AMARI, Michele. — Patriot, historian, and Orientalist, born in Palermo in 1806, died in Florence in 1889; one of the principal agitators for the liberation of Sicily from Bourbon rule. Having fled to France in 1842, following the publication of his famous *Storia della guerra del Vespro* (which in its first editions bore the title: *Un periodo delle storie siciliane del sec. XIII*), he took advantage of his exile in Paris, which lasted until 1848 and then again from 1849 to 1856, to perfect his knowledge of Arabic and Byzantine studies at the flourishing French school and to produce the other two major works on Sicilian history: *Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia* (1851–72), to which his fame is especially tied, and the *Biblioteca arabo-sicula*, a collection and translation of Arabic texts concerning Sicily (1857–87).
Returning to Italy in 1859, after the annexation of Tuscany, he devoted himself not only to his teaching of Arabic in Florence, which he held until 1873, but also to completing his major works, preparing a second edition of the *Storia*, which he brought nearly to completion through meticulous additions and corrections (recently published and updated by C. A. Nallino, Catania 1933–39), and to another series of important studies on the relations between Muslims and Italy. He held numerous political offices, beginning in 1848 in Palermo, then in Florence and Rome (he was made a senator in 1861), with admirable zeal, integrity, and competence. He was a distinguished Arabist and Islamic scholar; his *Storia* is a masterpiece of Italian historiographical literature, not only for the skillful use of all Arabic and Byzantine sources, but also for the vigor of its structure and the nobility of its style. He rendered great service in promoting Arabic and Oriental studies in Italy, through his example, teaching, and concrete support, including during his tenure as Minister of Public Education from 1862 to 1864.
The first volume of *Storia dei Musulmani* was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1855, because, despite its undeniable historical and literary merits, it is dominated by anticlerical prejudices, from which many serious errors in the evaluation of facts and persons—sometimes even in matters of doctrine—derive. Cf. P. Bottalla, in *La Civiltà Cattolica*, 2nd series, IX (1855, 1), p. 70.