Celestino Schiaparelli

Celestino Schiaparelli (14 May 1841 – 26 October 1919) was an Italian Arabist and philologist and a leading representative of Italian Arabic studies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in Savigliano, Piedmont, he belonged to the scholarly circle formed around Michele Amari and is regarded as one of Amari's most eminent pupils and successors. He taught Arabic in Florence and, from 1875, at the University of Rome, where he became known for his editions and translations of Arabic texts relating to Italy and Sicily.

Biography Schiaparelli was born on 14 May 1841 in Savigliano, present-day Piedmont, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He completed his secondary schooling in Savigliano, but his family's financial difficulties prevented him from pursuing university study and compelled him to seek employment. In 1861 he entered the postal administration, first serving in Urbino and then, after a transfer, in Turin and later Florence. A third large work was his Italian translation of Ibn Jubayr's travel account, published in 1906, which was widely noticed even beyond the circle of specialists and was useful to De Goeje in preparing a new edition of the Arabic text. According to Nallino, the library lacked adequate staffing, and Schiaparelli therefore undertook much of the work almost single-handedly, reorganizing the collections, cataloguing and indexing volumes in his own hand. Through Elsa, he was the great-grandfather of Marisa Berenson and Berry Berenson.