Le prime conoscenze del medio-iranico nell'Italia dell'Ottocento

This paper deals with early scholarly works in the area of Middle Iranian studies in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. After reviewing the cultural, academic and bibliographical framework surrounding the rise of pre-Islamic Iranistics – a quite different situation from that of Indian studies –, the paper will address the few relevant figures who wrote on Middle-Persian: Ascoli, Bang, Pizzi, essentially a popularizer and translator, and above all Giacomo Lignana, the real founder of scientific Iranian studies in our country, who was a professor in Naples at first and later in Rome. Some of his unpublished papers are closely investigated, with reference to the description and partial translation of some Middle Persian books. It was only with the outstanding figure of Antonino Pagliaro, a Bartholomae’s pupil, that Middle Iranian studies returned permanently to Italy and particularly to Rome in the late 1920s.