ABSTRACT
The etymology of risk goes back to the seventh century and to the Arabic word rizq. So, the original concept of risk was present in the Koran as a religious principle. God gave a provision of spiritual and material goods to good believers before undertaking a long and uncertain voyage by desert or sea. The Arabic word rizq passed to medieval Latin from this original usage and it already appeared as an expression, ad meum risicum, in a maritime contract signed in Genoa in the thirteen century (1249). Soon after, this kind of documents were written in Romance and for the first time in Italian, rischio, in 1329 and Catalan risch in 1347. The risk, a religious concept originally, was secularized to become a maritime and commercial notion. This chapter describes and explains this transition.
