First Day (08/05/2025)
Institutional Greetings
10:00–10:10 Roberto Tottoli
Rettore dell’Università di Napoli L’Orientale
10:10–10:20 Sabina Pavone
Professoressa Ordinaria in Storia delle Missioni, Università di Napoli L’Orientale
10:20–10:30 Giuseppe Cappello and Federico Stella
EuQu Project, Università di Napoli L’Orientale
Chair: Robert Aleksander Maryks
10:30–10:50 Bernard Heyberger (EHESS, Paris): Catholic Missions and Knowledge on Islam and the Arabs (17th Century).
10:50–11:10 Luca Berardi (Università di Napoli L’Orientale): Missionary Linguistics and Muslim Captives: The Early Arabic School in Malta (1628-1633).
11:10–11:30 Federico Stella (Università di Napoli L’Orientale): The Making of Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862-1863). William Gifford Palgrave’s Reports on Wahhabism.
11:30–11:45 Debate
11:45–12:05 Coffee Break
Chair: Ulisse Cecini
12:05–12:25 Stanisław Jaskowski (University of Warsaw): A Roman Catholic Missionary Faces a Perso-Islamic Bureaucratic Tradition: Tadeusz Juda Krusiński and His Observations on Safavid Documents and Official Procedures.
12:25–13:05 Robert Aleksander Maryks & Adrian Sadowski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań): Bridging Worlds: Jan Tadeusz Krusiński and Franciscus Meninski as Pioneers of East-West Cultural Exchange.
13:05–13:20 Debate
13:20–14:50 Lunch Break
Chair: Giuseppe Cappello
14:50–15:10 Ali B. Langroudi (Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow, Leipzig): The First Catholic Bishop of Isfahan and the Question of Conversion.
15:10–15:30 Francesco Gusella (Università di Napoli L’Orientale): Catholic Devotional Objects with Islamicate Features from the Persian Gulf and the North-Western Coast of India.
15:30–15:50 João Vicente Melo (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla): Portraying the Mughal: The Evolution of the Jesuit Perceptions of the Mughal Empire, c. 1580-1670.
15:50–16:10 Debate
Second Day (09/05/2025)
Chair: Sabina Pavone
10:00–10:20 Michele Bernardini (Università di Napoli L’Orientale): The Vecchietti Brothers and the Christian Missions in Hormuz.
10:20–10:40 Guia Minerva Boni (Università di Napoli L’Orientale): From Goa to Cyprus: The Journey of Gaspar de São Bernardino (O.F.M., fl. 1593-1611).
10:40–11:00 Barbara Roggema (Università di Firenze): Jonas Korten’s Travels in the Near East (1730s): His Observations of Interreligious Relations and the Weight of Prejudice.
11:00–11:15 Debate
11:15–11:35 Coffee Break
Chair: Barbara Roggema
11:35–11:55 Ulisse Cecini (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona): Theory and Practice of Mission in the Islamic World in the Life and Texts of Dominicus Germanus de Silesia (1588-1670).
11:55–12:15 Sara Belelli (Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Viterbo): Kurdish for the Missionaries: Conversation Guides and Lexical Repertoires in Maurizio Garzoni’s Grammatica e Vocabolario della Lingua Kurda (1787).
12:15–12:35 John Chesworth (University of Birmingham): What Do the Definitions in Charles Sacleux’s Dictionnaire Français-Swahili (1891) Tell us about Religious Terminology Used by Muslims in 19th Century East Africa?
12:35–12:50 Debate
12:50–14:20 Lunch Break
Chair: Federico Stella
14:20–14:40 Giuseppe Cappello (Università di Napoli L’Orientale): On the Defence of the Authenticity of the Gospel and Torah: Jesuit Father Aimé Chézaud and his Māsiḥ-i Miṣqal-i ṣafā-yi Āiyna-yi ḥaqq-numā (1656).
14:40–15:00 Will Sherman (University of North Carolina at Charlotte): The Psalms of Allah: Islamic Revelation Before and Beyond the Qur’an in the Early Modern Period.
15:00–15:10 Debate
15:10–15:30 Final Remarks and Farewell