Description: 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.
Brief description: 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.
Review Quotes: 'Reassembling Knowledge is a pathbreaking contribution to the history of philosophy, astronomy, and medicine in the late ancient and early Islamic Middle East, demonstrating previously undetected pathways of continuity between Sasanian Persian science and science in Arabic. Benfey's detailed sleuthing gathers scattered sources surviving in many languages to reveal lost intellectual history.' Kevin van Bladel, Yale University