The Department "Italian Institute of Oriental Studies - ISO", established by Chancellor's Decree of 10 June 2010, is the institutional heir, within the University of Rome Sapienza, the Eastern School, the Department of Oriental Studies and the Faculty of Oriental Studies, as deputy central to the promotion of scientific research and higher education in scientific areas related to civilization, culture and languages of Asia and Africa, from antiquity to the contemporary period.
The Faculty of Oriental Studies, established by rector's decree on March 7, 2001, is the heir to a long tradition of Oriental studies, which began with the activation of individual courses (the oldest documented are Hebrew in 1842, and Arabic in 1575). In more recent times, the various Oriental studies courses established over time were united into Institutes (Ancient Near East, Islamic Studies, Indian and East Asian Studies) constituting an Oriental School. These were later dissolved, along with the latter, and most of them were merged into the Department of Oriental Studies, and finally into the Degree Course in Oriental Languages and Civilizations, activated in 1994. The latter was deactivated by the laws of the University Reform; in its place, a new (three-year) Degree Course in Oriental Languages and Civilizations was activated within the Faculty of Oriental Studies, followed by a (two-year) Master's Degree Course of the same name.
The creation of the Faculty of Oriental Studies was a response to the widespread demand for knowledge about "the Orient," which has manifested itself in recent years with a progressive and steady increase in the number of enrollments in the Degree Course in Oriental Languages and Civilizations, which has seen a notable increase, in particular, in the courses of Japanese Language and Literature, Chinese Language and Literature, and Arabic Language and Literature.
The Faculty of Oriental Studies grouped 40 disciplines into five distinct areas: linguistics, philology, archaeology and art history, philosophy-religion, and history, each in turn subdivided according to the following geographical-cultural areas: Ancient Near East, Islam, South and Southeast Asia, and the Far East.
The School of Oriental Studies is simply a convenient name, encompassing numerous and separate teachings, each with its own history, tradition, and spiritual succession, often from master to disciple. These words of mine (I warn you right away) will be little more than a list of disciplines and professors. Many of them I have known personally, others (and they are the majority) only by reputation.
The tradition of Orientalist teaching in Rome is, of course, very ancient (see Rome and Oriental Studies), although limited to Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, all crucial languages for biblical exegesis, religious history, and the ancient literature of Christianity. These teachings, taught from the 14th century until 1870, were recently the subject of a very learned study by my friend and colleague Paolo Daffinà (whom I thank for the extensive information he provided, including on the more recent structure of the Oriental School), and so I will refrain from discussing them. Suffice it to recall that when the Piedmontese arrived in 1870, there were three Orientalist teachings: Hebrew, taught by Luigi Vincenzi; Syriac, by Paolo Scapaticci; and Arabic, by Johannes Bollig, who later taught Sanskrit for a time.
A true Orientalist School, no longer confined to the Ancient Near East and now independent of religious demands and pressures, can only be spoken of in the decades following 1870, when, alongside Arabic and Hebrew, the teaching of Chinese and Japanese was activated, under Professor Carlo Valenziani, and Iranian under Professor Giacomo Lignana.
Until the early 1900s, however, there was no separate Oriental School or Institute of Oriental Studies, and courses were simply taught within the Faculty of Arts, without being grouped together. The Oriental School of the University of Rome (I read in a 1974 note published in the RSO |Rivista degli Studi Orientali| edited by A. Bausani) was founded in 1903 "on the spontaneous initiative of five professors of Oriental subjects in the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy (De Gubernatis, Guidi, Labanca, Nocentini, and Schiaparelli), who voluntarily joined together pursuant to Article 23 of the Special Regulations of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy."Although the draft regulations for an Oriental School they proposed were approved by the Faculty itself, by the Superior Council of Education, and then by the Ministry, the Oriental School never had a clearly defined legal basis, but always maintained its character as an aggregation of Oriental studies on a purely bureaucratic-administrative level. Its core activities remained the management of the library and the publication of the Journal of Oriental Studies, founded in 1907 and now numbered LXVII. The School's teachings were divided into three groups in 1960: the Institute of the Ancient Near East, the Institute of Islamic Studies, and the Institute of Indian and East Asian Studies. The School remained tasked with providing a unifying element for the various Institutes, based on the consideration that a certain connection between them, especially with regard to the library and the RSO, remained appropriate: "beneath the official label, each sector has followed a distinct path and experienced a different fate." This is what Bausani said.
In 1982, the School's three institutes were formed into the Department of Oriental Studies. Not all Orientalist professors, however, joined it, though they remained associated with it through the library and the journal.
Let us now briefly explore these paths and see how, branching out in various directions, they have reached the present day. And I begin first with Arabic and Hebrew.
The first figure we encounter is the Piedmontese Celestino Schiaparelli (1841-1919), who, along with Ignazio Guidi, was a student of Michele Amari and was appointed to the Roman Chair in 1875. Professor Francesco Gabrieli, remembering him (though these are distant memories for him, too), describes him as a taciturn and snarling old man, like Menander's Dyskolos. His scholarly work, predominantly literary in nature, was nonetheless highly scrupulous and precise, born, Gabrieli continues, in the footsteps of the great Amari, but conducted with a philological meticulousness certainly superior to that of the illustrious Sicilian historian. Schiaparelli held the chair until 1916.
A few years earlier, as a result of the Libyan war and therefore to meet the needs not only of science but also of the country's new economic, colonial, and political interests, a new chair was founded in Rome, that of Muslim History and Institutions (Islamistica from 1954). In 1913, Carlo Alfonso Nallino, one of Italy's leading representatives of Arab-Islamic studies, was appointed to this post. He devoted himself, with youthful energy, more to the study of the religion, history, institutions, and sciences of Muslim civilization than to literature. "An expert," Gabrieli says, "in the most abstruse and technically arduous fields of that civilization (theology, law, mysticism, mathematics, and astronomy), he dispensed his doctrine from the chair (which he also physically mounted, often before a single audience) with that cold and limpid precision that was both his strength and his limitation."
n 1919, the chair of Arabic was occupied by Michelangelo Guidi, son of Ignazio, whom we will discuss shortly, in connection with Hebrew. Michelangelo Guidi (I always quote Gabrieli), "succeeding Schiaparelli, brought a mental openness and methodical approach far more modern than that of Amari's nineteenth-century disciple." Michelangelo Guidi, a disciple of Nallino, was the teacher of Francesco Gabrieli, whom we are all honored to know, no less great (may I be permitted to say so here) than the three greats, as he himself calls them: Nallino, Michelangelo Guidi, and Giorgio Levi della Vida, whom I will mention shortly. But Francesco Gabrieli is alive, and life demands silence, in this case, useless, because his work as a scholar and popularizer is well known even outside the circle of strict Arabists. Gabrieli was succeeded in the chair of Arabic for a short time by Paolo Minganti and then by Renato Traini.
Let's now turn to Hebrew. This subject was taught, from 1876 to 1919, by Ignazio Guidi, one of the fathers and masters of Italian Orientalism. In addition to Hebrew, he mastered Greek, Arabic, Syriac (he wrote verses in these languages), the Aramaic dialects, Ancient Ethiopian, and Amharic. His famous work on the primitive home of the Semitic peoples, his numerous philological monographs, his editions of texts, and his extensive historical and literary notes testify to an extraordinary grasp of language, critical acumen, and historical sensitivity.
Ignazio Guidi was succeeded in 1919 by Giorgio Levi della Vida, his disciple, whom I also knew personally. I visited him two or three times in his house on Via Pò, where I remember the great profusion of tables, all cluttered with works in progress, which he maneuvered and perfected like a strategist. But Giorgio Levi della Vida was not only a Hebraist (he held the chair from 1919 to 1931) but also a great Arabist and Islamist. "To the solidity and precision of Nallino (according to Gabrieli) he combined the open-mindedness and problematic nature of Michelangelo Guidi, his close friend from his youth; and to the latter's historical-religious interests, he added more strictly historical ones (the ethical-political history of Amari and Caetani) that were less congenial to Guidi."Giorgio Levi della Vida, dismissed from service in 1932 for refusing to swear the Fascist oath, took refuge in America, only to be reinstated in his teaching post in 1944. He continued to teach until 1956. The chair he reoccupied after 1944 was no longer Hebrew, but Muslim History and Institutions (after 1954, Islamic Studies). The severity of his studies was further tempered by an uncommon literary taste and interest, which, not limited to the Arabic field, extended to classical and modern culture. In this regard, I recall here two of his exceptionally elegant and refreshing volumes: Anecdotes and Arab and Non-Arab Entertainments from 1959 and Ghosts Found from 1966. Giorgio Levi della Vida died in 1967. His student and successor, first at Sapienza University and later at the Second University, was Sabatino Moscati.
Hebrew was taught after Levi Vida by Eugenio Zolli and currently by Jan Albert Soggin. Semitic Philology is currently taught by Professor Giovanni Garbini.
Still in the field of Islamic Studies, one of the most extraordinary figures of our school was Alessandro Bausani, who taught it from 1963 to 1985. Alessandro Bausani was a man of great intellectual curiosity for the most diverse aspects of culture and gifted with an incredible ability to learn languages and speak them with remarkable fluency. His interests were primarily religious. His translation of the Quran is by far the best ever published in the Italian language. He approached Islam, including modern Islam, especially Indian Islam, with a passion and sympathy unknown to many Western scholars, and his translation of the poet Iqbal is well known.
As often happens with great loves, he was not spared disappointment and bitterness, especially on the side of Islam. Alessandro Bausani was a Baha'i, whose persecution, which began during the Qajar era, escalated under the Ayatollah regime, so much so that he was never able to return to the Persia he loved so much.
Bausani was also a scholar of astronomy and astrology, and an excellent mathematician, so much so that he was chosen to be a member of the examining committee for a mathematics exam. Alessandro Bausani, for selfish reasons (but obviously not only for those), is one of the friends whose death I most regret, and every time I face a particularly difficult problem, I say to myself: "If only Bausani were still here!" The Islamic Studies course is currently taught by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti.
Turkish was introduced to our University in 1939, and its teacher was Ettore Rossi, a self-taught Turkologist with a mastery of the three Muslim literary languages (Arabic, Persian, and Turkish) like few others. His interests were not limited to Turkish language and literature but also extended to Arabic. After his untimely death in 1959, Turkish was taught by Alessio Bombaci, and after his death by Anna Masala, who holds the chair.
But let's now turn to Assyriology and Eastern archaeology. This was taught at Sapienza University first by Giulio Cesare Teloni and then by Giuseppe Furlani, whom I vaguely remember as a young student reading his summaries of Babylonian-Assyrian and Hittite religions. Giuseppe Furlani not only devoted himself to Mesopotamian civilization, its language, and its cults, but also studied Syriac philosophy and theology, the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic influences that pervaded it, and John Philoponus and Barhebreus. Like Nallino, like Levi della Vida, he was interested in diverse fields, such as Hebrew and Ethiopian literature, Arabic geography, the Yezidis, the Mandaeans, and astrological and divinatory speculation.
After Giacomo Lignana (1886-1981), the teaching of Iranian Studies at our University was not among the most successful and was always taught by appointment. From 1927 to 1944, however, the professor in charge of this discipline was one of the greatest Italian glottologists and linguists, Antonio Pagliaro (whom others have discussed, so I won't dwell on him here). After him, from 1944 to 1951, Giuseppe Messina, who focused especially on the ancient Iranian religion and later also on the early spread of Christianity in those regions (Nestorians, etc.). Last year, a new chair was established that somewhat fills this gap in our school: Religions and Philosophies of Iran and Eastern Asia, to which Gherardo Gnoli has been appointed. The chair of Persian language and literature is held by Angelo Piemontese.
Although the center of Egyptological studies in Italy has traditionally been Turin, Egyptology has also been cultivated in Rome since 1923, taught by Giulio Farina. After the 1950s, the chair was occupied first by Giuseppe Botti and then by Sergio Donadoni, whom we all know well. Thanks largely to the latter, Sapienza now hosts a major center for Egyptological studies, also present in Egypt with excavations and archaeological campaigns.
Coptic language and literature were taught by Michelangelo Guidi and Sergio Bosticco. The chair is currently held by Tito Orlandi.
But let's move on to India and the Far East. In 1932, one of the professors who most distinguished him, Giuseppe Tucci, joined our University as a professor of Indian and Far Eastern Religions and Philosophies. Born in 1894 (exactly one hundred years ago), Tucci was essentially self-taught. Already proficient in Sanskrit (during the 1914-1918 war, he read Kalhana's Rajatarangini in the trenches), during the five years he spent in India, from 1925 to 1930, he had the opportunity to master the language so well that he could write and speak it fluently. But Tucci's interests were not limited to the many philosophical and religious schools of India, of which he was a profound scholar and pioneer: consider his studies of Indian materialism, ancient Buddhist logic, Tantrism, especially Buddhist Tantrism (even today, in a book recently published in India, the publishers have transcribed one of Tucci's studies), the great Buddhist thinkers, and the Shaivite thinkers. Even before India, he was also interested in China, whose language he knew, writing his History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy, published in 1922.Giuseppe Tucci soon realized that Sanskrit was insufficient for the study of Buddhism. Many works originally written in Sanskrit have survived only in Chinese and Tibetan translations, hence the need to know those languages. Giuseppe Tucci thus learned Tibetan, becoming the greatest Western expert in the language. Nor was his knowledge of the Tibetan language and culture merely a matter of books, but rather one he supplemented through eight expeditions to Tibet, an extremely inaccessible region and then inaccessible to foreigners. Thus were born the volumes of Indo-Tibetica, dedicated to the scientific account of his travels, during which he was able to collect or photograph an extraordinary mass of literary and artistic documents. But Tucci was also a master popularizer, and he recounted these adventurous expeditions to a wider audience in numerous volumes (Tra Santi e Brigandi nel Tibet Ignoto, a Lhasa ed oltre, etc.). Then came the war and the time occupied by the immense disaster was better spent by him in composing the three volumes of Tibetan Painted Scrolls, which, despite the reductive title, are a true encyclopedia of Tibetan culture and religion.
After the war and the resulting bitterness, Tucci became an archaeologist, or rather, a promoter of archaeological excavations, establishing the Excavation Center within the Institute for the Middle and Far East (lsMEO) (founded by him and Giovanni Gentile in 1934). His work as a historian and archaeologist focused first on Nepal, then Swat, and finally Afghanistan and Eastern Iran. His initiative led to the creation of the National Museum of Oriental Art in Rome. His chair is now held by Corrado Pensa.
These brief words (but this applies to all the masters I have so briefly mentioned here) give only a faint idea of Giuseppe Tucci's work. He (a very rare case) was, in addition to being a scientist, an incomparable organizer, working for science and his disciples, whom he always cared for with affection and paternal respect. The knowledge he had gathered, as if in embryo, evolved, at his own initiative, even while he was still alive, into numerous specific teachings.
Let's briefly touch on this. In 1953, the teaching of History of Middle and Far Eastern Art was launched in Rome, which soon split into two courses: History of Indian and Central Asian Art and History of Far Eastern Art, both initially taught by Mario Bussagli, a student of Tucci.
Mario Bussagli, my dear friend, knew how to combine the rigor of scientific research with the rare grace of popularization. Born in Siena, his Tuscan accent lent him an innate ease of speech and writing, making his works, even the most abstruse, easy and enjoyable to read. His interests ranged from the art of the Kushans, India, and China to his native Siena, in whose art and culture he discerned previously unnoticed Eastern influences and motifs. The enthusiasm that Mario Bussagli always instilled in his students was not without fruit, and many of his students continue, in the classroom, the tradition he began.
In 1968, a new chair, History of Muslim Art, was established at Sapienza, to which another of Tucci's students, Umberto Scerrato, was appointed. The History and Geography of East Asia, which had existed before Giuseppe Tucci and had been taught by sinologist Giovanni Vacca since 1923, was passed in 1948 to Luciano Petech, who, a student of Tucci, held it until 1984. The History and Geography of East Asia was then divided into two courses, History of East Asia and History of India and Western Asia, currently taught by Professors Piero Corradini and Paolo Daffinà.
Sanskrit (later called Indology) was taught at our university in 1870 by Johannes Bollig, who also taught Arabic. He was followed by Giacomo Lignana and then Angelo de Gubernatis (1891-1909). Angelo de Gubernatis, a disciple of the famous Weber in Berlin, was a man of great erudition, not only in the field of Oriental studies. I recall here his studies on the Vedas, comparative mythology, Indian archaeology, and Buddhism. A great traveler, an active and enthusiastic man, he at a certain point conceived the idea that Queen Margrethe, who had perhaps unwisely shown too much interest in his studies and in India, should learn Sanskrit, and he insisted on it. This did not materialize.
Angelo de Gubernatis was succeeded by Carlo Formichi, who held the chair of Sanskrit from 1931 to 1941. Formichi's scientific activity also encompassed many aspects of Indology, from the Vedas to Indian religious and philosophical thought, from Buddhism to Kautilya's political science. An excellent expert in Sanskrit, he not only translated episodes from the Mahabharata and entire poems, such as the Raghuvamsa and the Buddhacarita, from that language into Italian, but also translated passages from the Divine Comedy from Italian into Sanskrit. After Formichi, Sanskrit teaching was held until 1949 by Ambrogio Ballini, and then by Giuseppe Tucci, and then by Alfonsa Ferrari, with whom, a student of Tucci and also a good expert in Tibetan, I took, so to speak, my first steps.
Among the professors of Chinese and Japanese, from 1910 until recently, always held by appointment, the most prominent figure was the Jesuit Father Pasquale D'Elia, who was primarily involved with the Catholic missions in China and Matteo Ricci, whose works he edited. The chair of Chinese is currently held by Giuliano Bertuccioli and that of Japanese by Maria Teresa Orsi.
I have come to the end of my presentation. Many of you will have noticed that I have always emphasized the succession between master and disciple. Beyond the transmission of doctrine and method and the particular approach to research, the living relationship between master and disciples is the source of a succession of thoughts, ideas, feelings, and impressions that form a spiritual community, a family-like bond based not on blood but on knowledge. This bond always persists, even when research and results diverge; it survives even minor differences and discrepancies, and only through this bond can we speak of a school. In this sense, the existence of the Roman Orientalist school, even though, as we have seen, it has never had a precise status and has branched out along many paths, is an effective reality of which we are rightly proud.
(Raniero Gnoli - La scuola Orientale)