Aubin-Louis Millin e la civiltà islamica attraverso disegni e appunti inediti

The contribution aims at considering the Arab-Islamic objects recorded in Millin’s unpublished manuscript notes, and on drawings com- missioned during his travel in Italy, especially in Puglia and in Venice. Through these docu- ments, and the unpublished correspondence of A.I. Silvestre de Sacy, it is possible to offer new details about the only Arabic inscription found in Lucera, nowadays apparently lost; to discuss an unpublished drawing of an epigraph, once in Marseille, of which only a fragment survives; and to reconsider the inscriptions of the Mauso- leum of Bohemund in Canosa. Moreover, Millin’s notes on Arab-Islamic pieces from Italian collections document the network of scholars whom he was relying for the reading of mate- rial such as epigraphs and vases, as well as the local connections he was able to make during his trip in the South of Italy. The curiosity that drove Millin towards the Arab-Islamic artis- tic and cultural heritage in Italy and the inter- disciplinary study he was trying to carry, is a valuable approach for the comprehension of the complex medieval South-Italian culture and history in which different languages, religions and cultures were in contact.