Mandean

The Identity of the  Ṣābi'ūn: An Historical Quest
by Christopher Buck.

The Muslim World 74.3/4 (July/Oct. 1984): 172–186.

[Published online 3 April 2007, Wiley Online Library.]
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1984.tb03453.x.
Electronic Database (full text available): ATLA Religion Database; Wiley.

ABSTRACT

One of the mysterious and unsolved Qur'anic problems surrounds the identity of the Sabians, al-Ṣābi'ūn. As Jane McAuliffe has shown in her study published in an earlier volume of this journal, Muslim exegetes reflect uncertainty on this point from the very start. Over time the term so diversified in meaning that it became even more difficult to determine to whom it referred. Yet one would assume that in the Qur'ān al-Ṣābi'ūn denotes a specific historical community. Placed alongside Jews, Christians, and "the Believers" (Muslims) in Q. 2:62, one is tempted to regard the Sabians as a fourth monotheistic community. This association is all the more inviting when once again, in Q. 5:69, the same four religions are distinguished following an address to the "possessors of scripture" several verses earlier. This sense of parallelism would appear in Q. 22:17 to extend to the Majūs—who are called into question by the obtrusion into the context of "those who associate" (gods with God). Whatever the solution, these groups constitute a significant internal witness to the religious demography, so to speak, within the Qur'anic universe.

To make sense of the demographic puzzle in which the Sabians figure as the least familiar piece, a fresh methodological "angle" is suggested by the inconclusive data obtained from the study of Muslim commentators. Their indecisive witness is itself a problem which may need to be explained in other ways than simply as resulting from educated speculation. Complementary to McAuliffe's illustrative exegetical survey, the present study employs, therefore, an historical methodology which enables us to place history alongside tradition. A comparison will be drawn between the prominent religious communities Islam encountered during its first two centuries of expansion and the groups identified as Ṣābi'ūn by Arabic and Persian authorities, primarily of the tenth century. Moreover, data gleaned from pre-Islamic sources will offer an independent witness, especially crucial for determining who the Qur'anic Sabians originally were.

The hypothesis we want to test in this article is that the tenth-century identifications of the Ṣābi'ūn which will be considered here reflect the first wave of Muslim expansion after the Prophet's death, especially the encounter with the groups listed by Waardenburg under numbers 5–9. In the case of the Sabians, an interpretation which accounts for diverse identifications would show the validity of data which otherwise would simply be dismissed as contradictory and therefore wrong.

It was natural in the course of time for Muslim authors to extend the application of the term Sabian to cover not only communities from a far distant past, but also contemporary communities with which they themselves came in contact, including some in Africa. Clearly, the term Sabian had by now proved to be the most meaningful and attractive nomenclature for comprehending foreign religiosities within what could still be considered a Qur'anic worldview.

Our study has shown that the issue of the apparent confusion among Muslim exegetes over the identity of the Sabians is resolved once the historical circumstances are grasped. Exactly because it was imprecise, the word Ṣābi'ūn functioned as a term of great legal importance by contributing to an attitude of toleration towards minority religions under Muslim rule. The term evolved from a once-specific designation to a classification which, adapted to ever new historical contexts, expanded its meaning to embrace peoples of otherwise uncertain standing, giving them a place of security within a Qur'anically sanctioned framework.

As far as the original Qur'anic Ṣābi'ūn are concerned, special attention was paid to the Cologne Mani Codex (CMC) which confirms the assertion found in the Fihrist that Sabians were Elchasaites, an identification which may also be implied in Hippolytus. On the basis of evidence to date, it seems justifiable to reaffirm Chwolsohn's conclusion that the Qur'anic Sabians were persons known for their emphasis on ritual purifications, predominantly Mandaeans and Elchasaites.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, Shams al-Din al-Shahrazuri al-Ishraqi (d. between 1287 and 1304) wrote an Arabic history of philosophy entitled Nuzhat al-Arwah wa Raw∂at al-AfraÌ. Using some older materials (mainly Ibn Nadim; the ∑iwan al-Ìikma, and al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik), he considers the 'Modern philosophers' (ninth-thirteenth c.) to be the heirs of the Ancients, and collects for his demonstration the stories of the ancient sages and scientists, from Adam to Proclus as well as the biographical and bibliographical details of some ninety modern philosophers. Two interesting chapters on Adam and Seth have not been studied until this day, though they give some rare – if cursory – historical information on the Mandaeans, as was available to al-Shahrazuri al-Ishraqi in the thirteenth century. We will discuss the peculiar historiography adopted by Shahrazuri, and show the complexity of a source he used, namely al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik's chapter on Seth, which betray genuine Mandaean elements.

The U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires states to provide an effective remedy to indigenous peoples deprived of their cultural, religious, or intellectual property (IP) without their free, prior and informed consent. The Declaration could prove to be an important safeguard for the indigenous peoples of Iraq and Turkey, the victims for centuries of massacres, assaults on their religious and cultural sites, theft and deterioration of their lands and cultural objects, and forced assimilation. These peoples, among them the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Yezidis of Turkey and Turkish-occupied Cyprus, and the Armenians, Assyrians, Yezidis, and Mandaeans of Iraq, have lost more than two-thirds of their peak populations, most of their cultural and religious sites, and thousands of priceless artifacts and specimens of visual art.

The European Union has probed these violations of indigenous people's rights as part of the process of bringing Turkish laws and policies into compliance with European human rights standards. The United States has investigated violations of the rights of Iraq’s indigenous peoples in reports issued by the various executive agencies and legislative committees.

My paper will summarize the results of these inquiries, and propose four reforms. First, restitution or compensation should be implemented for the widespread destruction of indigenous peoples’ cultural and intellectual properties by previous Turkish and Iraqi regimes. Second, efforts to promote the security of indigenous peoples’ surviving intellectual and cultural patrimony must be adopted. Third, transnational corporations and other large enterprises such as museums and publishers should respect the rights of indigenous people to protect, access, and use their cultural and intellectual property held outside of Turkey and Iraq. Fourth, policies within Turkey and Iraq that restrict the preservation and transmission of indigenous cultural and intellectual manifestations must be reformed or abolished.

This article also describes the growing body of law governing indigenous peoples' rights, particularly in Europe. Applicable general international law standards are set forth in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, the the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Hague Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land, the Hague Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, the Convention on Biodiversity, the ILO Convention No. 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

European standards are embodied in the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Copenhagen principles on human rights in the EU, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the OSCE Oslo Recommendations Regarding the Linguistic Rights of National Minorities, and the Council of the European Union's Framework decision on Racism and Xenophobia. In the United States, additional standards are set forth in the Foreign Relations Act of 1961, the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the Alien Tort Claims Act, and the Torture Victims Protection Act.