Salvatore Cusa

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Salvatore Cusa (born September 20, 1822 in Palermo , † November 30, 1893 ibid) was an Italian Arabist , palaeographer and diplomat .

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Salvatore was the son of Baron Girolamo Cusa and Antonia Amari from the family of the Counts of Sant'Adriano. After attending school with the Benedictines of Monreale , he studied law at the University of Palermo and received his doctorate in both rights in 1844. He took an active part in the revolution in Sicily of 1848, during Garibaldi's Platoon of Thousands he became mayor of the city for some time on May 29, 1860 and was also responsible for the administration of the province. From 1855 he taught palaeography and diplomatics at the University of Palermo. In 1875 he became a professor of Arabic language and literature. For many years he was Dean of the Philosophical Faculty. He was one of the founders and first lecturers of the Scuola di paleografia e diplomatica at the State Archives in Palermo. In the Società siciliana per la storia patria , founded in 1873 , he was one of the initiators of the Archivio Storico Siciliano and one of the founding members with Raffaele Starrabba and Isidoro Carini and was elected honorary chairman on April 7, 1893, a few months before his death. He was part of the organizing committee of the IV Congress of Italian Natural Scientists in Palermo in 1863 and was vice-president of a section of the IV International Congress of Orientalists in Florence in 1878.

Cusa compiled a catalog of the Arabic manuscripts available in Palermo and published “Il libro intorno alle Palme”, a translation of an Arabic text from a manuscript of the Biblioteca nazionale (today Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana ). To this end, he published a treatise on the history of the date palm in Sicily.

His publication in 1982 of over two hundred Greek, Arabic or Arabic-Greek documents from Sicilian archives and libraries has not been replaced. The timeframe of the publication ranges from the beginning of the Norman rule towards the end of the 11th century to 1629, 160 of which are from the 12th century and over thirty from the 13th century. He had correctly recognized that the Codicellos of Christodulos was the bestowal of a Byzantine title, but was not generally noticed by his compatriots. Corrections, additions or new editions have been made for individual pieces, but it is not currently foreseeable when a modern critical edition will replace its publication.

Fonts (selection)

  • Codicum orientalium qui Panormi in R. Bibliotheca asservantur catalogus. Panormi: ex Tip. F. Lao, 1882
  • I diplomi greci ed arabi di Sicilia, pubblicati nel testo originale, tradotti e illustrati I (in 2 parts). Reprint of the editions Palermo 1868 and 1882. With a foreword by Albrecht Noth . Cologne-Vienna 1982 ISBN 3-412-01679-9 (digital version of the first part from 1868 at the MDZ )
  • La palma nella poesia, nella scienza e nella storia siciliana . Introduzione di Francesco De Santis. - Rist. anast. - Palermo: Bruno Leopardi, 1998

literature

  • Isidoro Carini : Il prof. Cusa e gli studi moderni di paleografia e diplomatica , in Archivio Storico Siciliano 3 (1875), pp. 83-104. 177-193. 349-368
  • Giorgio Levi Della Vida : Cusa, Salvatore . In: Enciclopedia Italiana 1931 ( online at treccani.it)
  • Adalgisa De Simone : Salvatore Cusa arabista siciliano del XIX secolo , in Ugo Marazzi (ed.): La conoscenza dell'Asia e dell'Africa in Italia nei secoli XVIII e XIX , Vol. 1, Napoli 1984, pp. 593-617

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the archive school on the website of the State Archives Palermo ( Memento of August 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (WaybackMachine)
  2. ^ History of the company
  3. ^ Evidence in the SBN
  4. ^ Meetings at Beccariana. Associazione Italiana per le palme and in La Repubblica May 17, 2007, Palermo edition ; Digital version of the original edition at the MDZ

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cusa, Salvatore
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cusa Amari, Salvatore
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian Arabist and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Palermo
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1893
Place of death Palermo