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.

‘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

‘This book is a learned, rigorously argued reframing of the intellectual history of late antique and early Islamic Iraq and Iran. By situating medicine, astral science, and philosophy within Sasanian courtly culture and its Islamic afterlives, Benfey offers a compelling model for writing connected histories across religious, linguistic, and political divides.'

Yuhan Vevaina - University of Oxford