3K

(Maisonneuve)/Leiden (Brill). uM.Hy*wtuncj utuves. VU1J, fans, Z" e(l.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (1960), second ed. Leiden (Brill)/London (Luzac).
Etchecopar, R. D. and F. Hue. (1964), Les Oiseaux du Nord de VAfrique de la
Mer Rouge aux Canaries. Paris, N. Boubee et Cie.
Etchecopar, R. D. and F. Hue. (1970), Les Oiseaux du Proche et du Moyen Orient
de la Mediterranee aux contreforts de VHimalaya. Paris, N. Boubee et Cie.
Freytag, G. W (1837), Lexicon arabico - latinum. Halle. C. A. Schwetschke.
Goodman, S. M., P. L. Meininger, S. M. Baha el Din, J. J. Hobbs and W. C.
Mullie (1989), The birds of Egypt. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Hitti, P. (1985), History of the Arabs. London, McMillan.
Hollom, P. A. D., R. F. Porter, S. Christensen and I. Willis (1988), Birds of the
Middle East and North Africa. T. Calton & D. Poyser.
Ibn Manzur al-Ifriql al-Misri, Abu-1-Fadl Jamal ad-Din Muhammad ibn Mukarram (1955), Lisdn al-cArab. Bayrut, Dar Sadir - Dar Bayrut.
Al-Jahiz, Abu cUtman cAmribn Bahr (1965-1969), Kitab al-Hayawan 8 vols.
Second ed. Cairo, Maktabat wa Matbacat Mustafa al-BabT al-halabT wa 3Awladuhu bi-Misr.
Kazimirski,
A. B. (1860), Dictionnaire Arabe - Frangais, Paris, Maisonneuve et
Cie.
Lane, E. W. (1956), Arabic - English Lexicon. (William and Norgate. London
1879), New York, Frederic Ungar Publishing Co.
Peterson, R., G. Mountfort and P. A. D. Hollom (1989), Europas Fugle. Copenhagen, C. E. G. Gads Forlag.
Malouf, A. An Arabicc zoological dictionary. (First edition Cairo 1932). Bayrut,
ed. Dar ar-riPid al- arabl.
an-Nuwayri (1954), Nihayat al-Arab ft Funun al-Adab. Cairo, photomechanical
reprint of the ed. of Dar al-Kutub al Misriyyah, Ministry of Culture and
National Guidance, Egypt.
al-QazwInl, Zakaria0 b. Muhammad b. Mahmud (1967), Kitab ''Aja'ib al-mahluqat wa ghard'ib al-mawjudat - El Cazwini's Kosmographie. Ed. F. Wiistenfeld. Genehmigter Neudruck des Ausgabe von 1848-49 des Verlages der
Dieterichschen Buchhandlung. Wiesbaden, Martin Sandig.
Reig, D. (1983), Dictionnaire arabe-frangais, frangais-arabe, as-Sabil. Paris,
Collection Saturne, Librairie Larousse.
Steingass, F. (1982, first published 1884), Arabic - English Dictionary New
Delhi, Cosmo Publications.
Wehr, H. (1976), Dictionary of modern written Arabic. New York, J. Milton
Cowan.

Printed in Denmark - allrightsreserved

ACTA ORJENTALIA
ISSN,0001-6438

The 'Sabians' (SabPun) in Pre-Islamic Arabia1

Francois de Blois
London

A religious community called SabPun2 is mentioned three times in the

Quian. The first passage (2:62) reads: 'As for those who have believed,
and those who have professed Judaism, and the Christians, and the
SabPun: whoso believed in god and the last day and did good, they shall
have their recompense with their lord and there shall be no fear upon
them and they shall not grieve'. The second passage (5:69) is virtually
identical with this one; for our purposes it will suffice to point out that the
order in which the religions are enumerated is slightly different: here the
SabPun come before the Christians. As can be seen, these two dyahs list
four religions: 'those who believed' (evidently meaning the Muslims), the
Jews, the Christians and the SabPun, all of whom, provided they actually
fulfil their religious duties, are, or at least were at some time in the past,3
potential candidates for salvation. As such they stand in stark contrast to
the polytheists, the 'associators' (musrikun), who, the Quian insists, are
destined to damnation. Although it is nowhere explicitly stated that the
SabPun are 'people of the book' (ahl al-kitab) - this designation is
expressly applied only to the Jews and Christians - the fact that in these
1

This paper (apart from the appendix) was read at the 26th Seminar for Arabian Studies,
in Manchester, in July 1992, and again at the Oriental Institute Mediaeval Studies
Seminar, Oxford, in November of the same year. I should like to thank those colleagues
who were present on these two occasions for their remarks and in particular Professor
G.R. Smith for his written comments.
2
In post-Qur'anic Arabic the plural (or collective) of sabi'/sdbT occurs also as sdbfah or
sabah.
3
The Qur'an-commentators have in general understood these verses to imply a potential
salvation for the Christians only in the period before the coming of Muhammad, and
similarly for the Jews only before the mission of Jesus. Of course, the past tense in
Arabic does not necessarily refer to past time; it is used also to state timeless truths.

UQ

frequently used in a meaning that is not mentioned by Tabari,6 namely as

a designation for a community that existed in the town of Harran, on the
upper Euphrates, and which, judging from the fairly extensive reports by
authors such as al-MascudI and an-Nadlm,7 worshipped a variety of astral
deities; the epithet most frequently applied to its members by Muslim
authors is 'star-worshippers'.8 Less commonly, the name sabi0 is used,

verses they are mentioned together with the Jews and Christians has on
the whole led Muslim interpreters to the (plausible) deduction that the
SabPun are in fact ahl al-kitab, that is to say that they had a more-or-less
monotheistic faith and a book that had been given to them by a genuine
god-sent prophet.
The last remaining Qur'anic verse which mentions the SabPun (22:17)
can be translated as follows: 'As for those who have believed, and those
who have professed Judaism, and the SabPun, and the Christians, and the
majus (Zoroastrians), and those who have associated (others with god),
verily god shall separate between them on the day of resurrection. Truly
god is a witness concerning every thing'. In this verse the scope is wider:
after the true believers (Muslims) and the now familiar triad of Jews,
SabPun and Christians, two further faiths are mentioned: the Zoroastrians
and the polytheists, and to these is held up no longer the general possibility of salvation, but only the prospect that god will distinguish between
them, redeeming the ones and damning the others. It is thus clear that,
whereas 2:62 and 5:69 enumerate the 'approved' religions only, the
longer list in 22:17 is intended to give an overview of the whole spectrum
of religious variety, from the best (the Muslims) to the worst (the
polytheists).
The three passages that we have just examined represent the sum total
of what we really know about the SabPun. Already in the Jdmicu l-bayan
c
an ta3wili l-qufan of at-Tabari (died 923), we read4 that the ahlu t-ta'wll
disagree concerning the question of to whom the name SabPun belongs
and the author proceeds to quote nine more or less different suggestions.
What is striking here is not only the disagreement among the authorities
but also the overwhelmingly abstract character of the opinions cited: one
says that they are 'between the majus and the Jews', 5 another that they
'recite the psalms', etc. Only two of the authorities (and we shall return to
them) offer any sort of geographic localisation. In fact, it must be clear
that three hundred years after the time of Muhammad nobody really knew
who the Sabi^un mentioned in the Qur'an actually were and that the
question of their identity had become one of theological speculation.
However, during the 10th and 1 lth centuries the name SabPun is most
4
5

Tabari does list an opinion according to which the Sabiun are a community 'in jazlratu
l-Mawsil who say la 'ilaha 'ilia Hah' - i.e. they were monotheists - 'but who have no
religious practice (^atrial), no (revealed) book and no prophet'. This can hardly refer - as
Margoliouth and others have thought - to the 'Sabians of Harran', for these are
consistently described as polytheists; moreover Harran is a long way from al-Mawsil. It
would seem more likely that the reference is to some Kurdish sect, perhaps even the
ancestors of the Yezidis. In any event, the fact that Tabari's commentary fails to mention
the 'Sabians of Harran' does not mean that its author did not know of them; it shows only
that their identification as the Sabi'un of the Qur'an was not accepted by any of the early
exegetes.
7
The principal sources are conveniently collected, together with a German translation (not
always reliable), in Chwolsohn (1856). There are some interesting new insights in
Tardieu (1986). See now also J. van Ess, Theologie uhd Gesellschaft im 2. und 3.
Jahrhundert Hidschra, II, Berlin/New York 1992, pp. 442-9.
8
I am not aware of any clearly datable attestations for this use of the name Sabi3 before the
10th century. The only possible exception is a passage in the Risalah ... ft dikri ma
turjima min kutubi Jalinus by the well-known Christian author Hunayn ibn 'Ishaq (died
873) in which he says that Galen's work TIEQI rjdaiv was translated into Syriac by (as Ms.
A = Ayasofya 3631 has it) 'one of the Sabians' (rajulun mina s-sdbv'in); instead of this
the apparently earlier recension of the work contained in Ms. B (=Ayasofya 3590) has
'one of the Harnaniyyah' (sic lege; for the irregular nisbah compare the passage in
al-Xuwarazml cited below in note 19); see G. Bergstrasser, Hunain ibn Ishaq iiber die
syrischen und arabischen Galen-Ubersetzungen (=Abh.f.d.K.d.M. XVII/2), Leipz
1925, p. 49 of the Arabic section, and id., Neue Materialmen zu Hunain ibn Ishaq's
Galen-Bibliographie (=Abh.f.d.K.d.M. XIX/2), Leipzig 1932, p. 23. If both formulations
do indeed go back to Hunayn, then it would seem that sabi0 was understood to be a
synonym for hamanTlharrdnl already in the second half of the 9th century. But in the
absence of corroborating evidence one must consider the possibility that as-sabiin in
Ms. A is a correction (or gloss) by a later scribe. -1 cannot attach much importance to the
fact that Gregory Barhebraeus in his Chronicon syriacum, ed. Bedjan, p. 168, mentions a
Syriac work by abit ibn Qurrah (died 901) with the title KOafia <5 'al tawdlda dsafiaye
('Book concerning the sect of the Sabians'), since Barhebraeus' list of Qabit's Syriac
writings is clearly based on that given in Arabic by al-Qiftl in (the original of the epitome
published under the title) Ta'rixu 1-hukanuT, ed. A. Miiller and J. Lippert, Leipzig 1902,
p. 120. In other words, al-Qiftl's source (namely an Arabic bibliographical work by the
'Sabian' al-Muhassin ibn 'Ibrahim) translated the Syriac book-titles into Arabic, while
Barhebraeus merely translated them back into Syriac. By contrast, in the passage which

Ed. M. M. Sakir and 'A. M. Sakir, Cairo n.d. II pp. 145-7 (Commentary on 2:62).
Or 'between the Jews and the majus'. I should think that both formulations reflect
nothing other than the fact that in Qur'an 22:17 the name as-sabiTn is mentioned after
'alladina hadu, but before al-majus.

tcSIC

42

43

FRANCOIS DE BLOIS

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

evidently by extension, as a general term for 'pagan' or 'polytheist', i.e.

for what in the Qur'an is called musrik? This can be observed also in
Christian Arabic authors,10 who use it as a synonym for hanif which in
Christian usage has the same meaning as Syriac hanpd, 'pagan'. It is most
interesting that these two words are used in precisely this way by the
well-informed Muslim writer al-MascudI, when he says that the Roman
emperors, before their conversion to Christianity, had belonged to the
religion of as-sdbiDuna l-musammawna bi l-hunafa.u And in another
passage al-MascudI says that the ancient Persians, before the time of
Zoroaster, had followed the religion of al-hunafaH wa humu s-sdbPiin.12
al-MascudI must have been perfectly aware of the fact that here he is
using the words sdbi and hanif in a sense that is entirely different from
their meaning in the Qur'an. The implication of his statement is not - as
has sometimes been claimed - that in the Qur'an sdbiD and hanif are
synonyms, but only that in the very different sort of Arabic that was used
by the intellectuals of the 10th century both words could mean 'heathen'.
As it so happens, a fair number both of Muslim and of Christian
authors expressly denied that the 'star-worshippers' of Harran were really
the SabPun of the Quian. The fullest, and most colourful, version of the
story of the 'usurpation' of this name is quoted in the Fihrist of anNadlm13 from the account of an otherwise unknown Abu Yusuf 3Isuc
al-QatFI an-Nasranl - a Christian - in a work with the characteristic title
FT l-kasfi can maddhibi l-harnaniyyina l-macrufina fi casrina bi s-sdbah.
Briefly: When the caliph al-Mamun was passing through the Diyar
Mudar during the last years of his reign (i.e. not long before 833) on his

way to make war against the Byzantines, he noticed that there was
something peculiar about the men of Harran, e.g. that they had long hair,
and inquired about their religion. 'We are Harnaniyyah'. 'Are you Christians?' 'No.' 'Are you Jews?' 'No.' 'Are you majusT 'No.' 'Do you have
a book or a prophet?' The Harranians stammered in reply. The caliph then
set them an ultimatum: by the time of his return from the campaign the
Harranians were either to become Muslims, or accept one of the other
religions mentioned in the Qur'an, or else be put to the sword. Thereupon
some of them became Muslims, others Christians. Others, however,
would not abandon their ancestral faith and took advice from a local
Muslim faqih who, after accepting a large bribe, suggested to them that
when Mamun returned they should tell him that they were Sabi^un,
because this is the name of a religion which god mentioned in the Qur'an.
The story goes on to say that Mamun died during his campaign and thus
never returned to the area, but the pagans of Harran have continued to call
themselves SabPun until the present day.
We have, of course, no way of knowing whether this story is really
accurate in all of its details.14 What is clear is that it reflects a true
historical situation, namely that in the Abbasid period no one had any
idea who the Qur'anic Sabians really were and that the name was
consequently up for grabs. And it was a name which did in fact shield the
Harranians from persecution for the best part of two centuries.
The story of the 'usurpation' of the name by the Harranians was known
also to Hamzah al-lsfahanl, who tells us in his History15 that the pagans
of Western Asia used to be called 'Chaldaeans' (kalddniyyun) 'and their
remnants today are in the two towns of Harran and Edessa.16 But they
ceased to use this name for themselves since the days of al-Ma'mun and
instead they call themselves SabPun for a reason that it would take too
long to narrate', an evident allusion to the story that we have just heard

Barhebraeus quotes from abit to illustrate the excellence of his Syriac style (op. cit.,
pp. 168-9) and which was clearly available to him in the original language, abit refers
to his co-religionists consistently as hanpe, not as 'Sabians'. It is, of course, possible that
abit, when writing in Arabic, did refer to himself as a Sabi3, and that this usage was in
fact popularised by him, the first Harranian pagan widely known to educated Muslims,
but that is a hypothesis which requires confirmation. (For the 'Sabian' intellectuals of
Baghdad see now in detail my article 'Sabi3' in EP.)
9
For the following see Stem (1968), with further references.
10
E.g. by Eutychius (died 939), when he speaks in his Nazmu l-jawhar, ed. Pocock(e), H
p. 482 of the Sabi'un in Nazianzena at the time of Julianus Apostata.
11
Kitdbu t-tanbThi wa l-'israf ed. M.J. de Goeje (=BGA VII), Leyden 1894, pp. 122-3;
similar passages are cited in de Goeje's glossarium, p. xxviii.
12
Id. p. 90.
13
Kitdbu l-fihristi li n-Nadfm, ed. R. Tajaddud, 2nd edition, Tehran, n.d. (preface dated
1973) p. 385.

14

al-Bayrunl, al-'A6aru l-bdqiyah cani l-quruni l-xdliyah, ed. E. Sachau, Leipzig 1878, p.
318, says that the Harranians adopted the name Sabi'un in the year 228/842-3, which is
about a decade later that the time suggested by 'Abu Yusuf. Either date puts the event
well before the earliest literary attestations for this use of the name (see above, note 8).
15
Ta'rixu sinT muluki l-'ardi wa l-'anbiyd', ed. Gottwaldt, St Petersburg/Leipzig 1844-8,
p. 5.
16
The reference to a pagan community in Edessa, that well-known citadel of Syrian
Christianity, is surprising. I wonder whether ar-Ruha is not a scribal error for arrRaqqah.
A pagan presence in ar-Raqqah is attested by Ibn al-Qifti (p. 115 of the work quoted in
note 8) when he says that this town was the birth-place of the 'Sabian' doctor abit ibn
'Ibrahim.

TTTPT"
1 it=*44

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

FRANCOIS DE BLOIS

45

the classic presentation of the case is by the Russian Semitist D.A.

Chwolsohn (Chwolson, XBOJIBCOH) in his monumental work Die Ssabier
und der Ssabismus, published in 1856. Since then Chwolsohn's theses
have been accepted almost unanimously by western scholars (and even
by some modern Muslim authors); a few objected, notably Noldeke as
early as 1869, and some others since,23 but these have been voices in the
wilderness.
The central argument for the identification of the Sabians with the
Mandaeans is an etymology first proposed, it seems, by Norberg and
subsequently accepted by Chwolsohn and many others: the Arabic word
comes from the Aramaic root sbc, 'to baptize'. The Mandaeans are great
baptizers, baptism is indeed the main point of their ritual. A well-known
feature of the Mandaic dialect of Aramaic is precisely the loss ofcayn.
Thus, Arabic sabi0 or sabi could very well represent the Mandaic form of
the active participle of the root 'to baptize'; this participle is indeed
attested in Mandaic texts as sDbD.
I have, from a purely linguistic point of view, no objections to this
derivation. But it should be obvious that an etymology by itself cannot
establish the meaning of a word. For this textual evidence is necessary.
The textual basis for Chwolsohn's argument is, apart from the already
cited passage from Hamzah, an important extract from the Fihrist of
an-Nadlm concerning what the author calls the sabat al-batdHh ('Sabians
of the swamps') or al-muytasilah ('those who wash themselves').
In fact an-Nadlm mentions the muytasilah twice in his book. The first
time is at the beginning of his account of the Manichaeans.24 Here he tells
us how Manes' father Patek joined a sect called al-muytasilah, of which
an-Nadlm says that 'their remnants survive in the swamps until our day'.
Manes is brought up in this community, but later separates from it to
found his own religion. Later in his book an-Nadlm devotes a separate
section to the muytasilah, the text and translation of which can be found
in the appendix to this article. Here we learn that these people are also
known as the 'Sabians of the swamps' and that 'their leader is known as
-*^i and it is he who founded the sect'. Chwolsohn drew three conclusions from this passage: first that the 'Sabians of the swamps' are the
'real' Sabians, the Sabians of the Qur'an. Second, they are the Mandaeans. And third, the name of their founder is to be identified with the

from an-Nadlm. And later in the same book17 Hamzah writes that the
pagans 'used to be called Chaldaeans, but in the time of Islamic dominion
they have called themselves SabPun. But the real Sabi'un (as-sdbiuna fi
l-haqiqah) are a sect of the Christians who live in the region between the
cultivated lands and the swamp.18 They differ from the general mass of
Christians and are reckoned by the latter among the heretics.'
Hamzah, whose account is reproduced also by al-Xuwarazml19 and
al-BayrunT,20 distinguishes thus between the pseudo-Sabians of Harran
and the 'real' Sabians, who are a dissident Christian sect living near the
'swamps', i.e. evidently the great marsh-land in southern Babylonia. It is
noteworthy that already Tabari, amongst all his other unhelpful suggestions concerning the identity of the Qur'anic Sabians, cites one opinion21
according to which these are 'a tribe in the environs of Babylonia
(qabilatun min nahwi s-sawdd) who are neither majus nor Jews nor
Christians'.
Among orientalists there has for quite some time now been a virtual
consensus that the 'real' Sabians, the Sabians of the Qur'an, are in fact the
Mandaeans,22 the well-known gnostic sect which has survived to the
present day on both sides of the Iraq-Iran border in the inaccessible
marsh-lands where the Tigris and Euphrates flow into the Persian Gulf.
Or perhaps we should rather say that we hope that they have survived to
the present despite everything that has happened to their homeland in the
last two decades. As far as I can see, the first author to have proposed the
identity of the Sabians and the Mandaeans (albeit on the basis of what
must now seem totally indefensible arguments) was the Maronite Abrahamus Ecchellensis in a book published as long ago as 1660. However,
17

id., p. 30.
bayna l-bddiyati wa l-batjhah. bddiyah could also mean 'desert'.
19
Mafdtihu l-culum, ed. van Vloten, Leiden 1895, p. 36, where the author combines
material from the two passages which we have quoted from Hamzah.
20
op. cit., pp. 206, 318.
21
Jami'u l-baydn I p. 146 (xabar 1106).
22
One example of how unquestionably this has been accepted can be seen from the entry
'sabi0' in the standard (and, of course, excellent) Arabic dictionary of H. Wehr. A
comparison of the wording in the original German version of Wehr with that in the
German edition of the old Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. Sabi'a (article by Carra de
Vaux), shows that the latter is the source of the former. Apart from everything else, it
might be noted that the designation, in both reference books, of the Mandaeans as a
'jiidisch-christliche Taufersekte' is totally unfounded; the Mandaeans are not Jewish
Christians.
18

23
24

Wt~

See the bibliography.

Ed. Fliigel pp. 328-9; Ed. Tajaddud p. 392.

46

FRANCOIS DE BLOIS

name mentioned in Greek Christian sources of the 3rd and 4th centuries
as HXxaooi, HX^at, or EXxaoaiog, the founder of the 'heresy' of the
Elchasaites.
Of these three deductions we can now confidently say that the first two
are wrong. The last, on the other hand, has been confirmed brilliantly by
the discovery, a few decades ago, of an original Manichaean text in
Greek, the 'Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis' (Cod. Man. Col.).25 This
gives, among other things, an account of the childhood of the Prophet of
Light which agrees in many important points with that related by anNadTm: we hear of how Manes grew up in a community of Rcutrtoxal, in
which, of course, we recognise the muytasilah of our Arabic source.
Moreover, the Manichaean text reports extensively on Manes' polemics
against the baptists in the course of which he quotes 'the founder (agxnydc) of your law', a certain AXxaocuog,26 who, despite the slightly
different spelling, is doubtless the HX%aoat, etc., of the Christian
sources. Finally we have now also a fragmentary Iranian Manichaean text
in the Parthian language which also appears to give an account of the
childhood of the prophet and in which we discover the name Dlxs.27
It is thus now clear that the muytasilah, the community out of which
Manichaeism was to emerge, were Elchasaites. But it is equally clear that
the Elchasaites and the Mandaeans are two completely different sects.28
There is no suggestion in the scriptures of the Mandaeans that the latter
regarded Elchasai as their rais, their aoyriydc, or indeed any mention of
his name. Moreover, the doctrines of the two sects are totally different.
The Elchasaites were Christians, or, as Hamzah quite rightly says of his
'real Sabians', 'a sect of the Christians ... who differ from the general
mass of Christians and are reckoned by the latter among the heretics.' The
Mandaeans, on the other hand, are totally inimical to Christianity; for

25

26
27

28

1
7*
11

$1
a

J? I

First published by A. Heinrichs and L. Koenen in ZeitschriftfiirPapyrologie und

Epigraphik, in installments, in the 1970s, the work is now most conveniently accessible
in Der Kdlner Mani-Kodex ... kritische Edition ... herausgegeben und ubersetzt von
Ludwig Koenen und Cornelia Romer (=Papyrologica coloniensia XIV), Opladen 1988.
My references are to the pages and lines of the manuscript.
i
Cod. Man. Col. p. 94.
W. Sundermann, Mitteliranische manichdische Texte kirchengeschichtlichen Inhalts
1\
(=Berliner Turfantexte XI), Berlin (East) 1981, p. 19 (text 2.1., V3). It must, however,
be mentioned that the document is badly mutilated and that the letters 'lxs3 occur
without any readable context; thus their interpretation remains uncertain.
As was noted already by Noldeke (1869).

%\

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

4/

them msiha is the name of a demon. The only things that Mandaeans and
Elchasaites really have in common is the fact that both attach great
importance to baptizing or cleansing rituals and, of course, that both lived
at some time in the same area, the swamps of southern Iraq.29
But with this Chwolsohn's other main argument for the identity of the
Sabians with the Mandaeans, namely the etymology, also collapses. Even
if Arabic sabi0 were a borrowing from a Babylonian Aramaic word for
'baptizer' - and we shall return to this question in a moment -, even then
there would be no reason why these 'baptizers' should necessarily be
Mandaeans, since the Elchasaites also practiced baptism and since they
too lived in Southern Babylonia and presumably spoke a dialect of
Babylonian Aramaic close to that used in the surviving Mandaean scriptures.
However, the whole question of which Babylonian sect the Abbasid
authors intended with their account of the 'real' Sabians loses all significance in the light of two more fundamental questions: First, whether
these 10th-century authors could really have had any reliable information
concerning the identity of the Qur'anic Sabians, and second, whether
Muhammad and his contemporaries in Mecca and Medinah, people for
whom the word sabi' must have had some concrete meaning, are likely to
have known anything about religious communities in the swamps of
southern Babylonia. The answer to both questions is clearly no. There is
no reason to think that Muhammad and his compatriots in Central Arabia
were in any way familiar with the religious communities for whom the
marshes of southern Mesopotamia served as a refuge from a hostile
world, nor is there any evidence of a presence either of Mandaeans or of
Elchasaites in Central Arabia.30 The identification of the Sabi^un with one
or another of the communities in the swamps points rather to a very
different milieu, that of the early Islamic intellectual centres of Basrah
and Kufah. There, one can very well imagine that the fathers of Qur'anic
exegesis, racking their brains about who the mysterious SabPun of the
Qur'an might be, could have come upon the idea of identifying them with
the Elchasaites who lived just outside the gates of Basrah. It is their
29

In emphasising the separateness of Elchasaites and Mandaeans I do not intend to deny

that the former might very well have exerted an influence on the latter.
30
Buck (1984) p. 185 claims such a presence, referring to Epiphanius (LIII,1), whom he
quotes as saying that 'the Sampsaeans and the Elkesaites ... still live in Arabia'. In fact,
Epiphanius continues: 'in the region above the Dead Sea' (XCLGVTIEQOEV xfjg vexgdg
OaXdoong xeifiivnv xcbgav). Thus 'Arabia' here means Transjordan.

48

FRANCOIS DE BLOIS

world, and not that of the original Muslim community in Mecca and
Medinah, which collides with the people of the swamps.31
But it is precisely the question of the geographic and cultural milieu of
the first Muslims which suggest a new approach to the whole problem. If
we are to know who the SabPun might have been we must first ask
ourselves which religious communities were actually known to Muhammad and his compatriots. There are three religions about the presence of
which in pre-Islamic Arabia we can have no doubt: Arab paganism,
Christianity and Judaism. All of these are mentioned frequently in the
Qur'an. Moreover, there is ample epigraphic evidence for the presence of
Christians and Jews, if not in Central Arabia, then at least on the
periphery of the paeninsula. It is evident also that the original Muslims
must have had some awareness of Zoroastrians: the name majus which
we find in the Qur'an 22:17 can hardly refer to anyone else (it is, of
course, a borrowing from myusd, the usual Syriac name for the Zoroastrians) and, as is known, at the time of the prophet the Sasanians
controlled not only the whole of both coasts of the Persian Gulf, but the
Yemen as well.
There is, finally, one other religion which was evidently represented
not only in Arabia, but indeed amongst the prophet's own kinsmen, the
Qurays, namely Manichaeism. We are informed of this from a report on
the religions of the pre-Islamic Arabs by the famous authority on Arab
antiquities Ibn al-KalbT in his Madalibu l-carab,32 with reference to a
chain of authorities reaching back to Ibn cAbbas. Moreover, much of the
information given there is reproduced by two slightly later authors: Ibn
al-Kalbi's pupil Muhammad ibn HabTb in his Kitdbu l-muhabbar33 and
Ibn Qutaybah in his Kitdbu l-nufdrif3* as well as by a number of later
authorities (Ibn SaTd, Ibn Sacid, Naswan, Ibn Rustah), who, however,
appear to depend entirely on Ibn Qutaybah. These authors tell us that in
31

32

33
34

With the preceding compare also Tardieu (1986). Unfortunately, exactly the same
objections must also be raised against Tardieu's own identification of the Qur'anic
Sabi'un with the Stratiotici, an obscure gnostic sect mentioned (in the 4th century) by
Epiphanius, an identification the sole foundation of which is a decidedly forced Hebrew
etymology. There is no evidence that the Stratiotici still existed at the time of Muhammad, and certainly not in Central Arabia.
Unpublished. The passage which interests us is, however, available in a French translation by G. Monnot, Revue de l'histoire des religions 188 (1975) pp. 28-30, and
reprinted in his Islam et religions, Paris 1986, pp. 32-34.
ed. I. Lichtenstadter, Hyderabad 1943, p. 161.
Ibn Coteiba's Handbuch der Geschichte, ed. F. Wustenfeld, Gottingen 1850, p. 299.

} ^ *- -.
-.
;.i
7J

&
,.
i
i
!
*? *
1
*'
J
,
j

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

49

the days before Islam Christianity was represented among the tribes
Rabrah, Iassan and some of Qudacah. Judaism was among Himyar, Banu
Kinanah, Banu HariG ibn Kacb, and Kindah. Zoroastrianism was among
Tamlm; for example Zurarah ibn cUdus at-TamTm! and his son Hajib ibn
Zurarah were Zoroastrians (Ibn Qutaybah adds that the latter 'married his
own daughter, but later repented'), as were al-DAqrac ibn Habis and DAbu
Sud, the grandfather of WakT ibn Hassan. Zandaqah, finally, was among
Qurays, who had it from al-HTrah. Ibn al-KalbT proceeds to list six of
these zindiqs by name.
What is most interesting here is zandaqah. The word zindiq, the
ultimate origin of which need not be investigated here,35 entered Arabic
from Middle Persian, in which language it is attested already in a
3rd-century inscription of Kerder, where it clearly designates the Manichaeans. It is used in this sense also by the 5th-century Armenian author
Eznik, as well as by informed Muslim writers such as al-MascudT and
al-Bayrunl. Admittedly, Muslim authors also use zindiq as a general word
for 'heretic' or 'unbeliever', in much the same way that mediaeval
Christian writers used 'Manichaean' as a general term of abuse for
anyone whose religious principles they found repugnant. However, it can
hardly be doubted that in the passage from Ibn al-KalbT and his successors the word is used in its strict and original sense of 'Manichaean'; it
occurs, namely, in a list of specific religious communities on the same
plane as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. In such a context it would be
pointless to talk vaguely about non-descript 'heretics'.
But we are told that the Qurays had their Manichaeism from al-HTrah,36
or, as Ibn al-KalbT puts it, supposedly on the authority of Ibn "Abbas, that
the Qurays 'went to al-HTrah on their trading missions and met the
Christians and they (the Christians) instructed them'; similarly Muhammad ibn HabTb: 'They learnt az-zandaqah from the Christians of alHlrah'. 'Christians' must here mean 'Christian converts to Manichaeism'.
Nestorian Christianity was the dominant faith among the sedentary population of al-HTrah and it is thus only to be expected that any Manichaeans there would have had a Christian background, or even masqueraded as Christians. A Manichaean presence in al-HTrah, though not, as far
35

The (since Schaeder) generally accepted derivation of zindiq from Middle Persian zand
is refuted in my paper 'al-Mascudi's remarks on Iranian religions' (publication forthcoming).
36
'axaduha mina 1-hTrah (Ibn Qutaybah).

50

FRANCOIS DE BLOIS

as can be seen, explicitly confirmed by other sources,37 can virtually be

taken for granted; al-HTrah lies, after all, in the immediate vicinity of the
heartland of the Manichaean mission.38
We see thus that there is evidence for the existence in the environment
of emerging Islam of five religions: Arab paganism, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. We have also seen that the
Qur'an 22:17 mentions by name five religions other than Islam. Four of
these are clearly identical with four of the historically attestable creeds:
alladina hddu are the Jews, an-nasara the Christians, al-majus the
Zoroastrians and alladina asraku the Arab pagans. It would seem thus,
purely by the process of elimination, that the last remaining religion in the
Qur'anic list, as-sabiun, is likely to be identifiable with the last remaining historically attested religion of pre-Islamic Arabia, the Manichaeans.
This would mean that at the time of Muhammad the Arabic word for
'Manichaean' was sabi0 and that this was only later replaced by the
Iranian loan-word zindiq. It would also suggest that primitive Islam
regarded the Manichaeans, like the Christians and Jews, as 'people of the
book'. And indeed, one can hardly think of any religion for which such a
designation would have been more appropriate. We need recall only the
37

38

There is a Coptic Manichaean manuscript which has been regarded as evidence for a
Manichaean presence in al-HTrah in the 3rd century, but a different interpretation of this
text is suggested in my article 'Who is king Amaro?', forthcoming in Arabian archaeology and epigraphy.
A somewhat different interpretation of the tradition concerning the zandaqah among the
Qurays was proposed by Kister, Arabica XV (1968) pp. 144-5, namely that the word
refers here (as it sometimes does in Arabic) to the Mazdakites. The basis for this is a
passage in the Naswatu t-tarabftta'rlxi jahiliyyati l-carab of the 13th-century Andalusian author Ibn Said (see now the edition by N. cAbd ar-Rahman, Amman 1982,'p. 327)
which says that when the Sasanian QubaS accepted the teachings of Mazdak he ordered
al-Hari0 al-Kindl to impose the new religion on the Arabs of Najd and Tihamah.
Thereupon some of the people of Mecca 'became zindfqs' (tazandaqa), but cAbd Manaf
ibn Qusayy resisted this and remained faithful to the religion of 'Ismail and 'Ibrahim.
This story seems to me to be an arbitrary combination of two different episodes known
to usfromearlier sources: on the one hand the story of the conversion of some of the
Qurays to zandaqah in the course of their commercial operations in al-HTrah (as told by
Ibn al-KalbT), and on the other that of how QubaS ordered his governor in al-HTrah,
al-Mun8ir ibn Ma3 as-Sama', to embrace the doctrines of Mazdak and how, when the
latter refused to do so, he was temporarily replaced by the Kindite al-Hari0 {Kitdbu
l-ayant, Bulaq edition, VITI pp. 63-5, and other sources; cf. G. Olinder, The kings of
Kinda of the family of Akil al-Murdr, Lund/Leipzig 1927, pp. 63^1). There is no
suggestion in the early sources that Mazdakism spread from Kindah to Qurays, nor
indeed that Mazdakism survived for long even among Kindah.

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

51

passage in the Coptic Kephalaia39 which tells of how Manes contrasted

his religion with those of the divinely sent prophets who had come before
him, Jesus, Zoroaster and the Buddha, by saying that these had not put
their scriptures down in writing and that as a. result their teachings that
been corrupted by their followers, whereas Manes had written down his
teachings and thus preserved their integrity for ever.
I promised to return to the etymology of the word sabi0. Western
scholars have in general attempted to derive it from Aramaic or Hebrew.
The native Arabic lexicographers and Qur'an-commentators, by contrast,
maintain that sabi0 is an Arabic word meaning 'one who departs from his
religion to another' and have connected it either with the verb sabaa
yasbau, 'to rise' (of stars, etc.)40 or else with saba yasbu, in the sense of
'to incline towards something'.41 The former verb is hardly (if at all)
attested;42 moreover 'to rise' does not provide a very satisfactory derivation for the desired meaning. On the other hand, saba ila is well-known
in the meaning 'to be enamoured o f , in which sense it has clear-cut
parallels elsewhere in Semitic (e.g. Syriac sfld, 'to desire, love'); the
evidently secondary meaning 'incline towards' something other than a
human being, affirmed by the lexicographers,43 though rare, is not unattested in early Arabic,44 and is more likely to be of use to us: as-sabi0, or
as-sabi, is the one who 'turns toward' a new religion. The implied
metaphor would be much the same as when in English (and other
European languages) we speak of a 'convert' (from 'convertere'). In any
event, the root 5 b or s b vv, in the meaning 'convert' (verb or noun) is
39

Edited and translated by Polotsky in Manichdische Handschriften der staatlichen

Museen Berlin herausgegeben ... unter Leitung von Prof. Carl Schmidt. Band 1 Ke
laia. Lieferung 1/2, Stuttgart 1935, pp. 7-8.
40
Thus Tabari, loc. cit., and virtually all the other commentaries and dictionaries.
41
Thus, alongside the afore-mentioned etymology, in az-Zamaxsari, al-Kassdfu can haqdHqi t-tanztl wa cuyuni l-'aqdwll, modern edition without date or place of publication,
vol. I pp. 232-3, ad Qur'an 5:69. az-Zamaxsari mentions this derivation in connection with
the fact that some of the Qur'an-reciters read not 'sdbPun' but 'sabun', without hamzah,
but the question of which reading is correct has no real bearing on the etymology. The
fluctuation between roots III infirmae and III hamzah is common in Arabic.
42
I am for the moment unable to provide any extra-lexicographical references, but suspect
that saba'a is merely a doublet of saba in the sense 'to incline (upwards)'.
43
Who cite, among other things, the idiom sabba ra'sahu, 'he caused his head to incline
(downwards)'.
44
Cf. 'Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad, Bulaq, n.d., I p. 202 and V pp. 290-1, where the
Qurays say of the Muslims who had sought refuge in Abyssinia qad saba ild baladika
yilmdnun sufahd'u, 'some stupid boys have inclined themselves to your land'.

52

FRANCOIS DE BLOIS

very clearly attested in a number of passages in the hadffl and sirah

literature,45 thus when Ibn Hisam46 tells how the opponents of the prophet
Muhammad referred to him contemptuously as hdda s-sabi0, 'this renegade', or when he quotes people as saying of Muhammad's followers
sabaPa (or read: saba), 'he has converted',41 and sabawta, 'you have
converted'.48 And in one passage the early Muslims are even quoted as
saying of themselves: saband, 'we have converted', i.e to Islam.49 Such
passages have taxed the ingenuity of those scholars who interpret sabi0 as
meaning 'baptist'. Thus Wellhausen,50 in his otherwise so lucid account
of the origins of Islam, saw himself compelled to argue that the pagans of
Mecca confused the Muslim ablution rituals with the baptismal ceremonies of the 'Sabians' and consequently applied the latter name to Muhammad and his followers. But these difficulties disappear if we accept, with
the native tradition, that sabi0 means quite simply 'convert' and is as such
a logical designation for a follower of any new religion. Muhammad's
first supporters were 'converts', but so were the Arab Manichaeans.
Manichaeism was, after all, the proselytising religion par excellence
during the whole period that separates the triumph of Christianity in the
Roman Empire and the rise of Islam. Even Ibn al-KalbT was still aware
that Manichaeism was a relatively recent arrival in Central Arabia. It is
their common status as new religions which earned both the Manichaeans
and the Muslims the name sabiun.
According to al-Bayrum,51 writing towards the end of the 10th century,
in his own day the Manichaeans of Samarqand referred to themselves
precisely as sdbiun. It is interesting that in at least one manuscript of the
Persian abridgement of the tafsir of Tabari - a work that belongs roughly
to the time of al-Bayrum - the Arabic word sabiun in Qur'an 22:17 is
glossed as niydsagdn52 a well-known early Persian word for 'Manichaean auditors'. It is thus evident that not only did the Manichaeans of

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

4
V

See, apart from the passages quoted here, Wensinck's Concordance, s.vv. saba'a and
saba.
46
ed. Wiistenfeld, Gottingen 1858-60, p. 225.
47
id., p. 229.
48
id., p. 977.
49
id., p. 835.
50
J. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentumes (=Skizzen und Vorarbeiten ni), Berlin
1887, pp. 206-7.
51
>A9dr, p. 209.
52
Tarjama i tafsir i Tabari, ed, H. Yaymal, IV p. 1054.

Transoxania designate themselves as sabiun, but that even the Muslim

author of the gloss in question accepted that the Manichaeans were
indeed the sabiun of the Qur'an. I hesitate, however, to regard these
passages as real evidence for my contention that this was the original
meaning of the word, for it is certainly possible that the Central Asian
Manichaeans, like the 'star-worshippers' of Harran, merely made use of
this name as a device for protecting themselves from persecution.

APPENDIX:
an-Nadlm on the muytasilah
an-Nadlm's account of the muytasilah has already been published four
times:53 first by Chwolsohn (II pp. 543^4), with variants from four
manuscripts and a German translation; second in Fliigel's monograph on
the Manichaeans,54 on the basis of the same four manuscripts (though it is
astonishing how often the two scholars read the same codex differently),
again with a German rendering; third in Fliigel's posthumous edition of
the whole of the Fihrist;55 and finally in the new edition of the book by
Tajaddud (p. 403-4). Tajaddud's edition has the advantage that it is the
only one to be based on the two oldest and best manuscripts, Dublin,
Chester Beatty Arabic 3315 for the first half of the work, and Istanbul,
ehit Ali Paa 1934 for the second half (which alone interests us here),
even if it does not always seem to quote their readings accurately. There
are, apart from the two mentioned German versions, two complete translations of the Fihrist, Tajaddud's in Persian56 and Dodge's in English;57
both are quite inadequate in this passage, as in many others. Dodge does,
however, quote some useful variant readings in his foot-notes.58

53
45

53

I do not count the Cairo edition of the Fihrist published in 1348/1929-30 (where the
passage which concerns us can be found on p. 477), as this is merely a reprint of
Fliigel's edition.
54
G. Flugel, Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriften... aus dem Fihrist... zum ersten M
herausgegeben, Leipzig 1862, pp. 133-5.
55
Kitab al-Fihrist, Leipzig 1871-2, I pp. 344-5.
56
2nd edition, n.p. (presumably Tehran), 1346 xamsi/1967-8; the passage which interests
us is on p. 606.
57
The Fihrist of al-Nadim, New York/London 1970, p. 811.
58
There are some interesting remarks on this passage in A.F.J. Klijn and G.J. Reinirik,
'Elchasai and Mani', Vigiliae christianae 28 (1974) pp. 277-289.
39
See below, note (b).

54

FRANgOIS DE BLOIS

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

The text given here follows Tajaddud, except where indicated in the
notes:

^ i

u ^

<J\ fy,3

<*J~k,

J L J S * . &$&.

*W' tP" c-SJJI & ^fc-Jk

l ^

"^

<~>J- fr-^>J>

Ijitf, ^ ^ J liUi. cJLj-Ji- < ^ s illy"' <j;/ cS/

Before offering my own translation I shall comment on a few words and

phrases.

(a) al-muytasilah
has mostly been rendered as 'those who wash themselves', or the like.
Although the Arabic word can indeed have this meaning it might be noted
that in a specifically Islamic context al-iytisal means more precisely 'the
act of washing the whole body', as opposed to wudiP, 'washing the hands,
feet and face'. As already noted, the Cod. Man. Col. refers to the same
sect as BajiTiorai, 'immersers', and it is evidently thus that the Arabic
word must be understood here. Moreover, an-Nadim tells us that the
muytasilah not only wash/immerse themselves, but also wash/immerse
'everything that they eat', using the same root both times. A very striking

60
61

See below, note (c).

Thus Tajaddud and Fliigel (in both editions). Although this pointing is not impossible,
one would normally expect taftariqu. But in either case the meaning is the same, as it
would also be with Chwolsohn's emendation tatafarraqu.

55

parallel to this can be found in Cod. Man. Col. 80,1-3 which tells us how
Manes dissented from the sect in which he had been brought up 'concerning baptism and the vegetables that they baptize' (JIEQL XOV Bcutrla/iarog xai TCEQI SV Bajtxlt,ovoiv Xa%6.vo)v, and similarly in what follows),
again using the same root in both cases. In other words, the muytasilah
did not merely 'wash' their food; they 'baptized' it, subjected it to a ritual
purification.

(b) The name of the leader of the sect,

'the one who founded their religion', is represented in the manuscripts
used by Chwolsohn and Fliigel by the rasm ~*\ or **\ whereby in the
Leiden manuscript the last letter is pointed as jim. Tajaddud, on the other
hand, has z~^\ but I should think that this is either a mis-reading or
merely a typographical error. The name of the eponym of the Elchasaites
is given by our earliest source,62 Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium
IX,13,1 et seqq. (written about 230) as HX%aom, by Methodius, Symposium VIII, 10 (circa 300), and others, as EX%aoai(oc), and by Epiphanius, Panarion XIX,2 etc. (written circa 377) as HX^ai. The designation
of the sectarians as 'EXxEoairai or ' EXXEOCLIOL is based (as Brandt, p. 6,
has shown) on a confusion with the epithet ' EXxsoalog (for Hebrew
'top^K) which the Septuagint applies to the prophet Nahum. The Cod.
Man. Col. has AX%aocuog, the Manichaean Parthian text 3lxsD (in a
broken context),63 while Theodore bar KonT, Liber scholiorum (ed. Scher)
II p. 307 has )m-N i. It is not immediately obvious that these are, basically,
all the same. As for the etymology of the name, Epiphanius XIX,2,2 says
that the sectarians called their leader 'the hidden64 power', 'because r/X
means power (dvvapnv) and at means hidden (xExaXv/xjiivov)'. It is
evident that the author is thinking of Hebrew/Aramaic "rn and '03 respectively, and this derivation has been widely accepted by modern scholars.
But it seems to me that (Aramaic) hel kse, 'a hidden power' (in the status
62

The Greek sources concerning the Elchasaites have been republished and translated in
two recent books: A. F. J. Klijn and G. J. Reinink, Patristic evidence for JewishChristian Sects (^Supplements to Novum Testamentum XXXVI), Leiden 1973, and (les
completely, but with more extensive - if sometimes questionable - discussion) G. P.
Luttikhuizen, The revelation ofElchasai (=Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum
Tubingen 1985. I dispense thus with detailed bibliographical references.
63
See above, note 27.
64
anoxexaXvppivqv is presumably a scribal error for xsxaAvfipevnv.

56

absolutus) would be a most extraordinary name; one ought at least to

expect hayld kasyd, 'the hidden power' (status determinatus), but this is
ruled out by the fact that all the Greek forms have no vowel after X. It
would certainly be more in keeping with the usual typology of Semitic
proper names to look for a theophoric sentence name such as el kse, 'El is
hidden'. Epiphanius says (XIX,1,4 and LIU, 1,3) that HX^ai had a brother
named h^ai, which would indeed seem to suggest that the two names are
doublets meaning 'El is hidden' and 'Yah is hidden' respectively.65 The
Greek spellings HX^at, on the one hand, and H-(E-A-)Xxaocu(og), on
the other, are all adequate representations of Semitic el k(a)se, with or
without 'swa mobile': % is t n e usual Greek representation for Semitic k
(as opposed to x for q) while (Middle) Greek at (not ai as the editions
have it) could represent Semitic e. By contrast, after the 1 the Iranian form
has x, the Arabic x/h/j, none of which can very well represent an Aramaic
k, unless we were to assume that the 'Book of Elchasai', like the New
Testament of the Christians, was composed not in Aramaic but in Greek
and that the Arabic and Iranian forms go back to the Greek H-(E-A-)
X%aocu(og) and not directly to the Semitic source of the latter. This
leaves us with the last letter of the Arabic form. Schaeder66 thought that
-** might be a graphic error for <__^'; this is certainly possible, but an
even better proposal has since been made by Sundermann,67 namely that
the Arabic letters should be pointed as / V - A which would represent
'eine manichaisch-westiranische Schreibung *3lxsyg..., die *Alxasi zu
sprechen ist'. I would suggest a slight modification of this. The pseudoetymological representation of final -f or -e by -yg (or -yk) is characteristic not of Manichaean but of Zoroastrian Middle Iranian orthography.
an-NadTm's ultimate source for his account of the Elchasaites is thus not a
Manichaean, but a Zoroastrian one, presumably of a polemical nature, in
which Greek HX%aoai would have been rendered as *Dlhsyk and subsequently transcribed into Arabic as 3lxsyj.
As for the Syriac form Dlks, although this could indeed represent the
assumed Aramaic original, el kse, the fact that Theodore's account of the
sect is clearly derived from Epiphanius shows that this too is merely a
transcription from the Greek.

(c) The 'seven words'

aqdwilun sabcatun is apparently the reading of the codex optimus, Sehit
Ali Paa 1934,68 as well as of all the manuscripts used by Chwolsohn and
Fliigel apart from the Leiden copy, which offers the lectio facilior
(adopted in all four editions) aqawilun sariFatun, 'disgusting doctrines'.
'Seven words' certainly play a role in the reports that have come down to
us about the Elchasaites. One could think of the seven 'witnesses'
(ji&QTVQEg) which, according to Hippolytus,69 the Elchasaities envoked:
heaven, water, the holy spirits, angels, oil, salt and earth.70 But it is
difficult to see how an-NadTm could have likened these to xurdfah, the
word which he uses elsewhere for 'fables', 'idle tales', and which he
applies to the Islamic genre of entertaining fictional stories in prose.
However, there is another report by Epiphanius71 that in his book Elchasai
commanded his followers to recite a seemingly meaningless prayer (Epiphanius speaks of <pavxat,6nEva), consisting of seven different words,
of which the first five are repeated twice in inverse order:
1
aBag
5
daaotju

2
avid
4
V(D%IXE

3
fiwiB
3
ficoiB

4
VOJXLXE

2
avid

5
daaoifi
1
aBag

6
avn
1
OEXapt

Two scholars in the last century, I. Stern and M.A. Lewy, succeeded in
deciphering this: if we read the first six words backwards and then add
the seventh we come up with a perfectly normal Aramaic sentence: D^D'
ton r a m TD,!7i> "inon sax, 'I am the one who bears witness on your
behalf on the day of the great judgement. Farewell!' Nonsense formulas
of this kind figure commonly in Arabic fables (i.e. in the sort of literature
which literati called xurdfah), which are full of accounts of magical
words which open charmed caves and the like. It is thus perhaps these
'seven words' which an-Nadlm (or his source) had in mind.

68

Differently Brandt, p. 7 et passim.

Vortrdge der Bibliothek Warburg IV (1927) p. 69, note 1.
Acta Orientalia (Copenhagen) XXXVI (1974) pp. 148-9.

57

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

FRANCOIS DE BLOIS

Thus according to Dodge. Tajaddud follows Fliigel's reading without noting any
variants.
69
Hippolytus XV, 1,5. Similarly Epiphanius XIX, 1,6.
70
Thus Klijn/Reinink, art. cit. (see note 58), p. 287.
71
Epiphanius XIX,4,13. For discussion see Brandt, p. 40.

58
(d) Elchasai's pupil

an-Nadlm says that the rais of the sect had a pupil by the name of Simon
($imcun). No such name occurs in the ancient sources concerning the
Elchasaites. But Hippolytus (IX,13,2) does say that Elchasai transmitted
his book to a certain Sobiai (jtagsdwxiv xivi Xeyofievqj ZoBiai). Sobiai
is not, as Brandt and many others have thought, a misunderstood plural
meaning 'baptists/Sabians', but a personal name: this is now clear form
the Cod. Man. Col. where, immediately after the section in which Manes
refers to 'your leader Alchasaios', we are told about the teachings of
SaBBaiog b Banxioxijg.12 I should think therefore that an-NadTm's
i^yu^ is a graphic corruption for ot^rV**.

(e) The male and female beings.

Our author tells us further that the muytasilah recognised 'two existences' (kawnayn), male and female, and believed that herbs (buqul) came
from the hair (sacr is according to both Dodge and Tajaddud the lectio of
the codex optimus, against sar in the other copies) of the male being and
dodder73 from that of the female. The blatant anthropomorphism of this
conception makes it clear that these 'existences' must be thought of as
very concrete entities. Brandt (pp. 136-7) read too much into this sentence when he thought that it implies a Zoroastrian or Manichaean type of
dualism in which the useful plants are regarded as the creation of the
good (here male) principle, while the useless, parasitic plants are ascribed
to the evil (female) entity. In fact the passage implies no ethical hierarchy
of the two 'beings'. I should think rather that we have here a reflex of the
Elchasaite belief in two gigantic 'angels' (as Hippolytus LX, 13,2-3 puts
it), namely a male one called the 'son of god', and a female, the 'holy
spirit', who revealed Elchasai's book and evidently occupied a significant
place in his teaching.74
The paenultimate sentence in our extract has been grossly misunderstood by Chwolsohn, Fliigel and Dodge, but correctly construed by
72
73
74

THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

FRANCOIS DE BLOIS

Cod. Man. Col. pp. 97-8.

'uksuO or kasuO is 'Kleeseide, clover dodder, cuscuta epithymum Murr.' according to
the Worterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache, s.v. kasud.
See also Epiphanius (XLX,4,l-2; XXX,17,6; LIII,1,9), who refers to the male entity as
'Christ' (XguTzog) and adds (in LID, 1,9) that the female entity was called Christ's
sister.

59

Noldeke,75 Pedersen76 and Tajaddud. The author is not saying that 'they
agreed with the Manichaeans about the two elemental principles, but later
their sect became separate' (Dodge, p. 811). yaftariqu (or taftariqu) is
present tense and can hardly refer an action subsequent to the preceding
past continuous verb kdnu yuwdfiquna. It should rather be clear that the
phrase beginning wa yaftariqu is a hdl clause; bcfdu means here not
'afterwards' in time, but 'after all has been said; apart from this'. The
author is consequently saying that the Elchasaites 'were in agreement
with the Manichaeans as regards the two principles' - i.e. both sects were
dualists of a sort, the Manichaeans with their good and evil principles, the
Elchasaites with their male and female supernatural beings - 'but apart
from this their (the Elchasaites') sect diverges (from Manichaeism)'.
The final sentence, according to which 'some of them' adore the stars,
evidently derives from a different source in which the 'Sabians of the
swamps' are amalgamated with the 'Sabians of Harran'.
We can now translate the whole passage as follows:
'The muytasilah. These people are numerous in the districts of the
swamps; they are the Sabians of the swamps. They teach self-immersion
and (besides) they immerse everything that they eat. Their leader is
known as Elchasai and it is he who founded the sect, in that he claimed
that the two existences are male and female and that herbs are from the
hair of the male and dodder from the hair of the female and that the trees
(or bushes) are his (i.e. the male being's) veins.77 They have seven words
which are like (those which occur in) fairy-tales. His pupil was called
*Sabbaios. They were in agreement with the Manichaeans concerning the
two principles, but apart from this their sect diverges. And among them
are some who worship the stars up until our time.'
The upshot of our investigation is that an-NadTm's muytasilah have a
good deal more in common with the Elchasaites (as we know them from
our 3rd and 4th-century sources) than has previously been recognised. We
have, apart from (1) the obvious baptist connection, (2) the name of
Elchasai, (3) that of his pupil Sobiai/Sabbaios, (4) the male and female
supernatural beings, (5) and the seemingly senseless 'seven words'. The
quasi-Manichaean dualism which the Arabic text appears to ascribe to the
muytasilah and which has seemed the main obstacle to equating the latter
75
76

See his pertinent remarks apud Brandt, p. 137.

Pedersen (1922) p. 384.
The phrase could also mean: 'the trees (bushes) are its (i.e. the dodder's) roots'.

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THE 'SABIANS' (SABPUN) IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

with the Elchasaites, reveals itself as essentially a product of the schematism of the Muslim source: whoever recognises two divine principles is
obviously not a monotheist and belongs thus, together with the Manichaeans and others, under the heading 'dualism'.
What is in the end astonishing is how much the muytasilah of 10thcentury Babylonia still resemble their forefathers, the Elchasaite missionaries whom Hippolytus encountered in Rome some 700 years earlier.

J. Pedersen, 'The Sabians', in A volume of oriental studies presented to

Edward G. Browne, Cambridge 1922, pp. 383-91. [Mandaeans, Elchasaites and muytasilah are three different sects; the latter were perhaps
Bardaisanites. an-Nadlm's lhsyh is perhaps an error for al-masih. sabi0
and hanif both mean 'gnostic'. The Harranians were gnostics and thus
really did belong to the same religion as the SabPun of the Qur'an.]
S. M. Stern, ' c Abd al-Jabbar's account of how Christ's religion was
falsified by the adoption of Roman customs', in The Journal of theological studies, N.S. XIX (1968), pp. 128-85; reprinted in his History and
culture in the medieval Muslim world, London 1984 (separate pagination), [pp. 159-64: 'The Harranian origin of the story of Constantine':
Mascudl and others use both sabi0 and hanif for 'pagan'; Pedersen was
wrong to understand them to mean 'gnostic'.]
J. Hjarpe, Analyse critique des traditions arabes sur les sabeens Harraniens, Uppsala 1972. [Basically follows Pedersen.]
C. Buck, 'The identity of the SabiDun : an historical quest', in The
Muslim world LXXIV (1984), pp. 172-186. ['The Qur'anic Sabians were
persons known for their emphasis on ritual purifications, predominantly
Mandaeans and Elchasaites.']
M. Tardieu, 'Sabiens coraniques et Sabiens de Harran', in Journal
asiatique 21A (1986), pp. 1^44. [Rejects the identification of the Qur'anic
Sabians with the Mandaeans or with the hunafd0. Criticises Hjarpe's loose
use of the term 'gnostic'. The Harranians were not gnostics, but Platonists. Identifies the Sabians of the Qur'an with the Stratiotici, a gnostic
sect mentioned by Epiphanius.]
Addenda (September 1994):
The article by M. Gil, 'The creed of Abu c Amir', Israel oriental studies
XII (1992) pp. 9-57, was not available to me at the time when this paper
was completed. Gil maintains that the sdbFiin, hunafd0, Mandaeans,
Harranians and Mazdakites were all Manichaeans and even that 'Islam's
first appearance was as a non-conformist off-shoot of Manichaeism.' I
see no reason to revise my arguments in the light of this.
T. Fahd had access to a copy of the present paper when he was working
on his article 'SabPa', forthcoming in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and
has kindly sent me his typescript.

A Selective Bibliography
on the SabPun
A detailed discussion of the literature prior to 1856 can be found in
Chwolsohn, I pp. 23-90. The following mentions (in chronological order)
only those studies that have contributed something new to the question;
the numerous publications that merely repeat Chwolsohn's theses (with
or without credit) have been ignored.
D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, 2 volumes, St. Petersburg 1856. [Still fundamental. The second volume contains virtually all
of the relevant texts in Arabic and German translation. The author thinks
that Sabian , Mandaeans, Elchasaites and muytasilah are all the same
group.]
Th. Noldeke, [review of] Thesaurus s. Liber magnus vulgo Liber
Adami appellatus opus Mandaeorum ... ed. H. Petermann [and] Qolasta
oder Gesdnge und Lehren von der Taufe ... herausg. v. J. Euting, in
Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1869/1, pp. 481-501. [The muytasilah of
the Arabic sources were Elchasaites, not Mandaeans. Chwolsohn was
wrong to identify the last two with one another. 'Die Sabier des Koran's
sind vielleicht die oben genannten Elkesaiten, gewiss nicht die Mandaer'.]
W. Brandt, Elchasai ein Religionsstifter und sein Werk, Leipzig 1912.
[The Sabians of the Qur'an encompass both Mandaeans and muytasilah,
who are, however, separate sects. The muytasilah were not really Elchasaites, but merely picked up the name Elchasai so as to claim to the
Muslims that they had a prophet.]
D. S. Margoliouth, 'Harranians', in Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics VI, Edinburgh 1913, pp. 519-20. [The equation of the Quianic
Sabians with the Mandaeans is 'not free from difficulty'. In the Qur'an
sabi0 and hanif 'seem to bear some relation' with one another.]

-J