أوجنيو گريفيني

أوجنيو غريفيني سنة 1899م، القاهرة.

أوجنيو گريفِيني (بالإيطالية: Eugenio Griffini) ( 1296 - 1343ه‍ / 26 ديسمبر 1886 في ميلانو - 3 مايو 1925 في القاهرة ) هو مستشرق إيطالي وعالم لغويات.

له تآليف منها «التحفة اللوبية في اللغة العامية الطرابلسية».^[1]

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السيرة

Coming from a well-to-do Milanese family (his father, Rocco, who died prematurely on 25 February 1896 , was chief inspector of the Municipality of Milan and his mother, Maria Giacomina Reina, was a cousin of the architect and senator Luca Beltrami ), Eugenio Griffini showed himself already at a young age for oriental languages and in particular for Arabic .

الدراسات

The passion for oriental languages was born in him when he was still attending the Royal High School - Ginnasio Alessandro Manzoni , where he was taught by Lodovico Corio [1] , who put him in touch with one of his former students, Giuseppe Caprotti, from Magenta , who with his brother Louis [2] had set up a trading house at Ṣanʿāʾ in Yemen, from which he imported not only coffee , but also carpets and oriental objects, as well as a large quantity of books and manuscripts .

His study of the Arabic language was mainly self- taught , but with such appreciable results that the Austrian arabist Eduard Glaser ( 1855 - 1908 ) wanted to meet him, invited him for a short stay in Germany (in Munich , Easter 1897 ) and he also offered to continue oriental studies with him. Instead, Griffini preferred to continue his high school studies, deepening his knowledge of Arabic at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana , then directed by Antonio Maria Ceriani .

In the same summer of 1898 he obtained his classical high school diploma and the diploma in Arabic, recently instituted, at the Royal Oriental Institute of Naples (June 30, 1898, as an external). He then enrolled in the Faculty of Law of the University of Genoa , where he graduated in 1902 with a thesis on Islamic law .

Even before completing university he made his first trip to Egypt (March 1899); later he made several other trips: to London and Paris in 1902, to Tunisia and Algeria in 1905, again to Tunis in 1907.

المخطوطات اليمنية

In 1908, on the occasion of a move, he found himself in the need to return the numerous Yemeni manuscripts that Caprotti had made available to him for his studies, and fearing that the latter would then put them up for sale, dispersing an invaluable cultural heritage, he to do to find a way to ensure their permanence in Milan. Assisted by his cousin Luca Beltrami and by the new prefect of the Ambrosiana, mgr. Achille Ratti , he managed to find 25 benefactors who took charge of the large sum of 30,000 lire of the time, necessary for the purchase of the manuscripts and donated them to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. These volumes, which constitute the so-called "new fund" of Arabic manuscripts, consist of 1610 codes, mostly miscellaneous, which contain over 5000 works of notable historical and philological interest.

After this acquisition, the Ambrosiana entrusted Griffini with the task of drawing up the catalogue, a work that he undertook with passion managing to catalogue, in various subsequent publications, the first 475 codices (the entire series A, B, C of the catalogue) plus about sixty others from the H series. To get an idea of how vast and demanding the undertaking was, it suffices to remember that the Catalog of manuscripts was completed much later, with the contribution of Oscar Löfgren and Renato Traini , who completed, after Löfgren's death, only in 2011. [3]

الحرب الإيطالية التركية

In 1911 the Italo-Turkish war broke out , and Griffini, who had already turned his interests to the study of Libyan Arabic , managed to write a manual of Tripolian Arabic with an extensive dictionary (which was published by the publisher Hoepli in 1913 ), placed himself at the disposal of the Supreme Command and left for Tripoli where he arrived in early January 1912. Here he lent his services to directly contact the most influential personalities of the country and to better understand the situation of the population. We owe him the rescue and reorganization of the Turkish Archive, which at first threatened to be destroyed, as well as in-depth toponymy studies for the preparation of updated geographical maps of the territory. His stay in Tripolitania took place in two stages, for many months, in 1912 and 1913.

However, his proposals for the spelling to be used in the toponymy of Tripolitania encountered unexpected opposition. In fact, towards the end of 1914, the Ministry of the Colonies expressed its disapproval to Griffini of the transcription criteria he adopted, probably inspired by the criticisms expressed by Carlo Alfonso Nallino . All this, but also some family reasons, led him to give up the assignment received from the Military Geographical Institute, and so he wrote to Nallino himself on 31 October 1914 :

	«I do not regret, after all, having collected so many spelling and other inaccuracies in the names of Arab-Libyan places and tribes, because this made me decide on a passage I had been thinking about for some time in the interest of Arab-Libyan studies and works on the one hand, which in Rome are more in their place and in better hands than here, and Arab-Jemenian studies and works on the other. Today I sent notice of the decision to the Directorate of the Military Geographical Institute, which consequently is now forced to rely exclusively on you for the part of the work that was entrusted to me. [...] finally the reasons for which I give up, in the interest of the Institute and also for my own material difficulties, the planned trip to Cologne in the period December 1914-January 1915, on which it was already agreed [...]. You saw how inaccurate and unreliable my notes were; now you know that the field is completely open to your initiative, and only to yours [...] I also place at your disposal the dialectological material collected in Tripoli during your second stay, and therefore also the popular songs, because you use it during your journey and then make it your own. I haven't written down the tribe lists yet because I have a lot to do at the Ambrosiana, but you'll have them as soon as possible» so that she may use it during her journey and then make it her own. I haven't written down the tribe lists yet because I have a lot to do at the Ambrosiana, but you'll have them as soon as possible» so that she may use it during her journey and then make it her own. I haven't written down the tribe lists yet because I have a lot to do at the Ambrosiana, but you'll have them as soon as possible»
—( أرشيف معهد كارلو ألفونسو نلينو للشرق في روما، رسائل گريفيني» )

Although the Royal Military Geographical Institute continued to make use of his advice, in 1914 he therefore decided to return to Milan to resume the work of cataloging the manuscripts, auspices by Mons. Ratti, who in the meantime had become librarian of the Vatican Library . Alongside the catalogue, Griffini was very busy editing and publishing the voluminous corpus of jurisprudence of Zayd ibn Ali , the reference text of the Shiite branch of the Zaidites , until then very little known and studied (most of the Yemeni manuscripts contain works by Zaydi area).

After his return from Libya, Griffini obtained the free teaching position and in 1916 began to teach courses in Arabic literature at the Scientific-Literary Academy of Milan (which would soon merge into the University of Milan ).

في القاهرة

He later obtained the post of full professor of Arabic at the University of Florence , where, however, he was unable to hold courses, having in the meantime been called to Cairo.

Prince Fuʾād , the future king of Egypt , had known Griffini during his frequent trips to Italy, and had established excellent personal relations with him. When the prince, engaged in the development of the Egyptian University , had offered him, in 1910 , a chair for teaching Ethnography of Muslim countries and Economic Geography, Griffini had willingly accepted, but subsequent events, and in particular the Libyan parenthesis of 1912-1914, had prevented him from implementing this project.

With these premises, Griffini was unable to refuse the offer made to him in 1920 by Fuʾād (now reigning with the title of sultan ), to come to Cairo as Court Librarian. When Fuad became King of Egypt in 1922 , Griffini was appointed Secretary to the King.

While working in Cairo, Griffini returned to Italy at least once a year, mostly during the summer holidays, also to stay close to his mother. His last stay in Italy was in the summer of 1924. Once back in Egypt, he did his utmost in organizing the International Geographical Congress , which was held in Cairo in the spring of 1925. A neglected indisposition, precisely to accompany visiting Italian congressmen at the Pyramids , he degenerated into pneumonia and on May 3, 1925 he died in Cairo, at the Umberto I Italian Hospital.

King Fuʾād I decreed solemn state honors for him, and the body was brought back to his homeland at the expense of the King of Italy . Now it rests in the cemetery of Cireggio , above Lake Orta , the country of origin of the maternal family. As a final disposition, he wanted all his books and manuscripts (1221 printed works and 56 manuscripts) to be donated to the Ambrosiana. A small collection of his books and various writings is also kept in the "Sormani" Library in Milan (Miola 1994-1995).