The collections of the Istituto per l’Oriente ‘Carlo Alfonso Nallino’: A Note on Two Recently Discovered Yemeni Manuscripts

Abstract

Ettore Rossi, a distinguished scholar of the past century, gathered a library specialised above all in the Turkish world, but also including some materials in Arabic characters. The entire Rossi holdings — private library, manuscripts collection, personal archive — are now housed in Rome, with the Institute for the Orient ‘Carlo Alfonso Nallino’, which acquired the bulk of these materials in 1958. A recent project for the re-inventory and physical rearrangement of the archives and book collections brought to light two Yemeni manuscripts, originally owned by Rossi, but not previously known. The current note provides brief description, opening both manuscripts to public domain and serving to supplement the catalogue, Islamic Manuscripts from the Library of the Istituto per l’Oriente Carlo Alfonso Nallino, published in 2017.