Too loud a silence: Celestino Schiaparelli and the historiography of Oriental Studies in Italy

The aim of this article is to examine historiographical works devoted to Oriental Studies in Italy in order to explain the secondary role repeatedly assigned to Celestino Schiaparelli or rather, why his work has often been completely neglected. Moreover, through unpublished letters from pub- lic and private archives, it is possible to assess Celestino Schiaparelli’s support of Carlo Alfonso Nal- lino at the beginning of his career, and to suggest an explanation for Francesco Gabrieli’s mixed feel- ings regarding his predecessor in the chair of Arabic Language and Literature at Sapienza University.