Sabians

Sabian Mandi (place of worship), Nasiriyah, Iraq (2016)

The Sabians (/ˈseɪbiənz/; Template:Lang-ar al-Ṣābiʼah or الصابئون al-Ṣābiʼūn) are a religious group mentioned three times in the Quran as a People of the Book, along with the Jews and the Christians.^[1] In some Sunni hadiths, they are described as converts to Islam.^[2] Their identity has been called an "unsolved Quranic issue".^[3]

Interest in the identity and history of the group increased over time. Discussions and investigations of the Sabians began to appear in later Islamic literature. The criteria for acknowledgement as People of the Book essentially include having a prophet as well as possessing a monotheistic scripture.^[4]^[5]^: 5 Scholars such as Daniel Chwolson, Charles G. Häberl, Şinasi Gündüz, Ethel S. Drower, Brikha Nasoraia, Kevin T. Van Bladel and others commonly identify the Sabians with the Mandaeans.^[6]^[7]^{: IX, 111}^[8]^[9]^: 1, 5^[10]^[11]^[12]^: 47–48 Others identify the Sabians with the followers of Noah.^[13] Similarly, the Mandaeans claim direct descent from Noah.^[14]

Today in Iraq and Iran, the Sabians are those that follow the teachings of their prophet John the Baptist (Yahya ibn Zakariya). They are often referred to as Sabian-Mandaeans and baptism is the most important ceremony in the religion.^[15] They are monotheistic with their holy book known as the Ginza Rabba.^[14]^[16]^: 1 Sabian prophets include Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem and John the Baptist with Adam being the founder of the religion and John being the greatest and final prophet.^[11]^: 45^[17]

Etymology

According to Charles G. Häberl, "The cognate in Neo-Mandaic is Ṣabi 'to baptize'. To their non-Mandaean neighbors in Iraq and Iran, they are more commonly known as the Ṣābi'ūn, i.e. 'the Sabians‘, or colloquially as the Ṣubba, meaning 'the baptizers'."^[8]^[18] Andrew Phillip Smith notes that the 's-b' root is derived from a Mandaic verb meaning 'to dip', relating to baptism.^[18] Rejecting the prevalent notion that it means baptizer, while retaining the idea it was of Syriac origin, Judah Segal (1963)^[19] argued that the term Ṣābi'ūn derives from Shiva, a primary god of Hinduism.^[20]

When relating to a religion, the term "Sabian" can connote one who left his former religion, and was even a title of Muhammad for not being part of his tribe's faith.^[21] From such a root and in the context of the Quranic passages, it may refer to all people who leave their faiths, finding fault in them, but have yet to come to Islam, related to the Hanif.^[22]

In the Quran

The Quran briefly mentions the Sabians in three places, with hadith providing additional details as to who they were:

Indeed, the believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabians—whoever truly believes in God and the Last Day and does good will have their reward with their Lord. And there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.^{[Quran 2:62]}

Indeed, the believers, Jews, Sabians and Christians—whoever truly believes in Allah and the Last Day and does good, there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.^{[Quran 5:69]}

Indeed, the believers, Jews, Sabians, Christians, Magi, and the polytheists (who associated others with Allah) [1] [2]—God will judge between them all on Judgment Day. Surely Allah is a Witness over all things.^{[Quran 22:17]}

In later Islamic sources

At the beginning of the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia, the leader of the Mandaeans, Anush bar Danqa, appeared before Muslim authorities in c. 640 CE showing them a copy of the Ginza Rabba, the Mandaean holy book, and proclaiming the chief Mandaean prophet to be John the Baptist, who is also mentioned in the Quran by the name Yahya ibn Zakariya. Consequently, the Muslim caliphates provided them acknowledgement as the Quranic Sabians and People of the Book.^[5]^: 5^[7]^: IX

Other classical Arabic sources include the Fihrist of ibn al-Nadim (c. 987), who mentions the Mogtasilah ("Mughtasila", or "self-ablutionists"), a sect of Sabians in southern Mesopotamia who are identified with the Mandaeans or Elcesaites.^[23]^[11]^: 35^[24]

Al-Biruni (writing at the beginning of the eleventh century CE) said that the '"real Sabians'" were "the remnants of the Jewish tribes who remained in Babylonia when the other tribes left it for Jerusalem in the days of Cyrus and Artaxerxes. According to E. S. Drower (1937) these remaining tribes ... adopted a system mixed up of Magism and Judaism.'^[25]

According to Abu Yusuf Absha al-Qadi, Caliph al-Ma'mun of Baghdad in 830 CE stood with his army at the gates of Harran and questioned the Harranian Hermeticists about what protected religion they belonged to. As they were neither Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Magian, the caliph told them they were non-believers. He said they would have to become Muslims, or adherents of one of the other religions recognized by the Quran by the time he returned from his campaign against the Byzantines or he would kill them.^[26] The Harranians consulted with a lawyer, who suggested that they find their answer in the Quran II.59, which said that Sabians were tolerated. It was unknown what the sacred text intended by "Sabian" and so they took the name.^[27]

The pagan (Hermeticist) people of Harran identified themselves with the Sabians in order to fall under the protection of Islam.^[28]^[7]^{: 111–113}^: 5 Sabians were mentioned in the Qur'an, but they were the group that descended from Noah and followed John the Baptist known as the Mandaeans (a Gnostic religion).^[7]^{: 111–113}^[28]^: 5 The Harranians may have identified themselves as Sabians in order to retain their religious beliefs.^[28]^: 5 These newly dubbed Harranian Sabians acknowledged Hermes Trismegistus as their prophet and the Hermetica as their sacred text, being a group of Hermeticists. Validation of Hermes as a prophet comes from his identification as Idris (i.e. Enoch) in the Quran (19.57 and 21.85).^[29]

However, this account of the Harranian Sabians does not fit with the existence of earlier records making reference to Sabians in Harran. Usamah ibn Ayd, writing before 770 CE (his year of death), already referred to a city of Sabians in the region where Harran lies.^[30] The jurist Abu Hanifa, who died in 767 CE, is recorded to have discussed the legal status of Harranian Sabians with two of his disciples.^[31] Not all the Sabians in Harran were Hermeticists or pagans and idolaters. Many of them were Sabian-Mandaeans.^[11]^: 38

Brikha Nasoraia and Lady Drower suggest that Sabian-Mandaeans were renowned as great scholars of the court during the Abbasid caliphate. According to them, the most prominent of the Sabian-Mandaeans was Thābit ibn Qurra (Thebit), but there were others as well such as Abu Is'haq Al-Sabi'.^[11]^: 39^[7]^: 111 Drower names other famous Sabian-Mandaean scholars and physicians such as Abu'l-Fath Al-Mandāi (i.e. 'the Mandaean'), Ibrahim ibn Zahrūn Al-Harrani and Hilal ibn Ibrahim ibn Zahrūn Al-Sābi Al-Harrani (Zahrūn is a favoured Mandaean name).^[7]^: 112 However, other scholars believe Thabit was an adherent of the pagan astral religion of Harran.^[32]

The Tafsir Ibn Kathir states that "there is a difference of opinion over the identity of the Sabians". It relates the opinion of Mujahid, Ibn Abi Najih, `Ata` and Said bin Jubayr, as being that the Sabians are "between the Majus, the Jews and the Christians" but "do not have a specific religion ... that they followed and enforced", because they lived "according to their Fitrah (instinctual nature)." The tafsir reports saying that the Sabians^[33] read the Zabur (Psalms),^[33] worship the angels or the stars,^[33] never received a message by any prophet.^[33]

Non-Islamic sources

Maimonides

The Jewish scholar Maimonides (1125–1204) translated the book The Nabataean Agriculture, which he considered an accurate record of the beliefs of the Sabians, who believed in idolatrous practices "and other superstitions mentioned in the Nabatean Agriculture."^[34] He provided considerable detail about the pagan Sabians in his Guide for the Perplexed (completed 1186–1190).^[35]

Modern identification

In Baháʼí writings

The Sabians are also mentioned in the literature of the Baháʼí Faith. These references are generally brief, describing two groups of Sabians: those "who worship idols in the name of the stars, who believed their religion derived from Seth and Idris" (Harranian Hermeticists), and others "who believed in the son of Zechariah (John the Baptist) and didn't accept the advent of the son of Mary (Jesus Christ)" (Mandaeans).^{[note 1]} 'Abdu'l-Bahá briefly describes Seth as one of the "sons of Adam".^[36] Bahá'u'lláh in a Tablet identifies Idris with Hermes Trismegistus.^[37] He does not, however, specifically name Idris as the prophet of the Sabians. Sometimes referred to as Sabeans, this religious group has been mentioned in the Baha’i Faith among the many early religions of the previous dispensations. In the Baha’i Writing, Secrets of Divine Civilization by `Abdu’l-Bahá’ the Sabeans are attributed with possibly being the source of contributing some foundations to the science of logic.^[38]

Daniel Chwolson

According to Daniel Chwolson's Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (1856), Chwolson differentiates between the pagan pseudo-Sabians of Harran with the real Sabians which he identifies as the Mandaeans of the marshes of Iraq. The Caliph Mamun asked the pagan Harranians (Hermeticists) to choose a recognized religion, become Muslim or die. They subsequently identified themselves with the Sabians. Chwolson also connected the Elcesaites with the Mandaeans and with the Essenes.^[6]^[7]^{: 98, 111}

Nicolas Siouffi

The Syriac Christian,^[39]^[40] and later French Vice-Consul at Mosul, Nicolas Siouffi in his Études sur la religion des Soubbas ou Sabéens, leurs dogmes, leurs moeurs (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1880) claimed to have identified 4,000 Sabians in the Mandaean population. Siouffi's work was well received by the Theosophist G. R. S. Mead,^[41] but scholars criticized the estimates and study.^[42]

Sir Austen Henry Layard

Layard mentions in his travel diary^[43] meeting a "travelling silversmith" who was "Sabaean or Christian of St. John [the Baptist]". He estimated around 300 to 400 families to live in Shooshtar and Basra at the time. He also mentioned Sabians (spelled by Layard as Sabaeans) to be under oppression from Turkish and Persian authorities.^[43]

21st century scholars

Twenty-first century scholars have identified the Sabians as Mandaeans or Harranian Hermeticists. Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (2002, 2006) notes that in the marsh areas of Southern Iraq, there was a continuous tradition of Mandaean religion, and that another pagan, or "Sabian", centre in the tenth-century Islamic world centred on Harran.^[44] These pagan "Sabians" (Hermeticists) are mentioned in the Nabataean corpus of Ibn Wahshiyya.^[45]

Today in Iraq and Iran, the Sabians are those that follow the teachings of John the Baptist. They are Mandaeans (or Sabian-Mandaeans).^[15] Due to their faith, pacifism and lack of tribal ties, they have been vulnerable to violence since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and numbered fewer than 5,000 in 2007. Before the invasion, the highest concentrations of Mandaeans were in Amarah, Nasiriyah and Basra. Besides these southern regions and Ahvaz in Iran, large numbers of Mandaeans were found in Baghdad, giving them easy access to the Tigris River. Today, they primarily live around Baghdad, where the high priest resides who conducts services and baptisms. Some have moved from Baghdad to Kurdistan where it is safer.^[15]

Notes

^ Á'ín-i Sábi'ín by Rúhu'lláh Mihrábkháni, Institute for Baháʼí Studies, Ontario, Canada, 1994

References

^ Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, 1987, page 13.
^ E.g. Sahih Bukhari Book No. 7, Hadith No. 340; Book No. 59, Hadith No. 628; Book No. 89, Hadith No. 299 etc.
^ Buck, Christopher (July–October 1984). "The identity of the Ṣābiʼūn". Muslim World. LXXIV (3–4): 172+. doi:10.1111/j.1478-1913.1984.tb03453.x. ISSN 0027-4909. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
^ Kimball, Richard (17 October 2019). "The People of the Book, ahl al-kitāb: A Modern Comparative Theological Exploration". International Journal of Asian Christianity. 2 (2): 189–210. doi:10.1163/25424246-00202004. ISSN 2542-4246.
^ ^a ^b Buckley, Jorunn Jacobsen (2002), The Mandaeans: ancient texts and modern people (PDF), Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780195153859
^ ^a ^b Daniel Chwolson, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (Sabians and Sabianism), 1856.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Drower, Ethel Stephana (1960). The secret Adam, a study of Nasoraean gnosis (PDF). London UK: Clarendon Press.
^ ^a ^b Häberl, Charles G. (2009), The neo-Mandaic dialect of Khorramshahr, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 978-3-447-05874-2 p.1
^ GÜNDÜZ, ŞINASI. The Knowledge of Life. The Origins and Early History of the Mandaeans and Their Relation to the Sabians of the Qurʾān and to the Harranians. Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of Manchester, 1999.
^ Zaman, Muhammad Qasim (1997), Religion and Politics Under the Early 'Abbasids: The Emergence of the Proto-Sunni Elite, Brill, pp. 63–65, ISBN 978-9004106789;
The Arabic zindīq and the adjectival term zandaqa seems primarily (or at least initially) to have signified a follower of Manichaeism (i.e. not Sabians).
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Brikhah S. Nasoraia (2012). "Sacred Text and Esoteric Praxis in Sabian Mandaean Religion" (PDF).
^ Van Bladel, Kevin (2017). From Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes. Leiden: Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004339460. ISBN 978-90-04-33943-9.
From The Account of al-Ḥasan ibn Bahlūl (fl. circa 950–1000).
^ Khalil ‘ibn Ahmad (d. 786–787), who was in Basra before his death, wrote: "The Sabians believe they belong to the prophet Noah, they read Zaboor (see also Book of Psalms), and their religion looks like Christianity." He also states that "they worship the angels".
^ ^a ^b Drower, Ethel Stefana. The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran. Oxford At The Clarendon Press, 1937, p182.
^ ^a ^b ^c Sabah, Zaid (27 September 2007). "Sabian sect keeps the faith". USA Today. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
^ Al-Saadi, Qais; Al-Saadi, Hamed (2019). Ginza Rabba (2nd ed.). Germany: Drabsha.
^ mandaean الصابئة المندايين (21 November 2019). "تعرف على دين المندايي في ثلاث دقائق". YouTube. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
^ ^a ^b Smith, Andrew Phillip (16 August 2016). John the Baptist and the Last Gnostics: The Secret History of the Mandaeans. Watkins Media Limited. p. 69. ISBN 978-1-78028-913-7.
^ Judah Benzion Segal, The Sabian Mysteries: The Planet Cult of Ancient Harran, Vanished Civilizations, ed. by E. Bacon, London 1963
^ The city of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran, p112 Tamara M. Green, 1992. "Segal was inclined to believe that the root of the word Sabian was Syriac. Rejecting the notion that it means baptizer ... Even if the etymology proposed by Segal is correct, nevertheless the question of how Muhammad learned about these ..."
^ pg. 1640 of Edward William Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon
^ Qurʼan 2:62, 5:69, and 22:17
^ Ibn al-Nadim. al-Fihrist. pp. 442–445.
^ Asmussen, J. P. (29 July 2011). ALCHASAI. Retrieved 9 May 2022. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |website= ignored (help)
^ "Extracts from Ethel Stefana Drower, 1937, Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran". Archived from the original on 3 December 2017. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
^ (Churton p. 26)
^ Tobias Churton pp. 26–7
^ ^a ^b ^c Poonawala, Ismail K. (1990). The History of al-Tabari-Volume IX The Last Years of the Prophet. State University of New York Press.
^ (Churton p. 27)
^ Green, Tamara M. The City of the Moon God. Published by E.J. Brill. 1992. p. 106
^ Green p. 112
^ De Blois 1960–2007; Van Bladel 2009, p. 65; Rashed 2009a, p. 646; Rashed 2009b, p. 21; Roberts 2017, pp. 253, 261–262.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Muhammad Saed Abdul-Rahman (2011). Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Part 1 of 30, Al Fatiha 001 To Al Baqarah 141. p. 170. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
^ The Guide for the Perplexed, Book Three, Chapter 37 p. 334 M. Friedlander. Dover Publications, Inc. New York. 1956.
^ Elukin, Jonathan (October 2002). "Maimonides and the Rise and Fall of the Sabians: Explaining Mosaic Laws and the Limits of Scholarship". Journal of the History of Ideas. Retrieved 8 May 2022.
^ 'Abdu'l-Bahá (1982) [1912]. The Promulgation of Universal Peace (Hardcover ed.). Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Baháʼí Publishing Trust. p. 365. ISBN 0-87743-172-8.
^ Bahá'u'lláh (1994) [1873–92]. Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Baháʼí Publishing Trust. p. 152. ISBN 0-87743-174-4.
^ "The Secret of Divine Civilization | Bahá'í Reference Library". www.bahai.org. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
^ The Mandaeans: The Last Gnostics
^ Survival Among The Kurds
^ G. R. S. Mead, Gnostic John the Baptizer: Selections from the Mandaean John-Book, p. 137: "... the French Vice-Consul at Mosul, estimated them at some 4000 souls in all (Etudes sur la Religion des Soubbas ou Sabéens, Paris, 1880). These were then to be found chiefly in the neighbourhood of Baṣra aud Kút. Siouffi's estimate, "
^ The Edinburgh Review, 1880, Sydney Smith. "Admitting M. Siouffi's ignorance and his teacher's possible dishonesty, these are scarcely sufficient to account for the origin of all the traditions and beliefs described in the * Etudes sur la religion ' des Soubbas. ..."
^ ^a ^b Layard, Austen Henry, Sir (1887). Early adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia, including a residence among the bakhtiyari and other wild tribes before the discovery of Nineveh. John Murray. pp. 162–164. ISBN 9781313905619.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila in Ideologies as intercultural phenomena p. 90, ed. Antonio Panaino, Giovanni Pettinato, International Association for Intercultural Studies of the MELAMMU Project, 2002 "... that in the marsh areas of Southern Iraq there was a continuous tradition of Mandaean religion, but it seems to have been totally neglected in scholarship that there was another pagan, or Sabian, centre in the tenth-century Islamic world, in the countryside of Iraq (sawad) around Baghdad"
^ Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, 2002. First, the books of the Nabatean corpus themselves claim to be translations from "ancient Syriac" (e.g. Filaha 1:5) made by Ibn Wahshiyya and transmitted to a student of his, Ibn az-Zayyat. The real authors of, e.g., Filaha, according to...

Sources

Churton, Tobias. The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and the First Freemasons. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2002.