Place · Sassanian medical academy · Iran
Gondēshāpūr (Jundishpur)
Also known as Jundishpur, Jundaysabur, Gondishapur
Gondēshāpūr (Jundishpur) in Khuzestan, founded by Shapur I in the 260s and expanded by Khosrow I Anushirvan in the 6th century, was the greatest medical and translation centre of the pre-Islamic world. Shapur invited Indian āyurvedic physicians to teach alongside Nestorian Christian Greek doctors and Zoroastrian scholars; Khosrow’s court physician Burzōe was sent to India to collect medical and philosophical texts and brought back the Pañcatantra (translated into Pahlavi as Kalīlag ud Dimnag and from there into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa). The Caraka Saṃhitā was translated here into Pahlavi and from there into Arabic in the 7th century. After the Arab conquest the Jundishpur tradition passed into the great Baghdad medical schools and from there into Latin Europe.
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Patron dynasty
- Sassanian
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 32.150, 48.550
Connections (2)
- FoundedShapur I
Shapur I founded Gondēshāpūr (Jundishpur) in the 260s CE 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 institutional India-Persia medical exchange.
- PatronageCharaka
The Caraka Saṃhitā was translated into Pahlavi at Gondēshāpūr in the Sassanian period and from there into Arabic in the 7th-8th centuries; the Indian āyurvedic tradition that Caraka systematised entered Greek and Arabic medicine primarily through this translation chain.
Sources
Standard reference.
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