One of the earliest Europeans to write detailed works about the Mandaeans was Ignatius of Jesus, an Italian Roman Catholic friar who published a 1652 treatise on Mandaeism, Narratio originis, rituum, & errorum christianorum Sancti Ioannis ("Narration of the Origin, the Rituals, and the Errors of the Christians of St.
Petermann also performed field research with the Mandaeans in southern Iraq during the 1850s, where he worked with Yahya Bihram as his primary informant.
[7] During the latter half of the 20th century, other scholars active in Mandaean studies include Kurt Rudolph, Eric Segelberg, Edwin M. Yamauchi, and Edmondo Lupieri.
The most active 21st-century Mandaean studies scholars based in the United States are Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, Charles G. Häberl, and James F. McGrath.
Philologists outside the United States working on Mandaic texts include Bogdan Burtea in Germany,[8] as well as Matthew Morgenstern and Ohad Abudraham in Israel.