I manoscritti arabi conservati nella Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna: la traduzione italiana del manoscritto "La selezione dei tesori in merito ai gioielli" المخطوطات العربية في جامعة بولونيا المركزية: الترجمة الإيطالية لمخطوط نخب الذخائر في أحوال الجواهر

The recent project to digitize all the Arabic manuscripts of the Marsili Collection at the University Library of Bologna, which I personally supervised from 2017-2023, has contributed to making known one of the richest collections of oriental manuscripts preserved in Italian libraries. This paper deals with the phases preceding the enormous project of such digitization which began with the first exploratory steps that allowed the beginning of a process of study of this important collection. The first steps had begun at the start of the 17th century by the Austrian orientalist and diplomat Michael Talman, who was tasked with creating the first catalog of all the Arabic, Greek, Persian, and Turkish manuscripts held in the Marseille Library. However, he was unable to complete his catalog due to diplomatic reasons. Several years later, other scholars undertook the task of indexing Arabic manuscripts. The most reliable work is the catalogue prepared by the orientalist Victor von Rosen in 1883. He possessed extensive experience in cataloguing manuscripts in the Great Library of St. Petersburg and compiled a new catalogue for approximately 457 Arabic manuscripts. His catalogue remains the standard reference for Arabic manuscripts in the university library. This precious treasure remained piled up in the vaults of the university library for three centuries, and no one paid attention to it except for a few scholars, until we started a few years ago to offer graduation projects to our students to obtain a master’s thesis in Arabic language and literature based on translating some manuscripts from Arabic into Italian. In 2011, we organized an exhibition in the main hall of the university library of a precious collection of Qur'an manuscripts and the two famous Latin translations of the Qur'an. We have also, for the first time, edited, translated, and published the first Arabic manuscript. The article focuses on the manuscript number 3406, entitled: Kitāb Nuḫab al-dakā’ir fī aḥwāl al-ǧawāhir. The unique feature of this manuscript - copied in Istanbul in the 16th century- is that no other Arabic copies of it have been found in any Italian library. The author mentions fourteen precious stones, describing them in detail, explaining their medicinal properties, and detailing where they are found and extracted. Particular emphasis has been placed on a complete Italian translation, and on a list of Arabic and foreign sources and references related to the subject of precious stones.