Sabians
The Sabians, sometimes also spelled Sabaeans or Sabeans, are a religious group mentioned three times in the Quran (as الصابئون al-Ṣābiʾūn, in later sources الصابئة al-Ṣābiʾa),[1] where it is implied that they belonged to the 'People of the Book' (ahl al-kitāb).
[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.
[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).
[18] Ibn Wahshiyya (died c. 930) used the term for a type of Mesopotamian paganism that preserved elements of ancient Assyro-Babylonian religion.
[19] 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).
[23] Another widely cited hypothesis, first proposed by Daniel Chwolsohn in 1856,[24] is that it is derived from an Aramaic root meaning 'to dip' or 'to baptize'.
[25] The interpretation as 'converts' was cited by various medieval Arabic lexicographers and philologists,[26] 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),[27] 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.
[26] 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.
"[Quran 22:17 (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.
[34]: 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.
'[37] 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.
Usamah ibn Ayd, writing before 770 CE (his year of death), already referred to a city of Sabians in the region where Harran lies.
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.
[57] 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".
[62] 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.
[66] This group still practiced a polytheistic Babylonian religion or similar, in which Mesopotamian gods had already been venerated in the form of planets and stars since antiquity.
[67] 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".
[68] 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.
Besides these southern regions and Ahvaz in Iran, large numbers of Mandaeans were found in Baghdad, giving them easy access to the Tigris River.
