Twelve years after the last known contact with Paolo Dall'Oglio in Syria - on 29 July 2013 in Raqqa, when he disappeared, and no further news has emerged - this study reconstructs his profile as a Christian scholar of the Qur'an. Drawing on his doctoral dissertation on al-Kahf (the Sura of the Cave), defended at the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1990, and in dialogue with his later theological treatise Innamorato dell'islam, credente in Gesu from 2009, the essay shows how his method rests upon a critically creative interplay of four intellectual traditions: medieval Islamic exegesis, especially T.abari and a series of other authors classified as mystical; Louis Massignon's approach to the Qur'an, especially regarding the narrative of the Sev- en Sleepers of Ephesus; Western Qur'anic philology, with firm reservations about European orientalists, from Goldziher to Bausani; and late twentieth-century Jesuit scholarship of the Bible, particularly Roland Meynet's method known as biblical rhetoric. Elaborating on this legacy, Dall'Oglio situates the Qur'an within an eschatological horizon rooted in late antique Oriental Christianity, considering its language and the model of prophethood it implies crucial for the future of Catholic-Muslim relations. References to conciliar documents and historical precedents in his dissertation reveal the intellectual backdrop of a monastic project of "Abrahamic" character, in which he himself, as a Jesuit and a Syriac Catholic priest committed to living as a Christian monk among Muslims, intended to play a crucial role. Perceived in continuity with the "new beginning" regarding the Church's understanding of Muslims underlying the Second Vatican Council and embodied - through institutional tensions and contested liturgical practices - in the monastic community of Dayr Mar Musa al-H.abashi (Nebek), Dall'Oglio's much-debated experience in Syria proves inseparable from his exegetical engagement with the text of the Qur'an.
