Leone Caetani Duke of Sermoneta (also known as Prince Caetani), was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 scholar, politician and historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 of the Middle-East.

Caetani is considered a pioneer

Innovator

An innovator in a general sense, is a person or an organization who is one of the first to introduce into reality something better than before. That often opens up a new area for others and achieves an innovation.-History:...

 and founding father in the application of the Historical method

Historical method

Historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write histories in the form of accounts of the past. The question of the nature, and even the possibility, of a sound historical method is raised in the...

 on the sources of the early Islamic traditions which he subjected to minute historical and psychological analysis.

He emigrated to Canada in 1921 with Ofelia Fabiani. They brought with them their daughter Sveva, who after an appalling childhood emerged as a highly talented painter.

Life

Caetani was born in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 into the prominent and wealthy Caetani Family. His father was the Prince

Prince

Prince is a general term for a ruler, monarch or member of a monarch's or former monarch's family, and is a hereditary title in the nobility of some European states. The feminine equivalent is a princess...

 of Teano

Teano

Teano is a town and comune of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, 30 km north-west of that town on the main line to Rome from Naples. It stands at the south-east foot of an extinct volcano, Rocca Monfina.- Ancient times and Middle Ages:...

 and Duke

Duke

A duke or duchess is a member of the nobility, historically of highest rank below the monarch, and historically controlling a duchy...

 of Sermoneta

Sermoneta

Sermoneta is a hill town and comune in the province of Latina , central Italy.It is a walled hill town, with a 13th-century Romanesque cathedral called Cathedral of S. Maria Assunta and a massive castle, built by the Caetani family. The Cistercian Valvisciolo Abbey is located nearby...

. His English mother, Ada Bootle Wilbraham came from Rode Hall

Rode Hall

Rode Hall is a country house in the parish of Odd Rode, Cheshire, England. It consists of two houses, formerly separate, and now joined together. The older house was built for Randle Wilbraham in the early 18th century; it was recorded as being "recently completed" in 1708. It is a long low...

, Cheshire.

Caetani developed an interest in foreign languages at an early age. At 15 he began to study Sanskrit and Arabic on his own. Later he studied Oriental languages at the University of Rome, under Ignazio Guidi

Ignazio Guidi

Ignazio Guidi was an Italian orientalist. He became Professor at the University of Rome. He is known as a Hebraist and for many translations....

 and Giacomo Lignana, with an intensive study of Arabic, Hebrew, Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 and Syriac language

Syriac language

Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...

s (and perhaps also Turkish).

Leone Caetani also served as a deputy of the Italian Parliament (1909–1913): his Radical Socialist stance later caused his expulsion from the Accademia dei Lincei

Accademia dei Lincei

The Accademia dei Lincei, , is an Italian science academy, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome, Italy....

 by the Fascist regime (1935), as well as the loss of his Italian citizenship. He died soon afterwards in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

.

Caetani spent many years researching and travelling throughout the Muslim world gathering a great deal of material on a wide range of Islamic cultures from Tunisia

Tunisia

Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...

 , Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

 , Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 , Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 , Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 , the Levant

Levant

The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...

 , the Sahara

Sahara

The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

 and southern Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

.

He was married to Vittoria Colonna, however he emigrated without her to Canada (Vernon, British Columbia) in 1921 with Ofelia Fabiani. They brought with them their daughter Sveva.

Research

Caetani made extensive analysis of sources related to the origins of the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

 and Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic thought between 1904-1926 during which he collected and arranged chronologically and sequentially all known existing primary sources and 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 monumental work in ten volumes "Annali dell'Islam". It is still regarded today as a milestone in Islamic studies.

Caetani claimed that most of the early traditions of Islams 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.

Caetani was not a Moslem and he did not believe in the literal truth of the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

. Instead his views about its origins were as follows. As long as Muhammad

Muhammad

Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

 was alive, he could answer any doctrinal questions that arose, so there was little attention paid to written documents. The reign of his successor Abu Bakr was characterized by increasing confusion as multiple written and oral versions of Muhammad's teachings coexisted. To his great credit, Uthman understood the danger of this situation; he had an official version of the Qur'an developed and ordered the destruction of all unapproved versions. To summarize, Caetani thought that the Qur'an as it exists today did not come word for word from the pen of the Prophet, but was the result of a standardization and clean up effort ("Uthman's recension") undertaken many years after his death.

One of Leone Caetani's studies, Uthman and the Recension of the Koran, is included as a chapter in The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book

Origins of the Koran

:This article concerns the book. For a textual history of the Qur'an, see History of the Qur'an.The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book, is a 1998 book edited by secularist author Ibn Warraq...

 edited by Ibn Warraq

Ibn Warraq

Ibn Warraq is the pen name of a polemical author of Pakistani origin who is critical of Islam, and who founded the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society . He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qur'anic criticism...

.

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

• http://www.iant.com/imam/methodol.txt
• LATIUM - Online Information article about LATIUM at encyclopedia.jrank.org
• The Caetani Family: Popes, Princes, Scholars and Artists :: Greater Vernon Museum & Archives at www.vernonmuseum.ca
• The Caetani family: The Caetani Family: Popes, Princes, Scholars and Artists