Ad BSOAS., xiii, p. 337: “The Sons of Italy”

Extract

As Professor B. Lewis remarks, the mention of the Bĕnê Iṭaliya constitutes a serious hitch to his demonstration that the chapter of the “Prayer” where they occur reflects events of the tenth century: the Fatimids' appearance in Egypt and Palestine and the subsequent struggles between them, the Carmathians, the Turk Alptekin, the Byzantines, and the Ṭayy Bedouin. Since the “Italians” are the only obstacle to an otherwise flawless argumentation Professor Lewis is fully justified in trying to explain them away. He suspects that Iṭaliya is due to a misguided “correction” of Ṭayya, which in Syriac and Rabbinic Hebrew denotes the Ṭayy, and by extension the Arabs in general, but was probably no longer familiar to the copyist.