THE TRAVEL OF THE ARAB RA'D FROM ALEPPO TO VENICE (1654-1656)

In the years 1654-1656 the Christian Arab Ra'd, a merchant from Aleppo, reached Venice with his friend Abd al-Masih. When he came back he wrote a report about what he had seen and lived during his stay in Venice and his travel by sea. It is one of the few reports written in Arabic about a European city. The manuscript is kept in the Vatican Library and it has been already edited in Arabic in an essay in 2005 and re-edited and translated into English in a book in 2015. The two works stress the linguistic peculiarities of the text written in middle Arabic with Ottoman influences, but do not take into consideration its historical setting. On the contrary, this essay presents its Italian translation, made directly on the Arabic original, with a historical introduction based on a confrontation between what Ra'd saw and what is known about the city of Venice and its society in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Traduzuione dall'arabo con lunga introduzione e commento del testo di un viaggaitore ottomano che visitò Venezia nella seconda metà del Seicento.