Monete turche /Turkisch coins in the manuscript notes of Ippolito Rosellini (1800-1843)

Nicola Francesco Ippolito Baldassarre Rosellini (1800-1843), considered to be the father of Italian Egyptological studies, had wide interests spanning from Oriental languages (Coptic, Hebrew, Arabic) to Archaeology, from History to Numismatics. This paper discusses Ippolito Rosellini’s numismatic manuscript notes which have hitherto not received the attention they deserve. As Jean-François Champollion’s notes, Rosellini’s notes mirror his interest in Islamic numismatics. Beyond reproducing the contents of some of the major catalogues of Arabic coin collections in Italy – such as the Borgia, Nani and Majnoni collections – Rosellini had some competence in reading Arabic legends on coins. In an unpublished manuscript he identified a group of coins that he took to be Turkish; these are examined in the present article in the context of the 19th-century Oriental and numismatic studies in Italy and Europe. The correspondence of private collectors, such as Onofrio Bonghi (1780-18??), and the archives of academics, such as Joachim Lelewel (1786-1861), offer an interesting frame in which considering Rosellini numismatic interest for Arabic coins. The numismatic material, labelled by Rosellini as Monete Turche, is identified, and an edition of his notes is provided in the Appendix. However, not all the coins in in Rosellini’s notes were struck by Ottoman sultans – some of them belong to different dynasties.