Leone Caetani (September 12, 1869 – December 25, 1935),
Duke of Sermoneta
The House of Caetani, or Gaetani, is the name of an Italian noble family, originally from the city of Gaeta, connected by some to the lineage of the lords of the Duchy of Gaeta, as well as to the patrician Gaetani of the Republic of Pisa. It play ...
(also known as Prince Caetani), was an Italian scholar, politician, and historian of the Middle East.
Caetani is considered a
pioneer
Pioneer commonly refers to a settler who migrates to previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited land.
In the United States pioneer commonly refers to an American pioneer, a person in American history who migrated west to join in settling and dev ...
in the application of the
historical method
Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be drawn o ...
to sources of the early
Islamic
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or ''Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the main ...
traditions, which he subjected to minute historical and psychological analysis.
He was the father of Italian-Canadian visual artist
Sveva Caetani
Sveva Caetani (August 6, 1917 – April 28, 1994), was an Italian-Canadian artist.
She immigrated to Canada in 1921 with her father, Leone Caetani, and her mother, Ofelia Fabiani. Leone, an Italian nobleman (Prince of Teano and Duke of Sermoneta), ...
.
Life
Caetani was born in Rome into the prominent and wealthy
Caetani
The House of Caetani, or Gaetani, is the name of an Italian noble family, originally from the city of Gaeta, connected by some to the lineage of the lords of the Duchy of Gaeta, as well as to the patrician Gaetani of the Republic of Pisa. It play ...
family. His father
Onorato Caetani
Onorato Caetani, XIV Duke of Sermoneta and IV Prince of Teano (18 January 1842 – 2 September 1917) was an Italian politician from the noble Caetani family.(In Italian)
He was born in Rome, which was then part of the Papal States, to Mic ...
, Prince of
Teano
Teano ( Teanese: ) is a town and '' comune'' in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, northwest of Caserta on the main line to Rome from Naples. It stands at the southeast foot of an extinct volcano, Rocca Monfina. Its St. Clement' ...
and
Duke
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranke ...
of
Sermoneta
Sermoneta is a hill town and ''comune'' in the province of Latina (Lazio), central Italy.
It is a walled hill town, with a 13th-century Romanesque cathedral called Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and a massive castle, built by the Caetani f ...
, was
Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs
The Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs is the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Italy. The office was one of the positions which Italy inherited from the Kingdom of Sardinia where it was the most ancient ministry of the government: t ...
in 1896 in the second
di Rudini cabinet; his English mother,
Ada Bootle Wilbraham, was the daughter of the
Earl of Lathom. His paternal grandfather,
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was ins ...
, had married the Polish
Countess Calixta Rzewuski, whose ancestor
Wacław Seweryn Rzewuski had been a well-known Polish orientalist.
Caetani developed an interest in foreign languages at an early age. At 15, he began to study
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the la ...
and
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
on his own. Later he studied
Oriental languages
A wide variety of languages are spoken throughout Asia, comprising different language families and some unrelated isolates. The major language families include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Tur ...
at the University of Rome, under
Ignazio Guidi
Ignazio Guidi (1844 – 18 April 1935) was an Italian orientalist. He became professor at the University of Rome. He is known as a Hebraist and for many translations.
He learned semitic languages from Pius Zingerle and Father Vincenti, and ...
and
Giacomo Lignana, with an intensive study of Arabic,
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
,
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, Sanskrit and
Syriac language
The Syriac language (; syc, / '), also known as Syriac Aramaic (''Syrian Aramaic'', ''Syro-Aramaic'') and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ (in its literary and liturgical form), is an Aramaic dialect that emerged during the first centur ...
s (and perhaps also Turkish).
Caetani spent many years researching and traveling throughout the Muslim world, gathering material on a wide range of Islamic cultures from
Tunisia
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, map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa
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, capital = Tunis
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, ...
,
Algeria
)
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, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Algiers
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, largest_city = capital
, relig ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
,
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
,
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
,
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
,
the Levant, the
Sahara
, photo = Sahara real color.jpg
, photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972
, map =
, map_image =
, location =
, country =
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, ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, Central Asia, and southern Russia. Later, one of his disciples was
Giorgio Levi Della Vida
Giorgio Levi Della Vida (22 August 1886 in Venice – 25 November 1967 in Rome) was an Italian Jewish linguist whose expertise lay in Hebrew, Arabic, and other Semitic languages, as well as on the history and culture of the Near East.
Biography
Bo ...
.
He became a corresponding member of the
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
The Accademia dei Lincei (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Ro ...
in 1911 and a full member in 1919. Later, he left his rich library to the Lincei to create the Caetani foundation for Muslim studies.
Caetani also served as a deputy of the Italian Parliament (1909–1913), keeping a radical socialist stance.
He married
Vittoria Colonna Caetani Vittoria Colonna Caetani, Duchess of Sermoneta (London, 29 November 1880 - 1954) was an Italian writer, best known for her ''Memorie'', translated into English as ''Things Past'' (1929).
Born daughter of the Duke of Paliano Marcantonio VI Colonna ...
of the
Colonna
The House of Colonna, also known as ''Sciarrillo'' or ''Sciarra'', is an Italian noble family, forming part of the papal nobility. It was powerful in medieval and Renaissance Rome, supplying one pope (Martin V) and many other church and politic ...
, daughter of Marcantonio VI
prince of Paliano, from whom he later separated; in 1917 he succeeded his father as Prince of Teano and Duke of Sermoneta.
After the end of his marriage and the rise of Fascism, in 1927 Caetani decided to emigrate to
Vernon, British Columbia
Vernon is a city in the Okanagan region of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. It is northeast of Vancouver. Named after Forbes George Vernon, a former MLA of British Columbia who helped establish the Coldstream Ranch in nearb ...
, Canada, with his new partner Ofelia Fabiani and their daughter
Sveva. He later became a Canadian citizen. In 1935, the Fascist regime stripped him of his Italian citizenship and expelled him from the
Accademia dei Lincei
The Accademia dei Lincei (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Ro ...
; he died soon afterwards in the same year in
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. T ...
, British Columbia.
Research
Caetani made extensive analysis of sources related to the origins of the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
and
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...
ic thought between 1904 and 1926 during which he collected and arranged chronologically all known materials related to the origins of Islam. Caetani presented his critical analysis and conclusions regarding what he believed to be inconsistencies, contradictions, and variances in the Islamic sources in his ten-volume work ''Annali dell'Islam''.
Caetani claimed that most of the early traditions of Islam could be dismissed as fabrications by later generations of authors. He also suggested that the Arab conquests during the formative era of Islam were driven not by religion but by material want and covetousness.
[Studi di Orientale (Leone Caetani, p. 369) translated in ''The Expansion of the Early Islamic State'' ( Fred M. Donner, , p. 61):
''The arabs achieved their conquests only with material means and the moral virtues innate in their character; and Islam had nothing to do with these.'']
References
Works
* ''Annali dell' Islam'' (Milan, Ulrico Hoepli, 1905–1907), 10 volumes
* "Uthman and the Recension of the Koran", ''Muslim World'' 5 (1915), pp. 380–90
* ''Study of the history of the Orient'' (Milan, Ulrico Hoepli, 1914)
External links
Caetani, Leone in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani – Volume 16 (1973)*https://web.archive.org/web/20050930010903/http://www.iant.com/imam/methodol.txt
*
The Caetani Family: Popes, Princes, Scholars and Artists :: Greater Vernon Museum & Archivesat www.vernonmuseum.ca
The Caetani family: The Caetani Family: Popes, Princes, Scholars and Artists
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caetani, Leone
1869 births
1935 deaths
Politicians from Rome
Italian Arabists
Italian emigrants to Canada
Italian orientalists
Non-Muslim scholars of Islam
Scholars of medieval Islamic history
Members of the Lincean Academy
Deaths from cancer in British Columbia