Carlo Alfonso Nallino

Carlo Alfonso Nallino (18 February 1872 - 25 July 1938) was an Italian orientalist.

He was born in Turin, and studied literature in the University of Turin. At the age of 21 he published is first treatise on Arab geography and astronomy. This was followed by a work on Al-Battani (1899–1907) which gained him international recognition. From 1896 he taught in the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples and then at the University of Palermo (1902–1913). In 1900 he published a book on the Egyptian Arab dialect, which gained him the permission of King Fuad I of Egypt to work at the Egyptian Khedive University. Amongs his pupils was Taha Husayn, later Minister of the Interiors.

Later Nallino became ordinary professor at the University La Sapienza of Rome, where, in 1921, he had founded the Istituto per l'Oriente, which published the magazine Oriente Moderno. In 1933 he was named member of the Royal Academy of Arab Language in Cairo, and he was a member of the Italian Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and of the Royal Academy of Italy. In 1938 he travelled for two months in the Arabic Peninsula, but he died shortly afterwards in Rome for a cardiac crisis after publishing only the first volumes of the studies about his trip.