Favole allegoriche dal Manoscritto Vaticano Arabo 594

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.‎