Michele Amari

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Michele Amari
Michele Amari
Michele Amari
Born(1806-07-07)7 July 1806
Palermo
Died16 July 1889(1889-07-16) (aged 83)
Florence
Occupation(s)civil servant (1820–42), professor (1859–66), minister of education (1862–64), senator (1861–89)
Notable workHistory of the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1842)

Michele Benedetto Gaetano Amari (7 July 1806 in Palermo – 16 July 1889 in Florence) was a Sicilian patriot,

Italian unification, he helped prepare the annexation of Sicily by the Kingdom of Sardinia and was active in his later years as a senator of the Kingdom of Italy
.

Biography

Family background

In his memoirs, Amari portrayed his paternal grandfather Michele as a wealthy attorney who lived "on the third floor" of a house in central Palermo, on the corner of Via del Cassaro and Strada della Mercede.[1] But the historian's relation to his cousin and frequent correspondent, also Michele [it], later Count Amari of Sant'Adriano,[2] who largely shared his political trajectory, reveals Amari's father Ferdinando (d. 1850) to have been a younger son of Michele (c.1740–1820), the third Count Amari of Sant'Adriano from 1767. The title was acquired for the family by the latter's grandfather and namesake, Michele Amari, in 1722. The first Count, whose position derived from the hereditary office of the administrator of the royal tobacco monopoly, added a rural villa of his own to the residential suburb of Piana dei Colli (Plain of the Hills), today a northern district of Palermo, on land purchased from the marquises della Torretta in 1720.[3][4] The pursuit of education and direct involvement in governmental affairs may have distinguished the family among the Sicilian noble class.[5]

Early life and education

Ferdinando was an accountant in the municipal bank of Palermo. His marriage to Giulia Venturelli, Amari's mother, was opposed by his family. Due to Ferdinando's financial troubles caused by gambling, Amari lived with his grandfather in central Palermo from 1814.

Napoleon I.[8] Amari completed his education in Palermo, where most of his teachers were liberal clerics. Domenico Scinà [it], who taught Amari physics and political economy,[9] was a leading historian of Sicily. The intellectual domination of English empiricism in Palermo's institutes and his father's Voltairianism prompted Amari, by his own account, to abandon the church by the age of twelve and embrace materialist philosophy by the age of thirteen. Amari's father introduced him to the Francophile democratic circles of Sicily and secured him a place at the Ministry of the Interior in February 1820. The death of his grandfather, the Count, brought Amari back to his father's house. In July 1820, Amari was involved alongside his father in the Palermo uprising of the Carbonari which demanded Sicilian independence and a liberal constitution. Ferdinando was initially sentenced to death in 1822 for his participation and only released from prison in 1834. Amari spent the subsequent years progressing through the ranks of civil administration, publishing translations of English authors (which earned him a letter of thanks from Walter Scott[10]), and reading widely with political intent.[6]

cosa nostra activities.[12]

History of the War of the Sicilian Vespers and first exile

By 1837 he had prepared the outline of his principal work, a detailed investigation of the war of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1302), which was conceived as a call to overthrowing the Bourbon rule in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The publication was delayed by Amari's involvement in health administration during an outbreak of cholera in 1837 and by his subsequent transfer to Naples in 1838–40 where he carried out additional research in the state archives. The book, first released in 1842 with a title that understated its message to bypass censorship, rapidly won a mass audience in Sicily and on the Italian mainland, and caused concern in the Neapolitan government. Amari went into exile in Paris where he studied Arabic with Joseph Toussaint Reinaud. He moved in the French liberal elite circles, where his acquaintances included Alexandre Dumas, Jules Michelet, Jean Alexandre Buchon, Abel-François Villemain, Augustin Thierry and Adolphe Thiers.[6]

Revolution of 1848 and renewed exile

During the Sicilian revolution of 1848, he travelled back to the island to take up the chair of public law at the University of Palermo. Elected a deputy to the Sicilian Parliament, he was subsequently nominated the Minister of Finance in the revolutionary government. From August 1848 to April 1849, he lobbied for the recognition of the Sicilian state in Paris and London. After an abortive return to Sicily in April 1849, he pursued scholarly work in Paris until May 1859, when he accepted a position in Arabic at the University of Pisa.[6]

Role in the annexation of Sicily

In December 1859 he and his cousin Emerico, a philosopher of history, received appointments at the

Italian unification, rejected the notion of reviving the Sicilian parliament, and campaigned among the Sicilians for the unconditional approval of the annexation,[16] while acting as an intermediary between King Victor Emmanuel II and Garibaldi.[17] On 4 September, Amari drafted a proclamation of the plebiscite for approving annexation, along with an outline of special concessions to be awarded to Sicily from Turin.[18] He resigned after Garibaldi appointed Antonio Mordini as the new head of the cabinet (prodictator, Garibaldi's deputy) on 17 September, refused the post of Sicilian historiographer offered to him by Mordini, and attacked Sicilian autonomists and independentists and Garibaldi's republicans in his letters.[19][20] Against the background of Garibaldi's absence, the advance of Piedmontese troops into the Papal States, and the impatience of the Sicilian elites with the revolution,[21]
it was Amari's monarchist option that ultimately prevailed.

Later life and death

Amari was appointed a senator of the Kingdom of Sardinia in January 1861, two months before the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy,[22] as was his cousin Count Amari, who had remained in Turin, several weeks later.

Amari was the Minister of Education in the cabinets of Luigi Carlo Farini and Marco Minghetti from 7 December 1862 to 23 September 1864. He retired as academic in 1866 but continued publishing new works and holding public offices related to research and teaching. He lived in Florence until 1873, then in Rome, Pisa, and again in Rome from 1888.[6] He died at Florence in 1889 and was buried in Palermo.

Amari married Louise Boucher in 1865; they had two daughters.[6]

Scholarship

Amari's historical works trace the formation of Sicily's national characteristics from the period of

Islamic rule.[23]

Having mastered Arabic in Paris, Amari acted as a forerunner of Oriental studies in Italy. His efforts earned him the recognition as one of 19th-century Europe's finest translators of medieval Arabic writings. His Storia dei musulmani di Sicilia (History of the Muslims of Sicily, 1854) has been translated into many languages, including into Arabic by a group of Egyptian scholars as recently as 2004. He left his collection of Oriental studies books and manuscripts to the Accademia dei Lincei.[24]

In 1851, Amari published a translation into Italian of an Arabic work of the

Machiavelli
. Amari's version was translated into English by Bentley under the title Solwan, or Waters of Comfort in the following year.

His work proved influential with later historians of Islam: among them, in Italy, Leone Caetani, Francesco Gabrieli, Umberto Rizzitano and Paolo Minganti.

Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer of the University of Leipzig, in publishing two supplements to Amari's Siculo-Arabic Library, credited him with reviving Oriental studies in Italy[citation needed].

Views

A rationalist and a positivist, Amari exhibited a strong ethical sensibility, commitment to secularism and a notion of civic virtues, and indifference to religious disputes. He cited the works of Antoine Destutt de Tracy and Adam Smith as decisive in his intellectual formation.[6]

Principal works

References

  1. ^ Derenbourg 1905, p. 93.
  2. ^ Mack Smith 1954, p. 12.
  3. ^ a b Giuffrè 2020, p. 15.
  4. ^ "Palermo apre le porte, la scuola adotta un monumento", palermoweb.com, 2003, retrieved 13 March 2023
  5. ^ Mack Smith 1997, p. 35–37.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Gabrieli & Romeo 1960.
  7. ^ Derenbourg 1905, p. 94.
  8. ^ Antonetti 1994, p. 362–3, 365–6, 378–81, 407–8.
  9. ^ Derenbourg 1905, p. 96.
  10. ^ Amari 1896a, p. 1.
  11. ^ Giuffrè 2020, p. 18.
  12. ^ N. 15/ 98 R.G.C. A., N. 9/2000 SENT. (PDF), Repubblica Italiana, Tribunale di Palermo, retrieved 13 March 2023
  13. ^ Aquarone 1960.
  14. ^ Mack Smith 1954, p. 83.
  15. ^ Amari 1896b, p. 141.
  16. ^ Mack Smith 1954, p. 73–4.
  17. ^ Mack Smith 1954, p. 101, 233.
  18. ^ Mack Smith 1954, p. 184.
  19. ^ Amari 1896b, p. 134–41.
  20. ^ Mack Smith 1954, p. 265.
  21. ^ Mack Smith 1954, p. 285–92.
  22. ^ "Amari, Michele", senato.it, Senato della Repubblica, retrieved 10 March 2023
  23. ^ Amari, Michele; Nallino, Carlo Alfonso (1933). Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia. Oxford University. Catania, R. Prampolini.
  24. ^ "Biblioteca dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana", lincei.it, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, retrieved 11 March 2023

Sources

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michele_Amari&oldid=1221368342"