The Arabic Manuscripts of the Riccardiana Library of Florence and the Retrieval of Alessandro Pini's Allegedly Lost Collection

A recent cataloguing project of the Arabic manuscripts preserved in the Biblioteca Riccardiana of Florence allowed to reconstruct the history of 20 codices which had arrived in the library before 1736. A close analysis of the material, and of the information contained in the letters exchanged between Alessandro Pini and Francesco Redi, two physicians at the Medici court in Florence, has shown that they were part of goods, shipped by Pini from Cairo in 1681, which were believed to have been lost in a shipwreck. In the paper I identify the manuscript according to a list of lading made by Pini and their actual content. I also outline the phases of their cataloguing and description and provide a tentative reconstruction of their history before their acquisition by Gabriello Riccardi.