Shapur I

Shapur I (reigned 240-270 CE), the second Sassanian emperor, defeated three Roman emperors in a single reign (Gordian III at Mesiche, Philip the Arab who paid him off, and Valerian who was captured at Edessa in 260 CE). He founded the city of Gondēshāpūr (Jundishpur) as a resettlement town for his Roman captives and established there a hospital-and-academy that invited Indian āyurvedic physicians to teach alongside Greek and Zoroastrian doctors — the earliest documented example of institutional Indian-Persian medical exchange. Shapur also received the prophet Mani at his court and permitted the preaching of Manichaeism — a syncretic Zoroastrian-Buddhist-Christian religion whose Buddhist elements had come up the trade routes from Gandhara under Kushan patronage.