Dr István T Kristó-Nagy
Senior Lecturer
Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies
I was born in Budapest, Hungary. I studied History and Arabic at Pázmány Péter Catholic University (MA-s in 2000). My PhD in Arabic Studies is from Eötvös Lóránd University and the Université de Toulouse 2, Le Mirail (2006). A largely updated and revised version of my dissertation was published under the title of La Pensée d’Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ
https://www.leslibraires.fr/livre/5693194-la-pensee-d-ibn-al-muqaffa-studia-arabica-xix-un-agent-double-dans-le-monde-persan-et-arabe--istvan-kristo-nagy-editions-de-paris
My academic studies have been supplemented by the enriching opportunity to work as a cultural guide in more than twenty countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America. I speak in Hungarian, English, Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish, and used to be able to read Latin.
During my undergraduate and MA studies I was awarded with scholarships at the Universitá degli Studi di Napoli “l’Orientale”, the Pontificio Instituto di Studi Arabi e Islamici, the Institut Catholique de Toulouse, the Institut du Monde Arabe and Princeton University. I also received scholarships in different Arab countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.
After the completion of my doctoral studies, I received a Sultan Post Doctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley and a Mellon Career Development Fellowship in Classical Arabic at the University of Oxford. I taught as a visiting professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, in the fall of 2009. I declined a Mellon Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in order to come to Exeter where I spent three years as a research fellow in Professor Robert Gleave’s Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence in Islamic Thought (LIVIT) project between January 2010 and December 2013. The proceedings of the conferences organised in the framework of this project are published in a series by Edinburgh University Press:
edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-legitimate-and-illegitimate-violence-in-islamic-thought.html
The title of the first volume is Violence in Islamic Thought from the Qurʾān to the Mongols.
edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-violence-in-islamic-thought-from-the-qur-an-to-the-mongols.html
The title of the second volume is Violence in Islamic Thought from the Mongols to Europan Imperialism.
While holding this fellowship I was also granted a Mellon Research Fellowship at the Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid in 2011.
My lectureship at the IAIS started in January 2013 and my senior lectureship in July 2018.
Since September 2022, I am the director of the Centre for the Study of Islam.
Research interests:
My main scholarly interests lie in comparative and interdisciplinary studies, especially the social and cultural history of Islamdom as compared and linked to other civilisations. I am also committed to bridgebuilding between the humanities and the natural sciences, especially in applying an evolutionary approach to the humanities. My research has been centred on the formative period of 'Islamic civilisation', the evolution of the Arabic adab, Islamicate political thought and wisdom literature. I am highly interested in the interaction between the social structures and the individual; what are the social structures which encourage individuals to fulfil their potential to the utmost, and what can individuals do to promote such structures in society. My research on Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ can be considered as a detailed case study of these questions, centred on one of the most important authors of Arabic literature and Islamicate thought.
I worked on of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s views on reason, religion and power, on intellectual authority and political hierachy, and on the question of the authenticity of the works attributed to him.
During the LIVIT project, I was exploring the religious justifications for the legitimacy of the state’s violence against the individual. My introduction to the series, titled “Violence, Our Inherent Heritage”, is the first of my publications to explore how an evolutionary approach might transform research in the humanities. It is available with most of my papers at https://exeter.academia.edu/IstvanKristoNagy.
I also focussed on the first inquisition and persecution in Islam, that of the Zanādiqa (Manicheans and other suspicious dualists) during the reign of two ʿAbbāsid caliphs, al-Mahdī and al-Hādī. This persecution is one of the most striking and less investigated examples of a violent campaign against a non-violent religious community within the Dār al-Islām. It provides deep insights into crucial aspects of the history of religions such as the interaction between monotheism and dualism and its deepest philosophical, psychological, social, logical and biological roots. Manichaeism is the only world religion that was persecuted to extinction across Christian Europe, the ʿAbbāsid Empire and China. A dark but alarmingly important lesson of its eradication and the almost complete lack of social awareness or remorse about it is that a successful genocide (either physical or cultural) remains an unreproached genocide.
I also started to explore the figure of Iblīs or Shayṭān (the Devil) and the social implications of interpretations of his revolt and God's retorsion. I have been also invistigating Iblīs as a symbol for individualism, often depicted as an inspirer of the arts and literature.
I have been also exploring and calling attention to the social layer of the kuttāb (scribes/secretaries), of whom Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was a representative par excellence. These professional intellectuals working as advisors and administrators for the ruling elites, in an ambiguous relationship with both the umarāʾ and the ʿulamāʾ, played a crucial role in the evolution of Islamic civilization.
I have been also producing studies that explore aspects of Kalīla wa-Dimna, one of the most globally celebrated and influential books ever produced. A collection of fables, it is the quintessential book of political and ethical advice literature, which acquired unique trans-civilizational and trans-religious influence. Its Arabic version was authored by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, whose version has been the source of countless editions, reworkings and translations across Islamdom and Christendom.
I have been working on different versions of the text investigating the book in the close context of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s oeuvre, but also for its universal significance. I argued that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Kalīla wa-Dimna is more layered and complex than the preceding Sanskrit and Pahlavi (Middle Persian) versions. It advises both the rulers and their advisors in a way that its deepest layers are covered or indeed coded. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ advises other advisers on how to advise their advisees; his Kalīla wa-Dimna demonstrates for his peers, wise jackals with no official power, how to serve their society by taming and guiding the mighty wild lions ruling over them.
A foundational work of Arabic literature, it also offers an outstanding example of the “Aesopian language”. Despite Leo Strauss’s—often misunderstood—insights, the use of “Aesopian language” remains largely uncomprehended by Western scholars. However, I argue that it has been always and remains a worldwide phenomenon in political systems where the application of the ideal of parrhēsia (‘telling all’) would be suicidal. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ teaches intellectuals on how to communicate under the nose of the powerful and how to lead by the nose the lethally dangerous beasts, in order to promote the welfare of their communities.
I have also dhallenged dominant compartmentalizing tendencies that posit clear-cut distinctions between Ancient Greek, Iranian, Indian, and Islamic thought, as well as between philosophy and advice literature. In my view, these distinctions reflect later ideological and academic identities. I argue that elements of Greek philosophy were integrated into Islamic civilization as part of political advice literature well before the rise of philosophy as a discipline in Arabic. The toolkit of logic, rhetoric and political know-how had immediate and practical significance for the ruling elites in maintaining and legitimizing their power. Moreover, the most important specimen of advice literature, Kalīla wa-Dimna, is clearly defined by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ as work of philosophy. Although Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ used philosophy and wisdom/ḥikma to lead the powerful, he managed to “sell” philosophy to them as a tool of their power.
Research students:
PhD awarded (First Supervisor):
Sayed Ismail Albehbehani, The Inhabitants of al-Baḥrayn and Kāẓima in Late Antiquity
Robert Fuller, The orientation of the Kaʿba to Jerusalem: two sanctuaries. An older love affair?
Current PhD students (first supervisor):
Mohammad Ashkanani, The Reception and Survival of the Poetry of Imruʾ al-Qays from the pre-Islamic to the Abbasid Era
Elias Ragi, Why Is Death, in Mikhail Naimy’s Literature, Looked at Conflictingly between Punishment and Reward?
Majideh Qazizadeh, Islamicate Chess and Its Religious, Social and Scientific Contexts
For office hours and research leave go here.