Khodadad Rezakhani | |
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| Born | 1976 (age 49–50) Tehran, Iran |
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| Known for | History of Central Asia |
Khodadad Rezakhani (Persian: خداداد رضاخانی,Persian pronunciation:[xo̯dʌdʌdrɛzʌxʌni] born 1976) is an Iranianhistorian oflate antiqueCentral andWest Asia.[1] He has been associate research scholar at The Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf StudiesPrinceton University from 2016 to 2020.[2][3] He is a researcher at theAustrian Academy of Sciences since September 2025.[4]
Rezakhani was born inTehran, Iran and was educated inEurope andIran before moving to theUnited States. He later moved back toLondon,UK where he earned hisMSc inHistory fromLondon School of Economics and aPhD in Late Antique/Middle Eastern History fromUCLA with a dissertation titledEmpires and Microsystems : Late Antique Regional Economy in Central and West Asia, 500-750 under the supervision ofMichael G. Morony and advised byPatrick J. Geary,Claudia Rapp, andSanjay Subrahmanyam. Because of his multicultural background and education, Rezakhani is fluent in English, Persian and a number of other research and modern languages.
Since earning his PhD, Rezakhani became a research officer at theLondon School of Economics where he worked on an ERC funded project, Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Global Histories of Material Progress in the East and the West (URKEW).[5] He also taught as a teaching fellow the LSE,SOAS, andAKU, as well as a visiting assistant professor at theUniversity of Nevada, Reno.
From 2014 to 2016, he was anAlexander von Humboldt Stiftung fellow at theFreie Universität,Berlin.[6] Since 2016, he has been an associate research scholar and lecturer atPrinceton University.[7]
Rezakhani has also been involved in various projects for the academic study oflate antique Iran and Central Asia, as well as Global Late Antiquity. He is the founder and manager of rotating Twitter accountsTweeting Historians andHistorians of Iran, which aim to promote the works of the historians of Iranian and global history by presenting their work in form of weekly tweets concerned with each scholar's research. He is also the founder and author ofIranologie.com, a site dedicated to the history of Iran since 1997.
Rezakhani is aGlobal historian who has published onLate Antique Iran andCentral Asia, particularlySasanian history. Educated initially inphilology (includingIndo-European Studies) andmedieval history, Rezakhani's work encompasses comparative approaches toWorld History, usingCentral andWest Asia as areas of focus and encompassing matters ofculture,language, andeconomic andpolitical history. Chronologically, Rezakhani's research is most concerned with thefirst millennium, particularly the period of transition from late antiquity toEarly Islam.[8]
Rezakhani's interest in Central Asian history has also resulted in works concerned with the historiography of the Silk Road and its creation in 19th century Europe as part of colonial historiography. His denial of the concept of the Silk Road, reflected in his article on the subject,the Road that Never Was. His monograph on the history of Central Asia, calledReOrienting the Sasanians, provided a political history of Central Asia (includingAfghanistan andTransoxiana) from theIndo-Parthian period to the coming of Islam, and included the history of theKushans,Iranian Huns, theKidarites,Hephthalites,Nezak Shah, and theWestern Turk Empire. In 2018, the book was the recipient of the Honourable Mention in theEhsan Yarshater Book Award.[9]
Rezakhani's contribution to the critiques of concepts prevalent in both academic history-writing and popular historical imagination about Iran and Asia, including the idea of Iranians as "Aryans",[10] Nowruz as an "Indo-European" tradition,[11] representations of "the Ancients" in contemporary Iranian discourse[12] and other subjects.
He is a regular contributor to Iranian and English media, with contributions to BBC Persian, VOA Persian and Radio Farda, as well as to popular history journals such asHistory Today. Rezakhani runs the History of Iran podcast[13] and is an editor at the Sasanika Project.[14]
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