Celestino Schiaparelli (1841-1919): his scientific legacy

This paper aims to throw new light on the legacy of Celestino Schiaparelli. The first professor of Arabic Language and Literature at Sapienza University after the Italian Unification, Schiaparelli taught there for over forty years (1875-1916). In this period, during which he tutored numerous future scholars in the various disciplines of Oriental Studies, he also served as the first librarian at the Library of the Royal National Lincean Academy. A reassessment of Schiaparelli’s scientific production, considering his published and unpublished works, and reviewing his intellectual legacy in a wider sense, leads us to rediscover his crucial role in Oriental Studies and the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.