The Qur’an of Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada: the Arabic Versions of Suras 21 and 22 in BAV MS Urb. Lat. 1384

Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada, also known as Flavius Mithridates or Shemu’el ben Nissim Abū al-Faraj, was a fascinating figure of a Jewish convert to Christianity. Born in Sicily, he made use of his knowledge of Hebrew, Arabic and languages in general in ten years of frenetic activity at the end of the 15th century. One of the works he produced or edited is the magnificent and illuminated Ms Urb. Lat. 1384, now preserved in the Vatican Library, including the texts of the sura 21 and 22 of the Qur’an in Arabic and Latin translation. This paper focuses on the Arabic text of this manuscript analyzing its features and formal devices so as to understand its possible sources as a reflection of the knowledge of the Arabic Qur’an in Italy and Rome at the end of the 15th century