JUNDI SHAPUR UNIVERSITY

The forgotten University of Jundi Shapur had played a very significant and valuable role in pre-Islamic Iran, particularly during the Sassanian period. Numerous documents testify to the brilliance of this advanced Sassanid scientific center in philosophy, medicine, astronomy and various other fields. When Muslims entered Iran, the activities of this secientific center slowed down for a relatively long period of time. After power passed to the Abbasid hands, Ctesiphon regained some of its past prosperity, Baghdad was chosen as the new capital of the Muslim World, and hence Jundi Shapur once again found its lost importance under the Iranian viziers of the early Abbasid period. Since then until the middle of the 3rd century A.H. prominent families administered this scientific center next to Iranian scientists. Medicine in particular, following more Muslim attention to it, found new importance at the Jundi Shapur University. Subsequently, over long periods of time, Jundi Shapur, as a major scientific monument of the Sassanian period, was only rivaled by the great scientific center of Alexandria in Eqypt.