Alte Geschichte

Dr. Thomas Benfey

Wissenschaftlicher Angesteller

Kontakt

Keplerstr. 17, Raum 004, 72074 Tübingen

07071 / 29 75280

thomas.benfeyspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de

Sprechstunde (nur nach Voranmeldung per E-Mail)

  • Donnerstag 11 - 12 Uhr

seit 2023
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter

Seminar für Alte Geschichte, Universität Tübingen

2020 – 2023
Postdoctoral Researcher

ERC Project “Going Local in the Perso-Islamic Lands” (within “Invisible East” Research Program), Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford

2020
PhD in Near Eastern Studies

Princeton University

2017 – 2018
DAAD exchange scholar

Freie Universität Berlin

2015 – 2016
IvyPlus exchange scholar

University of Chicago

2014
MA in Religion (with distinction)

School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

2012
BA in Classics (Greek & Latin)

Yale University

Forschung

Forschungsschwerpunkte

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.

Aktuelle Projekte

  • 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)

Publikationen

Aufsätze

 

Im Erscheinen

  • “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  • “Windādag’s Orders: Six Unpublished Middle Persian Ostraca from Chāl Ṭarkhān-ʿEshqābād,” for a Festschrift.

Rezensionen

 

Im Erscheinen:

  • 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.