"Sabaism" redirects here. For general star worship, see
Astrotheology.
For the ancient people in South Arabia, see
Sabaeans. For the people of ancient Italy, see
Sabines. For the followers of Sabbatai Zevi, see
Sabbateans. For other uses, see
Sabian (disambiguation).
The Sabians, sometimes also spelled Sabaeans or Sabeans, are a mysterious religious group mentioned three times in the
Quran (as الصابئونal-Ṣābiʾūn, in later sources الصابئةal-Ṣābiʾa),[1] where it is implied that they belonged to the '
People of the Book' (ahl al-kitāb).[2] Their original identity, which seems to have been forgotten at an early date,[3] has been called an "unsolved Quranic problem".[4] Modern scholars have variously identified them as
Mandaeans,[5]Manichaeans,[6]Sabaeans,[7]Elchasaites,[8]Archontics,[9]ḥunafāʾ (either as a type of
Gnostics or as "sectarians"),[10] or as adherents of the
astral religion of
Harran.[11] Some scholars believe that it is impossible to establish their original identity with any degree of certainty.[12]
At least from the ninth century on, the Quranic epithet 'Sabian' was claimed by various religious groups who sought recognition by the Muslim authorities as a People of the Book deserving of legal protection (dhimma).[13] Among those are the Sabians of Harran, adherents of a poorly understood
pagan religion centered in the upper Mesopotamian city of
Harran, who were described by
Syriac Christian
heresiographers as
star worshippers.[14] These Harranian Sabians practiced an old Semitic form of
polytheism,[15] combined with a significant amount of
Hellenistic elements.[16] Most of the historical figures known in the ninth–eleventh centuries as al-Ṣābiʼ were probably either members of this Harranian religion or descendants of such members, most notably the Harranian astronomers and mathematicians
Thabit ibn Qurra (died 901) and
al-Battani (died 929).[17]
From the early tenth century on, the term 'Sabian' was applied to purported 'pagans' of all kinds, such as to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, or to
Buddhists.[19]Ibn Wahshiyya (died
c. 930) used the term for a type of Mesopotamian paganism that preserved elements of ancient
Assyro-Babylonian religion.[20]
Today in Iraq and
Iran, the name 'Sabian' is normally applied to the
Mandaeans, a modern ethno-religious group who follow the teachings of their prophet
John the Baptist (
Yahya ibn Zakariya). These Mandaean Sabians, whose most important religious ceremony is
baptism,[21] are
monotheistic, and their holy book is known as the Ginza Rabba.[22]: 1 Mandaean 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.[23]: 45
Etymology
The etymology of the Arabic word Ṣābiʾ is disputed. According to one interpretation, it is the
active participle of the Arabic
rootṣ-b-ʾ ('to turn to'), meaning 'converts'.[24] Another widely cited hypothesis, first proposed by
Daniel Chwolsohn in 1856,[25] is that it is derived from an
Aramaic root meaning 'to dip' or 'to baptize'.[26]
The interpretation as 'converts' was cited by various medieval Arabic
lexicographers and
philologists,[27] and is supported by a tradition preserved by
Ibn Hisham (died 834, editor of the earliest surviving
biography of Muhammad) relating that the term ṣābiʾa was applied to
Muhammad and the early Muslims by some of their enemies (perhaps by the Jews),[28] who regarded them as having 'turned' away from the proper religion and towards heresy. As such, the term may have been
reappropriated by early Muslims, first as a self-designation and then to refer to other people from a
Jewish Christian background who 'turned' to the new revelations offered by Muhammad. In the context of the Quranic passages in which the term occurs, it may thus refer to all people who leave their faiths, finding fault in them, but who have yet to come to Islam. In this sense, the term ṣābiʾ would be similar in meaning to the term
ḥanīf.[29]
Understanding the term as a reference to 'dippers' or 'baptizers' fits best with those interpretations that identify the Quranic Sabians with baptist sects like the
Elchasaites or the
Mandaeans.[27] However, this etymology has also been used to explain Ibn Hisham's story about Muhammad and his followers being called 'Sabians', which would then be a reference to the
ritual washing performed by Muslims before prayer, a practice resembling those of various baptist sects.[30]
"Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve."[
Quran2:62 (
Translated by Shakir)]
"Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabians and the Christians whoever believes in Allah and the last day and does good– they shall have no fear nor shall they grieve."[
Quran5:69 (
Translated by Shakir)]
"Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabians and the Christians and the Magians and those who associate (others with Allah)– surely Allah will decide between them on the day of resurrection; surely Allah is a witness over all things."[
Quran22:17 (
Translated by Shakir)]
The two first verses have generally been interpreted to mean that the Sabians belonged to the
People of the Book (ahl al-kitāb, cf. 5:68),[33] just like the Jews, the Christians and –only according to some interpretations– the
Zoroastrians (the 'Magians', al-majūs).[b] However, neither of the three verses give any indication of who the Sabians might have been or what they may have believed.[27] According to
François de Blois, the fact that they are classified in the Quran among
Abrahamic monotheists renders it unlikely that they were either the polytheists of Harran or the Mandaeans, the latter of whom defined themselves in opposition to the Abrahamic prophetic tradition.[27]
In later sources
Islamic
In some Sunni hadiths, they are described as converts to
Islam.[34]
At the beginning of the
Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia, the leader of the Mandaeans, Anush bar Danqa, appeared before Muslim authorities 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.[35]: 5
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.[36][23]: 35 [37]
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.'[38]
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 Harranians 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.[39] 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.[40]
The pagan people of Harran identified themselves with the Sabians in order to fall under the protection of Islam.[41][42]: 111–113 : 5 The Harranians may have identified themselves as Sabians in order to retain their religious beliefs.[41]: 5 Multiple medieval sources state that the Harranian Sabians acknowledged
Hermes Trismegistus as their prophet.[43] Validation of Hermes as a prophet comes from his identification as
Idris (i.e.
Enoch) in the Quran (19.57 and 21.85).[44] This has often led modern scholars to think of the Harranian Sabians as
Hermeticists, though there is in fact no meaningful evidence for this.[43]
Furthermore, 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.[45] 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.[46]
Other
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."[47] He provided considerable detail about the pagan Sabians in his Guide for the Perplexed (completed 1186–1190).[48]
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 Sabians), 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).[49]'Abdu'l-Bahá briefly describes Seth as one of the "sons of Adam".[50]Bahá'u'lláh in a
Tablet identifies Idris with Hermes Trismegistus.[51] 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.[52]
Modern scholars
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 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.[53]
Nicolas Siouffi
The
Syriac Christian,[54][55] 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,[56] but scholars criticized the estimates and study.[57]
Sir Austen Henry Layard
Layard mentions in his travel diary[58] 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.[58]
20th-century scholars
Gavin Maxwell while travelling with explorer
Wilfred Thesiger in the southern marshes of Iraq records in his diary that the Sabians were "People of the Book". The marsh Arabs called them "Subbi". They had their own script and religious practices. He estimated their number as "perhaps ten thousand". They dressed in the manner of the Sunnis. The lived only near moving (rather than stagnant) marsh water. In the mid-1950s they were considered the skilled craftsmen in the area who others turned to for metalwork. The work they were principally known for outside Iraq being silverwork.[59]
21st-century scholars
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.[60] These pagan "Sabians" are mentioned in the
Nabataean corpus of
Ibn Wahshiyya.[61]
Pagan Sabians
Among the various religious groups which in the 9th and 10th centuries came to be identified with the Sabians mentioned in the Quran, at least two groups were
pagans. Moreover, both appear to have engaged in some kind of star worship.
Sabians of Harran
By far the most famous of these two are the Sabians of Harran, adherents of a
Hellenized Semitic pagan religion that had managed to survive during the early
Islamic period in the
Upper Mesopotamian city of
Harran.[15] They were described by
Syriac Christian
heresiographers as star worshippers.[14] Most of the scholars and
courtiers working for the
Abbasid and
Buyid dynasties in
Baghdad during the ninth–eleventh centuries who were known as 'Sabians' were either members of this Harranian religion or descendants of such members, most notably the Harranian astronomers and mathematicians
Thabit ibn Qurra (died 901) and
al-Battani (died 929).[62] There has been some speculation on whether these Sabian families in Baghdad, on whom most of our information about the Harranian Sabians indirectly depends, may have practiced a different, more philosophically inspired variant of the original Harranian religion.[63] However, apart from the fact that it contains traces of
Babylonian and
Hellenistic religion, and that an important place was taken by planets (to whom ritual
sacrifices were made), little is known about Harranian Sabianism.[64] They have been variously described by scholars as (neo)-
Platonists,
Hermeticists, or
Gnostics, but there is no firm evidence for any of these identifications.[65][c]
Lower Mesopotamian Sabians
Apart from the Sabians of Harran, there were also various religious groups living in the
Mesopotamian Marshes who were called the 'Sabians of the Marshes' (Arabic: Ṣābiʾat al-baṭāʾiḥ).[66] Though this name has often been understood as a reference to the
Mandaeans, there was in fact at least one other religious group living in the marshlands of Southern Iraq.[67] This group still held on to a pagan belief related to
Babylonian religion, in which Mesopotamian gods had already been venerated in the form of planets and stars since antiquity.[68] According to
Ibn al-Nadim, our only source for this specific group counted among the 'Sabians of the Marshes', they "follow the doctrines of the ancient Aramaeans [ʿalā maḏāhib
an-Nabaṭ al-qadīm] and venerate the stars".[69] However, there is also a large corpus of texts by
Ibn Wahshiyya (died c. 930), most famously his
Nabataean Agriculture, which describes at length the customs and beliefs — many of them going back to Mespotamian models — of Iraqi Sabians living in the
Sawād.[70]
Contemporary Sabians
Today in
Iraq and
Iran, the Sabians are those that follow the teachings of
John the Baptist. They are
Mandaean Sabians.[21] 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.[21]
^Whether the 'Magians' listed in Quran 22:17 are to be understood as belonging to the People of the Book was a matter of dispute among medieval Muslim scholars. Islamic jurists generally granted Zoroastrians partial status as a People of the Book, though they disagreed on the extent to which legal privileges such as intermarriage with Muslims should be allowed (see
Darrow 2003;
Nasr et al. 2015, p. 834, verse 22:17).
^"Sabaism", in The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2005).
^De Blois 2004. 5:68, the verse preceding 5:69 quoted above, reads "Say: O followers of the Book [ahl al-kitāb]! You follow no good till you keep up the Taurat and the Injeel and that which is revealed to you from your Lord; and surely that which has been revealed to you from your Lord shall make many of them increase in inordinacy and unbelief; grieve not therefore for the unbelieving people.".[
Quran5:68 (
Translated by Shakir)]
^E.g.
Sahih Bukhari Book No. 7, Hadith No. 340; Book No. 59, Hadith No. 628; Book No. 89, Hadith No. 299 etc.
^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. ..."
^
abLayard, 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.
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^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...
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