Ama'ri

Ama'ri, MICHELE, an Italian historian and orientalist, was born at Palermo, July 7, 1806. Hardly had he commenced his studies when his father's sentence to thirty years' imprisonment for a political offence plunged him into straitened circumstances. His love for an English lady saved him from despair, and secured him a knowledge of the English tongue. He devoted himself to Sicilian history, and in 1841 published his famous investigation into the history of the Sicilian Vespers, a masterpiece of historical criticism, which reversed the common notion that the massacre was the result of a deep conspiracy on the part of the nobles; showing that it was rather a national outbreak, occasioned by the tyranny of the foreign rulers, that really brought about the deliverance of Sicily. The book was quickly prohibited, and, as a consequence, widely read. Its publisher was imprisoned, but its author fled to France. The revolution of 1848 recalled him to Sicily, where he was elected vice-president of the committee of war, and next sent by the provisional government on a diplomatic mission to France and England. The restoration in 1849 sent him once more into exile, from which he was recalled in 1859 to fill the chair of Arabic, first at Pisa, afterwards at Florence. In 1860 he took an active part in Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily. After the accession of Sicily to the kingdom of Italy, he was made a senator, and in 1862-4 held the portfolio of Public Instruction, afterwards returning to his chair. He presided over an orientalist's congress in 1878, and died at Florence, 16th July 1889. Important works are his Storia dei Musulmanni di Sicilia (1853-73); Bibliotheca Arabo-siculo (1857); Nuovi Recordi Arabici sulla Storia di Genova (1873); and Le Epigrafi Arabiche di Sicilia (1875).