Reassembling Knowledge by Benfey Thomas
The scholars of the Sasanian empire—the last 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.-
Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam
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Child Custody in Islamic Law
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The Second Ottoman Empire
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The Holy City of Medina
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Arabic Poetics
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The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran
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Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire
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Animals in the Qur'an
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Mantle of the Sufi Kings
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Ibadi Muslims of North Africa
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Law and Politics under the Abbasids
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The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam
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Empire and Power in the Reign of Suleyman
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Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought
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Non-Muslim Provinces under Early Islam
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Sexual Violation in Islamic Law
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Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily
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Law, Society and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500
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Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750
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Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire
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The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane
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The First of the Modern Ottomans
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Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire
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The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World
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Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography
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Slavery and Empire in Central Asia
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The Origins of the Shi'a
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Revealed Sciences
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The Second Formation of Islamic Law
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Opposing the Imam
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Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought
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Friends of the Emir
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The Economics of Ottoman Justice
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Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds
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Mannerism in Arabic Poetry
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Classical Arabic Biography
'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 ArabicBenfey'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
'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
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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781009788915 |
| Title | Reassembling Knowledge |
| Author | Thomas Benfey |
| Series | Cambridge Studies In Islamic Civilization |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Year published | 2026-08-31 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |