Reassembling Knowledge: Science, Medicine, and Philosophy in Sasanian and Early Islamic Iraq and Iran (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)

The scholars of the Sasanian empire-the late antique superpower whose extensive territories encompassed much of Mesopotamia, the Iranian plateau, and the Caucasus-played a pivotal role in world intellectual history. They developed a distinctive synthesis of Indian and Greco-Roman learning, which would have a formative impact on Islamic civilization in the wake of the empire's fall to Arab armies in the 7th century CE. Drawing on a wide range of texts in languages including Arabic, Middle Persian, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, Thomas Benfey closely examines these scholars, their contributions, and the shifting contexts in which they lived and worked. From the court of the sixth-century King of Kings Khusrō I to early Abbasid Baghdad, this book explores key developments in philosophy, medicine, and astral science and the institutional and historical contexts in which they took place. Benfey highlights the distinctive features of this decisive era, tracing intellectual continuity and change into the early Islamic period.

Thomas Benfey is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Ancient History at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. His research focuses on late antique and early medieval Iran.