Purity and Threat: Rethinking the Mandaeans' Religiosity

The Mandaeans are the members of an ethno-religious group living in Iran and Iraq. The religion of the Mandaeans is a written tradition and is the main reference of their identity. As a small endogamous group under the hegemony of the non-Mandaeans and exposed to epidemics, they always have been under the threat of cultural extinction. Therefore, group identity protection has become one of their major concerns, which is reflected in their religious practice. The Mandaeans practice a doctrinal ritualistic religion with recurrence theme of purity. The doctrinal rituals allow them to transmit a large number of religious codes through generations and to re-establish their identity. Simultaneously, the obsession with bodily purity symbolically shows their preoccupation with the unity and integrity of the threatened group boundaries. Since recent decades the Mandaeans' homeland in Iran and Iraq has undergone dramatic socio-political changes caused by the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the first and second Persian Gulf Wars and their entailed instabilities. These circumstances led to the emigration of many Mandaeans to other countries and formation of Mandaean diasporas around the world. These new social conditions are making a crucial effect on the Mandaeans' religious system and identity policy. The article is based on a long-term ethnographic study on the Mandaeans of Iran.

The paper addresses the Mandaeans' long lasting identity challenge as a small ethno-religious group living under the threat of cultural extinction. The Mandaeans are followers of an ancient gnostic tradion and they have been living in Mesopotamia for several centuries. Because of their unkown and partly esoteric relgion, they have always been the subject of the religious intolerance of thier neghbouring people. This have made the identity concern one of the main social concerns of the Mandaeans. This concern, in turn, reflects in the religious system of the Mandaeans. The Mandaeans have developed elaborated rituals with the repetitive theme of body purification. Babtism, ablutions and food taboos show this carful concern about purity. This obsession with body purification symbolically expresses the Mandaeans' anxious care about the purification of the group body. In last decades, because of the wars and social and plitical unrests in their homeland, the Mandaeans have started to emigrate from their countries to Europe, North America and Australia. Fromation of scattered diaspora and living in mulitcultural scular societies can bring about dramatic changes in the Mandaeans religious practice and cosmology. There are some signs that show this changes have been started.

2016

Mandaeans, an ethno-religious group mostly living in Iraq and Iran, are bearers of a Gnostic tradition based on the scriptures written in Mandaic. As a small minority living under the threat of cultural extinction and ethnocide, Mandaeans have developed highly elaborated purification rites as the source of their group identity. The concern for group integrity is well encoded in these rituals that symbolically and practically maintain the boundaries of group identity. In a mutual relation, the rituals and Mandaean world-view comprise a cultural system characteristic of Mandaean religion. However, political instability and wars have led to the emigration of a substantive number of the Mandaeans and the formation of diasporas in Australia, Europe and North America. The Mandaean dispersion is a turning point of the people's history. It liquefies the boundaries of group identity and puts the Mandaean identity challenge in an unprecedented paradigm. Simultaneously, it is bringing about further development in their religious system in terms of accommodation, rationalization and exegeses. These changes can be summarized as pluralism and secularization in the community, especially in the diasporas and an incipient move from mythos towards logos in the religious system.

Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 2020

The Mandaeans are members of a Gnostic ethnoreligious group who live in Iran and Iraq. They have always been a small minority under the threat of cultural extinction. Recent wars and political unrest in their homeland have intensified the situation and accelerated the emigration and dissemination of the community. They practice elaborate religious rituals that revolve around the recurrent theme of bodily purity, including ritual concern for food and its preparation. On the one hand, using a Geertzian approach to the study of religion with ethnographic data, the mutual relationship between the food-related rituals, Mandaean cosmology and the formation of a “religious world” is considered. On the other hand, the very formation of a “religious world” can be seen as a social construction based on the historical experience and socio-political situation of the people. The ritual obsession with the purity of body and food symbolically represents a preoccupation with the purity and integrity of the community, while at the same time it re-establishes the boundaries of a distinct group identity in a threatening milieu. Therefore, food-related rituals not only symbolically represent Mandaean worldview and simultaneously set up a specific ethos for the people, but they also create and recreate this distinct identity.

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2004

2018

Mandaeism is a two millenaries old religion that was confined for centuries in a small geographical area in Southern Iraq and Iran. Despite being prior to Christianity, it has a limited number of practitioners. Nonetheless, Mandaean community was forced to migrate several times, fleeing persecution. By the end of the 20 th century and the beginning of the 21 st , a large number of Mandaeans left their homelands to Western countries, including Sweden. Nowadays, this Scandinavian country hosts around 10.000 Mandaeans, which is considered as the largest Mandaean community in the world. The present article highlights the Mandaean presence in Sweden from different aspects, including integration, identity, change of habits and rituals, and secularization. Based on interviews with religious figures and secular citizens, it presents an in-depth analysis of the current situation of Mandaeans in Sweden, their relation to their homeland and the impact of their new environment on their practices.

Sydney Studies in Religion, 2008

Journal of Art & Civilization of the Orient (JACO), 2018

Religions present their followers with a religious world that simultaneously set the worldview as well as the ethos of the community of the believers. The Mandaeans are the followers of an ethnoreligious minority who are originally living in Iran and Iraq. By drawing on the landscape of ritual performance and certain ritual constructs among the Mandaeans, this essay intends to show how the Gnostic Mandaean cosmology and ethos are symbolically manifested in their aesthetic sense and the way they approach their rituals.

FOOD AND SOCIETY in ASIA PACIFIC: Taste, Culture, Education, 2018

The Mandaeans—members of an ethnoreligious minority originally based in Iran and Iraq—are the bearers of the last living Gnostic tradition of the world. Their religious practice involves complex purification rituals, including food rituals and specific taboos that symbolically and practically distinguish them from their Muslim neighbors. The present-day Ahvazi Mandaean community includes approximately two thousand people, who express diverse food-related ritual practices and have different food restrictions and ideas of purity. In fact, the norms concerning religious dietary restrictions are continuously challenged, reinterpreted and transformed by the people according to the practical necessities of everyday life. This paper, through the narratives of the Mandaean women, describes how the connection between the Mandaean community and its social and political milieu has shaped the relationship between people and food and consequently changed the food-related rituals. Following the stories of Mandaean Ahvazi women, we show how historical experience and socio-religious factors have influenced the deep connection between Mandaean religion and food.