Mandaeism

Mandaeism, sometimes called Nasoraeanism or Sabianism, is a Gnostic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion shaped by Greek, Iranian, and Jewish traditions. Its followers, the Mandaeans, honor Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. They regard Adam as the religion’s founder and John as its greatest and final prophet. The faith’s core doctrine is known as Nāṣerutā (Nasoraean gnosis or divine wisdom), and its adherents are called nāṣorāyi (Nasoraeans). These Nasoraeans are split into tarmidutā (priesthood) and mandāyutā (laity), the latter term coming from the Aramaic word *manda*, meaning knowledge. The name “Mandaean” itself derives from this same root. Followers may also be referred to as Gnostics (using the Greek word for knowledge) or Sabians.

The Mandaeans speak an Eastern Aramaic language called Mandaic. Outside their community in West Asia, they are more commonly known as the Ṣubba (singular: Ṣubbī) or as Sabians. The term Ṣubba comes from an Aramaic root linked to baptism. The name “Sabians” is borrowed from a mysterious group mentioned three times in the Quran, implied to be among the “People of the Book.” Mandaeans, along with several other religious groups, historically claimed this label to gain legal protection (dhimma) under Islamic law. Occasionally, Mandaeans are called “Christians of Saint John,” based on the idea that they are direct survivors of John the Baptist’s disciples. However, further research shows this is a misnomer, as Mandaeans consider Jesus a false prophet.

The religion has mainly been practiced along the lower Karun, Euphrates, and Tigris rivers, and the waterways around the Shatt al-Arab, in southern Iraq and Iran’s Khuzestan province. As of 2007, there were believed to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide. Until the Iraq War, nearly all lived in Iraq. Many Mandaean Iraqis fled after the 2003 invasion and subsequent U.S. occupation, driven by sectarian violence from extremists. By 2007, Iraq’s Mandaean population had dropped to about 5,000.

Mandaeans have remained separate and intensely private. Most reports about them have come from outsiders, including Orientalist Julius Heinrich Petermann, Syrian Christian Nicolas Siouffi (French vice-consul in Mosul in 1887), British cultural anthropologist Lady E. S. Drower, and French traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, whose 1650s account was highly prejudiced.

The English spelling “Mandaeism” is a hypercorrection of “Mandaism,” which is built on *manda* with the suffix -ism. “Mandaean” comes from Mandaic *Mandaiia*, also from *manda*. Semiticists like Mark Lidzbarski and Rudolf Macúch have translated *manda* as “knowledge,” based on cognates in other Aramaic dialects. This suggests Mandaeans may be the only sect surviving from late antiquity that explicitly identifies as Gnostics.

According to the Mandaean text *Haran Gawaita* (the Scroll of Great Revelation), authored between the 4th and 6th centuries, Nasoraean Mandaeans—disciples of John the Baptist—left Jerusalem in the first century CE due to persecution. They first went to Haran (possibly Harran in modern Turkey) or Hauran, then to the Median hills in Iran, and finally settled in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Richard Horsley suggests “inner Hawran” likely refers to Wadi Hauran in present-day Syria, then controlled by the Nabataeans, who were at war with Herod Antipas (who executed John) and thus sympathetic to John’s followers. This account is partially repeated in the Right Ginza, while the presence of Nasoraean Mandaeans in Jerusalem is also mentioned in the *Qulasta* and the *Draša d-Yahya* (Mandaean Book of John). Many scholars, including Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, agree with this historical account, though others argue for a southwestern Mesopotamian origin. Some scholars believe Mandaeism is older, dating to pre-Christian times. Mandaeans themselves claim their religion predates Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and that they are direct descendants of Shem, Noah’s son, as well as of John the Baptist’s original Nasoraean disciples in Jerusalem.

During Parthian rule, Mandaeans flourished under royal protection. This ended when Sasanian emperor Bahram I ascended the throne, and his high priest Kartir persecuted all non-Zoroastrians. At the start of the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia around 640, the Mandaean leader was named Anush.