Krisztina Szilágyi is research associate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University. Prior to that, she studied Arabic and Jewish Studies in Budapest, Damascus and Jerusalem. Her main interest lies in the interactions between Christians, Jews and Muslims in the medieval Islamic world, in particular as reflected in polemical literature. Her publications include “Christian Learning about Islam in the Early ‘Abbāsid Caliphate: The Muslim Sources of the Disputation of the Monk Abraham of Tiberias,” in The Place to Go: Contexts of Learning in Baghdād, 750-1000 C.E., ed. Jens Scheiner and Damien Janos (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 2014), pp. 267-342, “A Prophet like Jesus? The First Christian Polemical Narratives of Muḥammad’s Death and Their Muslim Sources,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 36 (2009): 131-171, and “Christian Books in Jewish Libraries: Fragments of Christian Arabic Writings from the Cairo Genizah,” Ginzei Qedem 2 (2006): 107-162.

Curriculum Vitae

Course Title: The polemical world of medieval Islam

Course Description:

Religion was a common topic of conversation in the medieval Middle East, in both spontaneous and organized form. Scholars of different backgrounds visited each other and corresponded to discuss, among other subjects, religion. Within the walls of palaces, Muslim notables, emirs, viziers, even caliphs occasionally entertained and educated themselves with sessions of religious debates. To such events they invited not only Muslims of various stripes, but Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and others as well.

These encounters left manifold traces in the literary record: numerous treatises of theologians attacking other religions and defending their own survive, as do correspondences on religious topics and accounts of religious disputations. Few of these texts were written from the position of ignorance; some in fact evince knowledge of astonishing detail and accuracy about other religions. Muslim authors cite the Bible and discuss questions of Christology, while Christians and Jews quote the Qur’ān and reveal familiarity with Islamic law and history.

In this course, we will study the phenomenon of debating religion in the medieval Middle East through the Arabic writings of Muslims, Jews and Christians. We will discuss the social and intellectual context of the debates, and the technique and education of the disputants. We will examine topics recurrent in medieval texts, such as attitudes to the scriptures of others, debates about the definition of true religion, about foundational narratives, doctrines and practices. We will conclude with a glance at the changes modernity and and westernization, and more recently globalization and online communication wrought on debating religion. 

Introductory Reading:

Secondary sources

Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land (London, 1992).

William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (London, 1997).

Shlomo Dov Goitein and Jacob Lassner, A Mediterranean Society: An Abridgment in One Volume (Berkeley CA, 1999).

Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton NJ, 2008).

Primary texts

Michael Cook, “Ibn Sa‘dī on Truth-Blindness,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 33 (2007), pp. 169-78. In Arabic: al-Ḥumaydī, Jadhwat al-muqtabis, ed. Muḥammad b. Tāwīt al-Ṭanjī (Cairo, 1952), pp. 101-102.

David Thomas, “Two Muslim-Christian Debates from the Early Shī‘ite Tradition,” Journal of Semitic Studies 33 (1988), pp. 53-80. In Arabic: Ibn Bābawayh, Kitāb al-tawḥīd, ed. Hāshim al-Ḥusaynī l-Ṭihrānī (Tehran, 1387/1967), pp. 270-75, 417-27 (chs. 37 and 65).

Krisztina Szilágyi, “Chapter Three: The Disputation of the Monk Abraham of Tiberias,” in S. Noble and A. Treiger (eds.), The Orthodox Church in the Arab World (700-1700): An Anthology of Sources (DeKalb, Ill., 2014), pp. 90-111, 300-308. In Arabic: Le Dialogue d’Abraham de Tibériade avec ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Hāšimī à Jérusalem vers 820, ed. Giacinto Būlus Marcuzzo (Rome 1986), pp. 264-95, 299-369, 503-33.