Pietro in Montorio school.