OROARAB - The Orosius Arabicus and the Arab Vision of the Graeco-Roman World: Researches on the Mediterranean Responsiveness

ID Call: HORIZON-MSCA-2020-PF-01 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships

Sapienza's role in the project: Host Institution

Supervisor: Gaetano Lettieri

Fellow: Marco Di Branco

Department: History, Anthropology, Religion, Arts and Performing Arts 

Project start date: September 1, 2018

Project end date: August 31, 2021

Abstract:

The “Orosius Arabicus” project (The Orosius Arabicus and the Arab Vision of the Graeco-Roman World: Researches on the Mediterranean Responsiveness) has been awarded by the European Commission with a Fellowship “Marie Curie Global” (2018-2021) involving the American University of Beirut, the Université de Tunis and Sapienza University of Rome. The core of the project is the English translation and the historical-philological commentary of the Book of Orosius (Kitāb Hurūšiyūš), a medieval Arabic version of the Historiae Adversus Paganos by the Latin historiographer Paulus Orosius (4th-5th century AD). The only manuscript that preserves this text was discovered in the 1930s by Giorgio Levi of Vida, is preserved in the Library of Columbia University in New York and was recently edited (without translation and commentary) by the Spanish scholar Mayte Penelas. The Kitāb Hurūšiyūš is a work of extraordinary importance, which has left a deep mark on Western Islamic historiography, coming to constitute for many Arab intellectuals a unique and fundamental gateway to the history of the Greco-Roman world.