Dr. Thomas Benfey

I work on late antique and early medieval Iran, with two areas of special focus: intellectual life in the Sasanian empire (ca. 224-651 CE), Sasanian engagement with Greco-Roman and Indian scholarly traditions, and the Islamic reception of Sasanian science, medicine, and philosophy; and the social, economic, and administrative history of Sasanian and early Islamic Iran, approached through the Middle Persian documentary evidence. I maintain interests in several other, related areas as well, including the Sasanian and Islamic historiographic traditions, the religions of Sasanian and early Islamic Iran (particularly Zoroastrianism and Islam), and Iranian philology.

• The Scholars of Sasanian Iran and Their Islamic Heirs (book project)
• Land Management and Landownership in the Medieval Islamic World (622–1250 CE), from Ferghana to the Fayyum, with Hugh Kennedy and Arezou Azad (edited volume)

• The Scholars of Sasanian Iran and Their Islamic Heirs: Toward an Intellectual History of the Late Antique East. Revising for resubmission to Cambridge University Press, for inclusion in their series Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.

• Co-editor with Hugh Kennedy and Arezou Azad, Land Management and Landownership in the Medieval Islamic World (622–1250 CE), from Ferghana to the Fayyum, Edinburgh University Press.

• “The Conceptualization of Religion and Incipient Secularity in Late Sasanian Iran: Burzōy and Paul the Persian’s Parallel Departures from Tradition”, History of Religions 62.4 (2023): 340–72.
• “A Greek Source for the Treatise on the Composition of Man Attributed to Aḥūdemmeh Anṭīpaṭrōs?” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 22.1 (2019): 3–37.

forthcoming

• “Middle Persian Documents and the Making of the Islamic Fiscal System: Problems and Prospects,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
• “Windādag’s Orders: Six Unpublished Middle Persian Ostraca from Chāl Ṭarkhān-ʿEshqābād,” for a Festschrift.

forthcoming

• The writings of the Sasanian philosophical author Paul the Persian (fl. 6th century CE) that survive in Arabic, particularly as preserved in Ibn Miskawayh’s (d. 1030) Tartīb al-
  saʿādāt, for the Bloomsbury series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle.
• Fragments from an as-yet unknown Arabic historical treatise focused on the Samanid dynasty of 10th-century Central Asia.
• The New Persian Rāsta attributed to Dādār ibn Dādūkht, a dialogue between Zoroastrian priests and Roman sages with purported origins in Sasanian Iran, in collaboration with Daniel Sheffield.

forthcoming

• “Education and Learning in the Sasanian Empire” in Spätantike / Frühmittelalter. Ein Handbuch, edited by Mischa Meier, Steffen Patzold, and Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner [under review].
• “Economic Documents as Sources for Pre-Islamic Religions,” “Gizistag Abāliš [The Accursed Abāliš],” “Wizārišn ī Čatrang ud Nihišn ī Nēw-Ardašīr [The Explanation of Chess and
• the Arrangement of Backgammon],” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History: Asia and Africa, edited by Ethan Harkness, Roderick McIntosh, Jason Neelis, and Daniel Potts [in preparation].

• Review of Eberhard Sauer (ed.), Sasanian Persia: Between Rome and the Steppes of Eurasia (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2018), Journal of Late Antiquity 13.1 (2020): 182–4.

forthcoming:

• Review of Chiara Barbati and Vittorio Berti (eds.), Iranianate and Syriac Christianity in Late Antiquity and the Early Islamic Period (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2021), Journal of Late Antiquity.

2022:

• “Relativism, Unbelief, and the Conceptualization of Religion at the Late Sasanian Court: Burzōy and Paul the Persian's Parallel Departures from Zoroastrian and Christian Alexandrian Tradition” at the University of Tübingen, May 17.
• “The Qom Documents and Their Post-Sasanian Context: Change and Continuity in Early Islamic Iran” at the University of Oxford, May 5.

2021:

• “In Search of the Arkand: Astral Science between India, Sasanian Iran, and the Early Islamicate World” in the Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts Colloquium, Oxford, October 27 [online].

2020:

• “How to Say ‘Religion’ in Late Antique Iran” at the University of California, Berkeley, March 13.
• “How to Say ‘Religion’ in Late Antique Iran” at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, February 20.

2019:

• “How to Say ‘Religion’ in Late Antique Iran” in the Princeton Near Eastern Studies Brown Bag Lunch Lecture Series, Princeton, December 2.

2023:

• “Zoroastrian Priests and Secular Science in the Sasanian and Early Islamic Periods: Two Astronomical Discussions in the Book Pahlavi Corpus and Their Context” at the European Conference of Iranian Studies, Leiden, August 21-25 [scheduled].
• “Newly-Discovered Fragments from a Medieval Islamic Historical Work: History and Historiograp hy in Samanid Central Asia” at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 3-6.
• “Berk. 34, Berk. 67, and the Origins of the Jizya” at the Berkeley Workshop on Middle Persian Documents & Sealings, University of California, Berkeley, March 3 [online].

2022:

• “Land Taxes in the Middle Persian Documents from Early Islamic Iran at a conference, A Hard Row to Hoe: Landowning and Land Management in the Medieval Islamic World (622-1250 CE), from Ferghana to the Fayyum, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, December 12-14.
• “Middle Persian Documents and the Making of the Islamic Fiscal System,” at the Iranian Studies Conference (put on by the Association for Iranian Studies), Salamanca, August 30-September 2.
• “Religious, Land, and Head Taxes in the Middle Persian Documents from Early Islamic Iran,” at the American Oriental Society Annual Meeting, Boston, March 18-21.

2021:

• “Astrological History and a Supposedly Sasanian Calendrical Reform in Early ʿAbbāsid Iraq” at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 29-December 3 [online].
• “The Sasanian Iranian Reception of Indian Astral Science: A Reevaluation” at a conference, China, India, and Iran: Scientific Exchange and Cultural Contact through the First Millennium CE, University of Cambridge, October 8-9.
• “Ahrun the Priest and the Beginning of Scientific Translation into Arabic: A Reassessment” at the American Oriental Society Annual Meeting, March 12-16 [online].

2020:

• “A New Arabic Historical Fragment Focused on Sāmānid History from Afghanistan” (with Hugh Kennedy) at a conference, Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiographies, London, October 22-24 [online].

2019:

• “The Medical Tradition of Greater Khuzestān under Sasanian and Islamic Rule” at a conference, Ērānshahr in the Age of Transition: West and Central Asia between Late
• Antiquity and Islam, Princeton University, Princeton, May 10-11.
• “The Medical Tradition of Sasanian Khuzestān in Islamic Historiography” at the American Oriental Society Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 15-18.

2018:

• “Uranius and Khusrō I: The Limits of Reason in Late Sasanian Iran” at the American Oriental Society Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, March 16-19.

2017:

• “Late Sasanian Epistemology, Greco-Roman Empiricism and the Murjiʾa: A Reevalution” at a conference, The Iranian World in Late Antiquity: A Graduate Student Workshop, the University of Chicago Center in Paris, Paris, September 18.
• “Galenic Epistemology at the Late Sasanian Court” at the American Oriental Society Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, March 17-20.

2016:

• “‘Poverty’ and the ‘Poor’ in Sasanian Zoroastrian Discourse” at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, November 18-21.
• “‘Religion, Religions, Religious’ from Sasanian Iran to the Abbasid Caliphate” at the University of Chicago Ancient Societies Workshop, Chicago, May 23.
• “‘Religion, Religions, Religious’ in Sasanian Iran” at the American Oriental Society Annual Meeting, Boston, March 18-21.

• Lead organizer, A Hard Row to Hoe: Landowning and Land Management in the Medieval Islamic World (622-1250 CE), from Ferghana to the Fayyum, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, December 12-14, 2022, international conference.
• Co-convenor, with Arezou Azad and Zhang Zhan, Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts Colloquium, University of Oxford, October-December 2020 and October-November 2021, a weekly seminar with invited speakers, held online.

University of Oxford, Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

• Lecturer and tutor (and instructor of record), Early Iranian: The Sasanian Empire, 224-651 AD, Hilary Term 2022.
• Tutor (and instructor of record), Iran in Transition: Religion, Politics, and Taxation in the Early Islamic Period, Michaelmas Term 2021.
• Tutor (and teaching assistant), Conversion to Islam in the Middle Ages, Hilary Term 2021.

Princeton University, Assistant in Instruction, Department of Near Eastern Studies

• Preceptor, Muslims and the Qurʾān, Fall 2019.

2022:

• Nominated by Arezou Azad for Award for Excellence, Oxford University Reward and Recognition Scheme

2021:

• Near Eastern Studies Department Prize for an Outstanding PhD Dissertation, Princeton University
• Honorable Mention, Award for Best Dissertation on a Topic of Iranian Studies, Foundation for Iranian Studies

2020:

• Shortlisted, Martin Buber Society of Fellows, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2017–18:

• DAAD Research Fellowship, German Academic Exchange Service

2017:

• Johnson Garrett ’35 Memorial Merit Fellowship, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University

• American Oriental Society
• Middle East Studies Association
• Association for Iranian Studies