The Academy of Gondishapur (, Farhangestân-e Gondišâpur), also known as the Gondishapur University (دانشگاه گندی‌شاپور Dânešgâh-e Gondišapur), was one of the three Sasanian centers of education (Ctesiphon, Ras al-Ayn, Gundeshapur) and academy of learning in the city of Gundeshapur, Iran during late antiquity, the intellectual center of the Sasanian Empire. It offered education and training in medicine, philosophy, theology and science. The faculty were versed in Persian traditions. According to The Cambridge History of Iran, it was the most important medical center of the ancient world during the 6th and 7th centuries. Under the Pahlavi dynasty, the heritage of Gondeshapur was memorialized by the founding of the Jondishapur University and its twin institution Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, near the city of Ahvaz in 1955. After Iranian revolution in 1979, the university was renamed to Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz but the twin institution kept its name Jundishapur. History In 489, the East Syriac Christian theological and scientific center in Edessa was ordered closed by the Byzantine emperor Zeno, and was transferred and absorbed into the School of Nisibis in Asia Minor, also known as Nisibīn, then under Persian rule. Here, Nestorian scholars, together with Hellenistic philosophers banished from Athens by Justinian in 529, carried out important research in medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. However, it was under the rule of the Sassanid emperor Khosrau I ( 531-579), known to the Greeks and Romans as Chosroes, that Gondeshapur became known for medicine and learning. Khosrau I gave refuge to various Greek philosophers and Syriac-speaking Nestorian Christians fleeing religious persecution by the Byzantine empire. The Sassanids had long battled the Romans and Byzantines for control of present-day Iraq and Syria and were naturally disposed to welcome the refugees. Emperor Khosrau I commissioned the refugees to translate Greek and Syriac texts into Pahlavi. They translated various works on medicine, astronomy, philosophy, and useful crafts. A Church of the East monastery was established in the city of Gondishapur sometime before 376/7. By the 6th century the city became famed for its theological school where Rabban Hormizd once studied. According to a letter from the Catholicos of the East Timothy I, the Metropolitanate of Beth Huzaye took charge of both the theological and medical institutions. Although almost all the physicians of the medical academy were Persians, yet they wrote their treatises in Syriac, because medicine had a literary tradition in Syriac. Significance of Gondeshapur