Il sorgere dell’iranistica pre-islamica in Italia nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento

This paper deals with early scholarly works in the field of Pre-Islamic Iranian studies in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. After reviewing the cultural, academic and bibliographical framework concerning the rise of pre-Islamic Iranistics – a situation quite different from that of the Indian studies –, the paper will focus on the few relevant scholars who wrote on Old and Middle Iranian texts and languages. It must be borne in mind that, before the beginning of the 20th century, «Iran was not the focus of interest of any scholar. Iranian studies were late in finding a continuity of tradition, a stability of university-level instruction, or a homogeneity of discipline», as Piemontese correctly observed many years ago. The scientific activities of brilliant Filosseno Luzzatto and Willy Bang on Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions, a handful of painstaking articles of Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, a couple of essays of Carlo Giussani on the Avestan language and the wide production of the “amateur” Italo Pizzi, essentially a popularizer and translator, are thoroughly examined. Finally, the multifaceted activity as a scientist and brilliant popularizer of Giacomo Lignana, the real founder of scientific Iranian studies in our country, who was a professor first in Naples and later in Rome, is also described. Some of his unpublished writings are closely investigated, with reference to the description and partial translation of some Middle Persian books.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, an outstanding Bartholomae’s pupil, that the Iranian studies returned permanently to Italy and particularly to Rome in the late 1920s.