Gundeshapur
Sign in to saveGundeshapur or Gondishapur or Jundishapur (, Weh-Andiōk-Ŝābuhr; ; ) was the intellectual centre of the Sasanian Empire founded by the Sasanian emperor Shapur I. Gundeshapur was home to a teaching hospital and had a library and an ancient higher-learning institution, the Academy of Gondishapur, which was the first and oldest university in human history. It has been identified with extensive ruins south of Jandi Shapur, a village 14 km southeast of Dezful, along the road to Shushtar in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran.
Key facts
- Ancient site.name
- Gundeshapur
- Ancient site.alternate_name
- Weh-Antiyok-Shapur
- Ancient site.image
- Ancient City of Gandhi Shapour 02.jpg
- Ancient site.caption
- The ruins of Gundeshapur
- Ancient site.map_type
- Iran
- Ancient site.relief
- yes
- Ancient site.location
- Khuzestan Province, Iran
- Ancient site.region
- Iranian plateau
- Ancient site.type
- Settlement
- Ancient site.part_of
- Sasanian Empire
- Ancient site.built
- 3rd-century CE
- Ancient site.epochs
- Late antiquity to Middle Ages
- Ancient site.cultures
- Iranian, Assyrian, Greco-Roman
- Ancient site.condition
- Ruined
via Wikipedia infobox
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
8 sectionsContents
- Name
- The rise of Gundeshapur
- Gundeshapur under Arab-Islamic rule
- Recent academic doubts
- See also
- Further reading
- Notes
- References
Gundeshapur or Gondishapur or Jundishapur (, Weh-Andiōk-Ŝābuhr; ; ) was the intellectual centre of the Sasanian Empire founded by the Sasanian emperor Shapur I. Gundeshapur was home to a teaching hospital and had a library and an ancient higher-learning institution, the Academy of Gondishapur, which was the first and oldest university in human history. It has been identified with extensive ruins south of Jandi Shapur, a village 14 km southeast of Dezful, along the road to Shushtar in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran.
The city declined after the Muslim conquest of Persia; the city surrendered in 638. It continued to remain an essential centre in the Islamic period. Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar, the founder of the Saffarid dynasty, made Gundeshapur his residence three years before his sudden death in 879. His tomb became one of the most prominent sites in the city.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Gundeshapur” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
On the map
3 mapped locations