Qulasta

[3] The prayerbook is a collection of Mandaic prayers regarding baptisms (masbuta) and other sacred rituals involved in the ascension of the soul (masiqta).

[5] The Qulasta, and two other key texts to Mandaic literature, the Mandaean Book of John and the Ginza Rabba, may have been compiled together.

[8] In the first colophon of the Qulasta (directly after prayer 74), Nukraya, son of Šitil, a scribe from the earliest part of the Islamic period, wrote that he copied the text while consulting at least seven manuscripts (ṭupsia).

[1]: 175 In 1949, Torgny Säve-Söderbergh argued that at many passages in the Manichaean Psalms of Thomas were paraphrases or even word-by-word translations of Mandaean prayers in the Qulasta.

[9] However, some scholars such as Kevin van Bladel believe that the material shared with the Psalms of Thomas may only be the use of a common source (perhaps Elkesaite funerary hymns), and that the text as a whole may date considerably later.

[10]: 76–78  The present form of the text must post-date the early Muslim conquests at minimum, given the references made in the Qulasta to the advancement of the Arab armies.

[15][16][17] Part 1 of Mark Lidzbarski's Liturgien (1920) (commonly abbreviated ML in Mandaic studies), titled the Qolastā, has only 103 prayers.

[2] The 414 prayers in E. S. Drower's 1959 Canonical Prayerbook (commonly abbreviated CP in Mandaic studies) are categorized into the following sections.

A different version of this prayer is found in DC 42, Šarḥ ḏ-Ṭabahata ("The Scroll of Ṭabahata" [Parents]), which is used during Parwanaya rituals.

These include:[1] Many passages in these texts are essentially priestly commentaries on both the practical ritual applications and esoteric symbolism of specific prayers in the Qulasta.