The Istituto per l'Oriente Carlo Alfonso Nallino (IPOCAN) was founded in March 13, 1921 by a group of ambassadors, senior civil servants and university professors of Oriental studies, to give Italy a valuable research institution devoted to the Near and Middle East (which was going to have a different rearrangement after World War I). In 1982 its name was changed in honour of one of its founders, Carlo Alfonso Nallino, whose library and whose house was donated to the Institute, through his daughter Maria..

The Constitutive Assembly was attended by di Cesarò, Carlo Alfonso Nallino, Vassallo, Festa, Scarpa, Esperti, Buggelli, Narducci, Rapex, Enderle, Bruni, U. Faldati, Vacca, Zanutto, Petrocchi, Tucci, di Leone, Sferra, Corradetti, Tiriticco, Missirocchi, Giorgio Levi Della Vida, Ferro, Caroselli, Salto, Guidi, Mascolino, Cattan, Diel, Francese, Scalfati, Almagià, Balvis, Virginia De Bosis, Laura Veccia Vaglieri, Gatteschi, Lanzara, Amedeo Giannini, Carlo Conti Rossini, Sayed M. Pascià, Mohammed Hinnaui, Fratini e Ambrosetti.
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On that occasion it was also decided to create a Journal that could provide useful elements to understand the complex institutional and political situation that had arisen in the Near and Middle eastern countries after the end of the First World War.
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The Istituto has worked without a break for 98 years, standing as a benchmark for Italian researches in its area of study.
Essential personal scientific contributions have been made by members of the Institute, which mainly pertain to a number of universities and research centers, both Italian (Roma, Napoli, Venezia, Pisa, Milano, Torino, Bologna, Palermo, Lecce, Cagliari in particular) and foreign.

The Istituto publishes monographs on the Middle East, mainly Islamic, and scientific journals, first of all Oriente Moderno (vol. I, 1921 – XCIX, 2019) which is an indispensable to understand and be better informed about issues of relevance to the Near and Middle East.
From 1982 the Istituto has added to its name also that of its founder, Carlo Alfonso Nallino, for a long time its prestigious Scientific Director, as well as Editor of Oriente Moderno.
His daughter Maria, professor of Arabic Language and Literature in University Ca’ Foscari of Venice and Scientific Director of the Istituto after his father's death, left the Istituto per l’Oriente left his books and paternal library to the Institute, and their own apartment too in Rome.

From 2013 Oriente Moderno is printed and distributed in cooperation with the publishing house Brill of Leiden (The Netherlands).

 

The Istituto is also the editor, in collaboration with the University of Naples "L'Orientale", of the Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, the only Journal in the world since 1941 dedicated to the Ethiopian studies. These "historical" journals were complemented since 2002 by Eurasian Studies – nowadays in collaboration with the Orientalisches Institut der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, dedicated to the area stretching from the Balkans to Central Asia, including the eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, the Near East and Iran from the beginning of Islam since the First World War –, since 2007 by the Journal Quaderni di Studi Arabi n. s., dedicated to classical Islamic studies, and from 2011 by La rivista di Arablit , a magazine of Arabic modern and contemporary literary studies (online open access).

 

The library is open to the public from Monday to Friday (9.00-13.00) and in the afternoons on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (15.30-18.30). It is rich in more than 35 000 volumes and 300 periodicals and is today the largest Italian collection of specialized texts historical, political, socio-economic and literature on the Middle East (mainly Islamic) modern and contemporary.

 

In addition to the main Library, are available to the public, the Turkish Fund “Ettore Rossi”, the Islamic Fund “Carlo Alfonso and Maria Nallino”, the “Angelo Sammarco” paper Fund on relations between Egypt, Italy and Europe since 1798, and on the Suez Canal. In addition, the Indonesian Fund “Luigi Santa Maria” on Indonesia and the small Fund on the contemporary Arab-Islamic world “Pier Giovanni Donini”, endowed on the whole with volumes, sometimes extremely rare, in the main western languages, in Arabic, in Farsi, in Turkish and in Urdu, whose informatic cataloguing is being completed according to the Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale, SBN (Italian National Library Service,  (www.sbn.it).

Ihe journals have been filed also the site of the Catalogo Italiano dei Periodici (Italian Catalogue of Periodicals, ACNP (http://acnp.unibo.it/cgi-ser/start/it/cnr/fp.html).

 

Every year, the Istituto holds conferences, lectures, book presentations, six-monthly afternoon courses in Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Arabic-Islamic culture.
Other institutional activities include:
- its library services
- the organisation of courses in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, and Islamic culture.

Other areas of research are:
- research into the history, politics and culture of the countries in the area
- catalogues of Islamic manuscripts.

Those interested in receiving further information on the activities of the Institute can write E-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Law 296/2006 has recognized the Istituto among those holders the right to receive the 5 x mille contributions.
Just sign in the first box on the left “Sostegno delle organizzazioni non lucrative di utilità sociale delle associazioni di promozione sociale, etc.”, i.e. Support of non-profit social associations of social promotion, etc.”. Report then, under his own signature, our tax code:: 00815280581