Acknowledgements
At the end of this journey, or rather the first stage of this journey, it is my great pleasure to thank all those who have accompanied me along the road with their assistance, counsel, and friendship.
In the first place, I would like to mention His Holiness Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria, for allowing me to access the collections of the Egyptian monasteries and the Patriarchal library. My visit to Egypt in September 2018 proved crucial for the entire enterprise. I hope that this work, in which so many sources of different provenance come together to compose a harmonious mosaic of Biblical and Church history, may strengthen the bonds of unity between Rome and Alexandria, Peter and Mark.
With the same spirit of gratitude, I salute Cardinal Angelo Scola, President Emeritus of the Oasis International Foundation. My debt to him is immense, for his testimony and the opportunities that he gave me in terms of encounters, exchanges, method, and, last but not least, for the many journeys to the Middle East that helped me stay in touch with the living reality of this region. Also, it was Oasis that sent me to the 2012 Christian Arabic conference in Malta where, looking for something to present, I first came across the name of Ibn al-ʿAmīd.
This work could not have been envisaged (let alone brought to completion) without the unforgettable period that I spent at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, as a Willis F. Doney visiting member to the School of Historical Studies, from January to July 2019. The IAS is the place that every scholar dreams of. There I had the opportunity to pursue my research in complete freedom, without bureaucracy, perpetual task switching, commuting, and other nuisances (ḥirfat al-adab), immersed in a stimulating community and the full splendor of nature. I wish to thank in a special way Sabine Schmidtke, who selected my project and provided me with generous guidance throughout my stay. Her example of methodological rigor and her dedication to work, which I had the privilege to witness daily by sharing the same room in the library, was and continues to be a great source of inspiration to me. I am also grateful to Gabriel Said Reynolds, my American brother, and Mark Swanson for having graciously endorsed my application.
I equally pay homage to the memory of Nikolai Seleznyov, who died during the Covid pandemic at 50. We came to know each other by virtue of our shared interests and when I was drafting my IAS application, an e-mail from him proved decisive in orienting my choice towards Ibn al-ʿAmīd. As the scribe of ANT admonished in his colophon,
ما من كاتبٍ إلّا سيُبلى ويَبقى الدهرَ ما كتبتْ يداه فلا تكتُبْ بيدك غيرَ شيءٍ يسُرّك في القيامة أن تراه .
No writer can escape death, but what his hands wrote lasts forever.Do not write anything with your hand except that which you will be happy to see at the Resurrection.
Throughout his career, Nikolai took heed of these words. May he rest in peace.
At IAS, I had stimulating exchanges with Nicola Di Cosmo, Glen Bowersock, Christopher Jones, George Kiraz (who also welcomed me as a student in his Syriac course at Princeton), Hassan Ansari, Pier Mattia Tommasino and Benedetta Tilli, Tommaso Tesei and Marie Shalev, Gabriele Pedullà and Patricia Gaborik, Christian Mauder, Johannes Pahlitzsch, Sylvie Jolie and Paul Bertrand, Rodrigo Cordero and Soledad Pinto, and many others who enriched me as a person and a scholar. I am particularly grateful to Seth and Rachel Kimmel for their friendship and for having engraved an unforgettable New York page in our family album, and to our IAS neighbors Beshara Doumani and Issmat Attereh for some memorable evenings and their hospitality in Providence, as well as to Sean Gurd and Julija Šukys, who patiently tolerated a very noisy and at times dissonant family above their ceiling.
Michael Cook met with me repeatedly and put me on the right track concerning the Seljukid background of “Rūzbihān’s History,” while Lara Harb invited me to the Princeton Brown Bag Lunch, Presentations, where I tested many ideas for the first time. I am indebted to Valentina Sagaria Rossi for her careful analysis of the manuscript O1. Our American stay was blessed by the warm and operative friendship of Elisabetta and Jeff Erickson and the company of Brad and Federica, John and Kelly, Sophie, and Sophia and our New Jersey summer would not have been the same without the dynamism and warmth of Roberto Tottoli, Francesca Bellino, Lorenzo, and Ludovico.
The Catholic University of Milan was of constant support during my furlough at IAS and afterwards. I wish to express my gratitude to my research group and in a special way its director Giovanni Gobber, Dean of the Faculty of Linguistic Sciences and Foreign Languages, for his encouragement and appreciation, which I have experienced throughout all these years, in words and deeds. It is thanks to him that I was able to bring this project to completion within a reasonable time. It is also my privilege to mention here my colleague Wael Farouq, who shares with his compatriot Ibn al-ʿAmīd the same resolve in promoting the cause of dialogue among civilizations and people.
Throughout my Egyptian field trip of September 2018, Father Rafic Greiche, the spokesman of the Catholic Church in Egypt, greatly facilitated the communication with the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, while the IDEO granted me generous hospitality and Saad Tabet took me around the different monasteries and their “liaison offices” in Cairo with unwavering patience. When I had already despaired of the Coptic Museum of Cairo, Kristian Heal of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute at BYU came to my rescue, sending me the scan of the manuscript Taʾrīḫ 266 as part of an ongoing digitization project. It is hoped that similar projects may free the patrimony that is at present held hostage by the Museum, certainly against the intentions of its founder. With instantaneous solicitude Riccardo Paredi provided me with a digital copy of the manuscript kept at the American University of Beirut and checked the alphabetical order in the index of names, while Jean Druel answered all my queries with imperturbable calm, drawing from the inexhaustible treasures of the IDEO, the new Library of Alexandria for Arabic and Islamic studies. Back in Cairo in December 2022, and once again hosted by the IDEO’s friends, I spent an unforgettable morning with the friars of the Franciscan Centre of Christian Oriental Studies in Mosky, who keep alive an outstanding tradition of scholarship as well as the memories of a cosmopolitan Cairo. In the same spirit, I wish to thank H.E. Mgr. Jules Boutros, Syro-Catholic Curial Bishop, and Fr. Yusif Dergham, responsible of the Patriarchal library, for allowing me to consult the manuscripts kept at the Monastery of Sharfeh. I am equally grateful to Elizabeth Bolman, Patrick Godeau, and the American Research Center in Egypt, which granted me permission to reproduce some images from the beautiful volume Monastic Visions.
Yael Ben Israel graciously sent me a copy of the very much needed Arabic Josippon, while I am indebted to Alexandre Roberts for the classy touch of identifying the passage concerning the griffin in the Arabic translation of the Pseudo-Caesarius. Samuel Moawad kept me informed about his progress on his edition of Ibn al-Rāhib, Benno van Dalen directed me to the Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus website and project, and Luke Yarbrough was kind enough to share many of his articles. Carsten Hoffmann sent me his PhD dissertation on the Ethiopic translation of Ibn al-ʿAmīd, of which I had no knowledge, and read a first version of the section concerning the Ethiopic tradition and the geographical treatise, suggesting several corrections. Bishara Ebeid’s help proved decisive to decipher the Garshuni colophons of two manuscripts, while my colleague Maurizia Calusio transliterated all Russian titles in the bibliography. Martino Masolo helped me tame a couple of wild Persian expressions and prepared the index of Biblical passages, while Ester Brunet offered sure guidance regarding Tintoretto and the Scuola grande di San Rocco. It is a great source of hope to see how many people were ready to help me absolutely gratuitously and I apologize here if I have forgotten anyone.
I am honored to see my edition published in the Arabic Christianity Texts and Studies series and I wish to thank its editor, Alexander Treiger, for his steady trust, wise advice, and untiring patience as he waited for the continuously delayed submission, as well as his careful reading of the manuscript, which greatly improved it. I am also indebted to the two readers, Stephen Davis and Elie Dannaoui, for their valuable comments which led me to clarify some points and rethink others. Stefan Hagel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences deserves a special thank you for having resolved all my doubts about Classical Text Editor (and for having created the program, in the first place). I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to Franca de Kort from Brill for her abiding support, and to Pieter te Velde for seeing the volume through the press.
Also, I wish to thank Francesca Salima Karroum for having transcribed a good deal of O1 in the initial stages of the project, Ahmad Wagih and Camille Eid for having checked the correctness of the explanatory notes in the Arabic apparatus, and Livia Muccini for the stimulating sessions of work that bring us together every week within her PhD program.
Sophie A. Brady, PhD candidate at Princeton, was exemplary in her dedication to the tedious, and at times desperate, task of improving the level of my English. Thank you, Sophie, for your friendship, it is among the greatest gifts of our time in America. You have earned a special place, not only in the very exclusive club of the connoisseurs of Ibn al-ʿAmīd but also, and forever, in the heart of my family.
To my family goes my last and sincerest words of gratitude. To my wife Stefania, for having been at my side all along the road, feigning ignorance of the immense amount of time that I stole from her, evening after evening, vacation after vacation, for giving me imperative ultimata that moved the project forward, and for canceling them, every time with a smile. And to Kervens and Djouvens, who very quickly learned of the existence of l’edizione, the mythological animal that so frequently took their daddy away from them.
Despite my best efforts, this book is not free from flaws and errors. I kindly ask the readers to point them out for my instruction (and perhaps for a future list of corrigenda). And now ahead to volume two: Ibn al-ʿAmīd deserves to have his work published in full.