Gundeshapur (Persian Persian: گندیشاپور, Gund-ī Shāh Pūr, Gondeshapur, Jondishapoor, Jondishapur, and Jondishapour, Gundishapur, Gondêšâpur, Jund-e Shapur, Jundê-Shâpûr, etc. (means Army of Shapour), Pahlavi Weh-Andiôk-Šâbuhr, Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܠܦܬ Beth Lapat and Greek Bendosabora) was the intellectual center of the Sassanid empire and the home of the Academy of Gundishapur.
Founded in 271 CE by the Sassanid king Shapur I, Gundeshapur was home to a teaching hospital, and also comprised a library and an centre of higher learning. It has been identified with extensive ruins south of Shahabad, a village 14 km south-east of Dezful, to the road for Shush, in the present-day province of Khuzestan, southwest Iran. It is not an organised archeological place today, and except of the ruins it is full of remainings like broken ceramics.
Gundeshapur or Jondi Shapour, was a renowned academy of learning in the city of Jondi Shapour during late antiquity, the intellectual center of the Sassanid Empire. It offered training in medicine, philosophy, theology, and science. It has been a center for training scientists for centuries. Iranian, Greek, Indian, and Roman scientists conducted studies and scientific research there. The faculty was versed not only in the Zoroastrian and Persian traditions, but in Greek and Indian learning as well. According to The Cambridge History of Iran, it was the most important medical center of the ancient world during the 6th and 7th centuries. Will Durant has lauded the Iranian civilization for having built such an academy. Einstein has praised his disciple, Professor Hesaby, for having belonged to a country where an academy had been built 1,700 years ago.[1].
In the Achaemenid era, there were numerous physicians in Iran (Persia) whose knowledge was used by Greek scientists, as well as those from many other nations. An important part of medical knowledge in that age and even in the Median period before it and the periods after, was based on the Avestan sciences. During the Sassanian era, scientists from various countries, one of whom was Diogenes, studied different fields, including medicine, at the academy in Gondi Shapur.[2]
Despite the fame, recently, some scholars have called Gundeshapur's overall historical importance, specifically, the existence of its hospital, into question.[3]
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Gundeshapur was one of the major cities in Khuzestan province of the Persian empire. The name Gundeshapur (Pahlavi Gund-ī Shāpūr) comes from the compound term Gund-ī Shāpur "Army of Shapur". Gundeshapur's administrative district included the neighboring towns of Susa and Mihrijanqadaq, the latter which was actually in a different province.[4] Most scholars believe Shāpur I, son of Ardeshir (Artaxexes), to have founded the city after defeating a Roman army led by Emperor Valerian. Gundeshapur was a garrison town and housed many Roman prisoners of war.
Shāpur I made Gundeshapur his capital. Shāpur's wife, the daughter of Aurelian, lived in the capital with him. She brought with her two Greek physicians who settled in the city and taught Hippocratic medicine. Shāpur also encouraged scholars from Persia and India to settle in his capital.[5]
In 489, the Nestorian theological and scientific center in Edessa was ordered closed by the Byzantine emperor Zeno, and transferred itself to become the School of Nisibis[6] or Nisibīn, then under Persian rule with its secular faculties at Gundeshapur, Khuzestan. Here, scholars, together with Pagan philosophers banished from Athens by Justinian in 529, carried out important research in medicine, astronomy, and mathematics".[7]
It was under the rule of the Sassanid monarch Khusraw I (531-579 CE), called Anushiravan "The Immortal" and known to the Greeks and Romans as Chosroes, that Gundeshapur became known for medicine and erudition. Khusraw I gave refuge to various Greek philosophers, Nestorian Assyrians fleeing religious persecution by the Byzantine empire.
The king commissioned the refugees to translate Greek and Syriac texts into Pahlavi. They translated various works on medicine, astronomy, astrology, philosophy, and useful crafts.
Anushiravan also turned towards the east, and sent the famous physician Borzouye to invite Indian and Chinese scholars to Gundeshapur. These visitors translated Indian texts on astronomy, astrology, mathematics and medicine and Chinese texts on herbal medicine and religion. Borzouye is said to have himself translated the Pañcatantra from Sanskrit into Persian as Kelile væ Demne.
Many Syriacs settled in Gundeshapur during the Fifth century. The Syriacs were most of all medical doctors from Urfa, which was during that time, home to the leading medical center.[8] Teaching in the Academy was done in Syriac until the city fell to Muslim Arab armies.[9]
The Sassanid dynasty fell to Muslim Arab armies in 638 CE. The academy survived the change of rulers and persisted for several centuries as a Muslim institute of higher learning. It was later rivalled by an institute established at the Abbasid capital of Baghdad. In 832 CE, Caliph al-Ma'mūn founded the famous Baytu l-Hikma, the House of Wisdom. There the methods of Gundeshapur were emulated; indeed, the House of Wisdom was staffed with graduates of the older Academy of Gundeshapur. It is believed that the House of Wisdom was disbanded under Al-Mutawakkil, Al-Ma'mūn's successor. However, by that time the intellectual center of the Abbasid Caliphate had definitively shifted to Baghdad, as henceforth there are few references in contemporary literature to universities or hospitals at Gundeshapur.
Gundeshapur, in this time, became a major link between Islamic and Greek medicine, because of its previous practices of combining the Greek, Indian, and Iranian medical traditions. Gundeshapur was a site where the traditions of Galen and Hippocrates had been preserved, therefore the transition from ancient to Islamic tradition was more coherent.[10] This combination "foreshadowed the synthesis that was to be achieved in later Islamic medicine."[11]
The significance of the center gradually declined. The 10th century writer Muqaddasi described Gundeshapur as falling into ruins [12]
Some scholars have cast doubts on the existence of the hospital at Gundeshapur by claiming that there are no known surviving Persian sources "that would corroborate the claims that [Gundeshapur] played a crucial role in medical history".[13] It has been assumed that a medical center at Gundeshapur would have resembled the School of Nisibis. What is more likely is there existed a seminary, like the one in Nisibis, where medical texts were read, and an infirmary, where Galenic medicine was practiced.[14]
Additionally, Gundeshapur's reputation may have been conflated with that of Susa, a city to the west of Gundeshapur and with which Gundesahur was administratively linked. Ath-Tha 'ālibi, a scholar with access to Sassanian royal annals, says of pre-Islamic Persia: Thus, the people of [Susa] became the most skilled in medicine of the people of Ahwāz and Fārs because of their learning from the Indian doctor [who was brought to Susa by Shāhpur 1] and from the Greek prisoners who lied close to them; then [the medical knowledge] was handed down from generation to generation.[15] In the other hand, the same source might be another confrmation of the medical reputation of Gundeshapur as Susa may represent the whole local region which included Gundeshapur (as they were administrativly linked). This is enforced by the fact that Ahwāz and Fārs, mentioned in the quote for comparison to Susa, were regions as well, an indication that regions were being compared.
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