The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), in coordination with our Institute/Embassy of Italy to the UAE, the Embassy of Spain to the UAE, National Marciana Library of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the University Library of Bologna, the National Library of Spain, and the Royal Library of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, is hosting the Pearls of Wisdom exhibition at Abu Dhabi’s Qasr Al Watan from 7 December 2022 to 6 January 2023. The exhibition explores the influence of Arab culture in Europe through a presentation of valuable manuscripts that demonstrate the role of Arab civilisation in generating religious dialogue and knowledge exchanging that paved the way for European renaissance and enlightenment.
From the 12th century onwards, Europe witnessed a powerful cultural renewal in thought, the arts and sciences, which eventually led to the Renaissance.
This period was characterised by the interest European intellectuals showed in the Arab-Islamic world, at that time culturally very flourishing; an intense translation movement began, and in order to be able to translate, European intellectuals needed to acquire the works to be translated; thus, the movement of translations was accompanied by the physical movement of Arabic books to the West, along the same routes that exported other luxury goods.
This great moment of cultural interaction between Europe and the Arab world began in those places where the Arab presence was strongest: the Iberian Peninsula, i.e. the territories that the Arabs called al-Andalus and that they dominated between the 7th-15th centuries until the fall of the emirate of Granada (1492); and southern Italy and especially Sicily, the large island conquered by the Arabs in the 9th century and fallen in the 11th, which was under Arab cultural influence until the reign of Frederick II (d. 1250).
This is precisely the subject of the invaluable exhibition of manuscripts organised by the DCT in the magnificent venue of the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi, Qasr al Watan (opening on 6 December, until 6 January), with the cooperation of the Italian and Spanish Embassies, who facilitated the loan of priceless works from some libraries of their respective countries. It is also the subject of the two subsequent conference days in Manarat al Saadiyat (7 and 8 December): scholars from Europe, the UAE and the Arab world will endeavour to show how not only the sciences but also medieval European literatures bear clear signs of the contacts they had with Arab and Islamic culture.
In particular the Italian Embassy, through the Italian Cultural Institute Abu Dhabi (IIC), provided several loans from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice; among them a marvellous illuminated Holy Qur’an dated 1537, and a manuscript containing some sayings of the Arab Christian fathers dated even 1357. Other, even older, volumes come from the renowned Bologna University Library, such as al-Zamakhshari’s treatise on Arabic grammar, or al-Nasafi’s treatise on Islamic law, both copied in the 14th century.
