Francesco Gabrieli (27 April 1904, in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

– 13 December 1996, in Rome) was counted among the most distinguished Italian Arabists together with Giorgio Levi Della Vida and Alessandro Bausani, of whom he was respectively a student and colleague at the Sapienza Università di Roma (then simply the "Università di Roma").

Life

Francesco Gabrieli was the son of Giuseppe Gabrieli, librarian to the

Accademia dei Lincei The (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed"), anglicised as the Lincean Academy, is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome, Italy. Founded in ...

. He learned

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

with his father before studying classical

Arabic literature Arabic literature ( / ALA-LC: ''al-Adab al-‘Arabī'') is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is ''Adab (Islam), Adab'', which comes from a meaning of etiquett ...

at the University of Rome writing his degree thesis on the poet Al-Mutanabbi.Giuliano Lancioni
Gabrieli, Francesco
''Encyclopedia Iranica'', 2000. Accessed 19 March 2012. From 1928 to 1935 Gabrieli worked as an editor for ''Enciclopedia Italiana''. From 1935 to 1938 he taught at the Naples Eastern University. In 1938 became professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Rome, staying there until his retirement in 1979. He focused on Arabic studies. He died in Rome.

Works

* ''Storia della letteratura araba'', 1951 * (ed., tr.) ''Alfarabius compendium legum Platonis'', 1952. Volume 3 of ''Plato Arabus'', ed. Richard Walzer. * (ed., tr.) ''Storici arabi delle Crociate'', 1957. Translated by E. J Costello as ''Arab historians of the Crusades'', 1957. * ''Gli arabi'', 1957. Translated by Salvator Attanasio as ''The Arabs: a compact handbook'', 1963. * (ed.) ''L'antica societá beduina'', 1959. * ''The Arab revival''. Translated by Lovett F. Edwards, 1961. * ''L'Islàm nella storia; saggi di storia e storiografia musulmana'', 1966. * ''Maometto e le grandi conquiste arabe'', 1967. Translated by Virginia Luling and Rosamund Linell as ''Muhammad and the conquests of Islam'', 1968.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gabrieli, Francesco 1904 births 1996 deaths Italian Arabists Italian orientalists 20th-century Italian historians