Sono quindici anni che la nostra rivista opera sul piano culturale, valendosi della partecipazione di illustri studiosi italiani e stranieri, tanto da essersi affermata come un punto di riferimento nel campo dell'arabistica. Secondo gli intenti iniziali, si è affiancata ai "Quaderni di studi arabi" anche una collana di Studi e testi, nella quale hanno visto la luce alcuni volumi monografici.
Alcune delle persone che ci hanno seguito in questa attività editoriale non sono più fra noi, ma altri ricercatori si sono via via affiancati con un loro valido contributo scientifico.
Sento ora l'esigenza di un rinnovo delle strutture redazionali. Lascio pertanto la direzione dei Quaderni, ma non la collaborazione, nelle mani di chi già dedica alla rivista tempo e idee, con un saluto pieno di fiducia e di speranza.

In this paper it is intended to show how important is the question of the investigation on early schools of learning, transmission and writing down the fruit of scientific activities in the two first Islamic centuries. Especially it emphasises the very big importance of the Library of the judge of Egypt, `Abd Allah Ibn Lahi`a (97-174/715-790), in the process of codification and conservation of an important collection of manuscripts from the first Islamic centuries, from which a certain number is saved on papyrus and is to be found in Heidelberg, in Pairs or in the Vatican Library in Rome. Besides this point of view the present papyri allow to affront with more solidity the problem of early Islamic culture, in order to put it with more precision in its century and to clarify the problem of its transmission.

Guillaume Postel (1510-1581), lecteur royal in the court of Francis I, believed that Hebrew was the original language in which God spoke to Adam from ``behind the vel''. All languages consequently were derived from Hebrew; Syriac and Arabic were the sisters of Hebrew. From his linguistic theories he developed a system of interrelatedness of all parts of the universe, arguing that omnia in omnibus. Postel's theory of the unitary origin of the language was intimately related to his political theory of a universal state and to his religious concept of all men united in the love and praise of God and in the love and help of mankind. When all men become one in spirit and in mind, they then become participants in the Divine Unity.

Le Ménologe de Basile II, réalisé entre 979 et 989, est une oeuvre aulique de grand luxe, où la peinture prend une place prédominante. Les enluminures sont une source remarquable pour la connaissance des vêtements et de textiles proche-orientaux car une grande précision s'observe dans leur rendu.
Il fournit de nombreux exemples d'un vêtement très répandu au début de l'Empire byzantin, la tunique, vêtement de travail héritée de l'Empire romain où elle était en vogue sur tout le territoire. L'art chrétien en fera la costume des premiers martyrs. Les habits impériaux byzantins sont fréquents, car de nombreux souverains assistent aux martyres qu'ils ont commandités. Les rois de l'Antiquité ont les atours des empereurs byzantins contemporains du Ménologe. L'impératrice est représentée sur quelques miniatures et les costumes de l'aristocratie byzantine, élégants et raffinés, sont aussi présents.
Le Ménologe montre quantité de tissus en usage à Byzance et dans le Proche-Orient musulman à son époque et témoigne aussi de l'intérêt des Byzantins pour l'art islamique, comme leur fascination pour la calligraphie arabe. Cette influence se fait également sentir dans la sculpture et les arts décoratifs, et le dessin des inscription révèle parfois une connaissance assez précise de l'écriture arabe.
Ce manuscrit qui reflète les courants d'échanges entre Byzance, le monde islamique et les diverses traditions culturelles de l'Orient au début du XIème siècle, est aussi d'un intérêt exceptionnel en tant que source iconographique pour l'étude des vêtements et des tissus islamiques. Pour les premiers siècles, on ne dispose pas de représentations suffisamment précises, surtout dans les sources islamiques. Or, le Ménologe offre plusieurs examples de tissus et costumes arabes, persans et même bulgares, peints beaucoup de minutie. Les miniatures du Ménologe, par la qualité de leur exécution, sont ainsi un reflet du commerce très actif entre les mondes byzantin et islamique, dans le domain des textiles et du vêtement.

Aux premiers siècles de l'islam, beaucoup de confusion régnait déjà sur la paternité de certains poèmes. Plus souvent on avait des doutes sur des petits fragments ou même sur des lignes isolées. Bien vite aussi on a dû constater que à part les doutes sur la parenté d'un poème ou un vers ancien, il y avait des falsifications contemporaines.
Dans la majorité des ces cas l'explication que les anciens philologues ont avancée pour ce phenomène était qu'il s'agissait, ou bien de simple plagiat, ou d'intercalation de certains vers fameux en qualité de proverbes. On supposait que ces vers étaient bien connus de tous et, on pourrait dire, de propriété commune. On reconnaisait bien aussi d'autres possibilités, tels les conformités par coincidence et des simples erreurs de transmission.
Une grande quantité de termes techniques devait servir à catégoriser ces phénoménes. Quand, un peu plus tard, les philologues se sont obligés de définir ces termes multiples, chacun agissant à sa manière et selon ses propres idées, des définitions contradictoires ont commencé à circuler. On s'est rendu compte de la confusion qui en resultait. Quand meme, en vertu de certains réalités incontestables on n'a pas abandonné ces termes en masse et un petit nombre de termes s'est mantenu jusqu'au Bas Moyen Age. En meme temps, en ce qui concerne la poésie ancienne, on a avancé l'idée qu'il n'était plus possible de trouver des critères irrefutables permettant à établir un corpus de poésies anciennes authentiques.

D'aprés Ibn Rashiq le thrône (marthiya) et l'éloge (madih) ne se distinguent en fait que par quelques différences minimes qui résident essentiellement dans le temps employé pour décrire la personne dont il est question. Ainsi le poète se sert-il dans le thrône du passé pour evoquer le souvenir du défunt. Ibn Rashiq fait également allusion à la manière adoptée par les Anciens pour décrire la toute puissance des rois, la férocité des bêtes et la beauté éphémère des étoiles et des montagnes. Partant d'une telle conception du thôrne, il est possible d'affirmer que dans l'oeuvre du muhdath Ibn al-Rumi se retrouvent les effets cosmiques tels que cités par Ibn Rashiq. Ibn al-Rumi utilise également dans ses thrônes nombre de termes, de formules et de concepts propres aux Anciens. Ainsi retrouve-t-on chez lui la formule ``ne t'éloigne pas'' déjà utilisée par Labid, le concept de ``frayeur'' lorsque sonne l'heure du départ du bien-aimé et le terme de ``humum'' pour marquer l'accablement venant désormais faire place au bonheur déjà utilisés par al-Khansa'. Mais dans sa poésie, Ibn al-Rumi fait aussi preuve d'innovation par l'emploi des procédés littéraires modernes du badi` comme par exemple la paronomasie (jinas) et l'étiologie fantastique (husn al-ta`lil).

This article analyses Western studies on poets of South-Arabian origin from pre-Islamic times to the ninth century AD. The particular interest lies in the fact that a claim to Yemeni forebears was believed to enhance the literary (and also political) value to poetry.

Having located almost 49 mss. containing literary works that can help to make clearer the neo-Arabisation excursus of the Mount Lebanon Christian idiom, the author illustrates the results of his linguistic-literary 'land-surveying', traces an historic-linguistic excursus of Mount Lebanon between the 15th-17th centuries, including six poets and their poetic works, all written in the Syriac alphabet. According to the mss. analyzed, he ascertains that:
- their authors were students of Rome, or their relatives and disciples;
- their content has more historic and linguistic value than literary;
- the poems documentated were named qawl, madiha, iframiyya, but not zagal;
- the neo-Arabization of Christians on Mount Lebanon was irrevocable once their isolation was broken, that is to say after their expansion towards Kisruwan (16th c.);
- Arabic has been adopted, as a literal and literary language, when other Christians immigrating from Aleppo proposed it as a linguistic prototype to be imitated (17th-18th c.).

Many manuscripts on the Druzes are to be found throughout Italy, not only in major collections but also in minor provincial libraries. This paper attempts to outline the distribution of some of the most significant of these and, in particular, those containing Druze ``catechisms''. Manuscripts relating to this sect which deliberately surrounds itself with a veil of mystery have reached libraries in Italy in many different ways: through men of letters and of the Church, pillaging soldiers, travellers and explorers. This paper thus attempts to take stock, but by no means exhaustively, of a selection of Druze manuscripts in Italian libraries, how they arrived there and the subject-matter, with particular attention to the information contained in the so-called ``catechisms'' of this esoteric religion and the interest shown in these by scholars, both past and present.

The popular Arabic epics vary considerably according to the time, the place and the milieu in which they developed. The study of the largest possible number of manuscripts and printed editions of an epic enables us to get a more thorough picture of that epic in its various forms and the comparative analysis of its different versions can help us to understand its evolution.
The first part of the article presents eleven manuscripts and printed editions of the Zir Salim epic. We can distinguish three major recensions, which are independent at the level of their formulation: the yemenite recension (al-sira al-yamaniyya), the fisrt part of which tells in detail the story of the Yemenite king Tubba`; the Egyptian recension, which situates the action in Egypt; and the Syrian recension, which is linked with the recension of the hilalian epic called al-sira al-shamiyya. The Syrian recension can be divided into four traditions which present certain similarities at the level of their formulation. One of these tradition reflects the professional storytellers' (hakawati) art.
The second part of the article analyses the distinctive characteristics of the copies of three manuscripts belonging to the storyteller's tradition: lacunae, additions in the margins, omissions, abbreviations of repetitive formulae etc. Close observation of these particularities help us understand how the texts were composed and recopied. These texts may have been used by the hakawati as a basis for their partly improvised public reading. The manuscripts were recopied perhaps dictated from other manuscripts and may have been somewhat altered in the process; then they were completed and "corrected" by their successive owners; moreover, frequent changes in ownership accounts for the mixing up of volumes from differents collections; finally one of the three manuscripts seems to show the efforts of his writer to make technical improvements such as more accurate spelling and grammar and a better general layout, betterments as would later be done by the epics' editors.

In Yemeni tribesmen's lore, the Banu Hilal contended with the Himyarites for the merit of having constructed the dams, palaces, tombs scattered along the borders of the desert. In this paper, information is given about Hilali traditions concerning: 1. The B. Hilal in South Arabia; 2. Najd and Sarw territories as their original homeland; 3. the settlement of some Hilali `forgotten' tribes in the Eastern Yemen regions (Wadi Jirdan, Hadina and especially Wadi Markha), after the massive Hilali migration to the North; 4. remarks on the origins of the Yemeni B. Hilal; 5. their fame as a result of their heroic deeds, but also of their very name (hilal `moon'), in connection with the old South Arabian astral worship. Historical, geographical, literary, religious and ethnographical sources have been examinated, as well as the data collected during fieldresearch in the Yemen.

ROBERTO TOTTOLI
Nota sul vestire abiti di lana secondo la tradizione islamica, pp. 201-204

Many traditions and reports in Muslim literature praise the practice of wearing woolen clothes and state that Muhammad and the prophets used to wear wool. These traditions reflect the simple lifestyle and behaviour which were regarded as preferable by Islam, and the consequent position that was adopted opposing such things as luxurious clothes.

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