Charles Häberl | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (original) (raw)
Videos by Charles Häberl
In his 1997 novel Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson writes, “The life of the mind is an imaginary ... more In his 1997 novel Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson writes, “The life of the mind is an imaginary relationship to a real situation; but then the real situation keeps happening, event after event, and many of those events are out of our control, but many others are the direct result of the imagination’s take on things.” Historical and comparative linguists share the same utopian ideals concerning the use of experimental data, reproducibility of results, ontological parsimony, and peer review as others who identify primarily as scientists, but to what extent are our cherished axioms the “direct result of the imagination’s take on things,” and how have they impinged upon reality through their own referential and representational powers? This video will reflect upon the 18th century Orientalist August Ludwig von Schlözer, his seminal article “von der Chaldäer” (about the Chaldæans), and the discovery of Semitics.
38 views
Books by Charles Häberl
The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran are adherents of the last surviving Gnostic tradition from the per... more The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran are adherents of the last surviving Gnostic tradition from the period of Late Antiquity, and the Book of Kings is the capstone to one of their most sacred scriptures. A universal history in four parts, it concisely outlines the entire 480,000 year span of the material world, from its creation to its destruction in the maw of the great Leviathan, with details including a succession of antediluvian cataclysms that have previously wiped out all human life, the reigns of the kings who have reigned over humanity and are still yet to reign, a lament on the end of pagan antiquity under the reign of the Arabs, and the apocalyptic drama attending those who have the misfortune to live at the end of the world era. For the first time ever, this work appears in English in its entirety, complete and unabridged, and directly translated from original Mandaic manuscripts, with the events mentioned within it coordinated with our calendar. It also includes an extensive commentary illustrating its relationship to contemporary historical writing and with the sacred literature of Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other neighbouring religious communities living under Sasanian rule.
Neo-Mandaic is the only surviving dialect of Aramaic to be recognized as a direct descendant of a... more Neo-Mandaic is the only surviving dialect of Aramaic to be recognized as a direct descendant of any of the classical dialects of Late Antiquity. The Mandaeans who speak it are adherents of a pre-Islamic Gnostic sect, the only such sect to survive to the present day. As such, Mandaic may be considered as both a living language of the modern Middle East and also the vehicle of one of the great religious traditions of that region, along with Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. Unfortunately, Neo-Mandaic is severely endangered, and all signs indicate that the current generation of speakers is likely to be the last. As a description of an endangered language, this work addresses one of the chief concerns of linguists in the 21st century, namely the impending loss of the majority of the world's languages and the immense threat to both linguistic and cultural diversity that it represents. This grammar is the first account of a previously undocumented dialect of Neo-Mandaic, and the most thoro...
A reprint of J. Heinrich Petermann's classic edition of the Ginza Rba, with an English translatio... more A reprint of J. Heinrich Petermann's classic edition of the Ginza Rba, with an English translation of his original Latin preface and a new introduction.
Robert Hetzron first organized the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL) a... more Robert Hetzron first organized the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL) at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1973 and passed away only six months after it had completed a quarter century of annual meetings. He would undoubtedly have been pleased to know that NACAL is still going strong, and that ten years after his passing it attracted no fewer than thirty-six scholars from the United States, Canada, and eight other countries, who presented on topics near and dear to his heart such as phonology, morphology, syntax, language contact, classification, subgrouping, and the history of scholarship, in languages such as Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Omotic, and others, as well as the groups to which they pertain. Since he established it, NACAL has served a unique role among the meetings of learned societies in North America. Only a handful of organizations worldwide hold annual meetings dedicated to Afroasiatic linguistics, and NACAL is one of a very small number of venues where linguists from all sub-disciplines and schools of thought meet to share their research. NACAL is also an academic nexus, a unique node at which graduate students at the beginning of their careers rub shoulders with the native speakers of the languages which they study and with the titans of their fields, men and women of an almost legendary stature such as Hetzron himself. This volume contains sixteen contributions from these scholars, on a broad cross-section of topics within the field of Afroasiatic linguistics.
Abstract The entire destiny of modern linguistics is in fact determined by Saussure’s inaugur... more Abstract
The entire destiny of modern linguistics is in fact determined by Saussure’s inaugural act through which he separates the ‘external’ elements of linguistics from the ‘internal’ elements, and, by reserving the title of linguistics for the latter, excludes from it all […] the political history of those who speak it, or even the geography of the domain where it is spoken, because all of these things add nothing to a knowledge of language taken in itself.
Bourdieu 1991: 33
With these words, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) undermined the foundation of modern linguistics established by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). Drawing upon the insights of his Russian predecessor, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), Bourdieu argued that language is neither solely a means of communication nor solely a system of internal rules. Situating language within society, he implored linguists to go beyond the internal elements of language to consider its external elements equally, exploring the interaction of language with its surrounding social variables, such as power, politics, ideology, and so forth.
This special issue can be considered a response to Bourdieu’s call. By situating Middle Eastern languages within the diasporic context of the United States, it brings together scholarship that explores the intersection and intersectionality of language with the social variables that exist in society and the implications of such interactions upon languages and their speech communities with regard to language use, attitudes, learning, maintenance, and/or attrition. Although the Middle East is our geographical focus, the eight languages that are brought together in this volume have different origins, belonging to different language families, including Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, and Turkic. Not only does this volume focus upon vibrant and widely spoken Middle Eastern languages that are national in their countries of origin, namely Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, and more recently Kurdish, but also upon smaller languages that enjoy no official or national status anywhere, notably Western Armenian, Turoyo (a form of Neo-Aramaic), and Juhuri (or Judeo-Tat a form of Tat and part of the larger Judeo-Persian language family). This special issue will be in print soon.
The turn of the 20th century witnessed a unprecedented mania for constructed languages. Born out ... more The turn of the 20th century witnessed a unprecedented mania for constructed languages. Born out of the utopian ideals of a motley assemblage of philosophers, artists, poets, and scientists, these languages reflect the virtues and vices of their age in their designs. Their developers aimed at nothing less than the unification of all humanity by substituting a linguistic unity for a fractious diversity, but the sources they employed in constructing their projects reflect their limited perspectives with regard to that diversity of languages and of the peoples they would unite. The men who participated in the vast and collective project of designing a world language were some of the foremost intellectuals and most sophisticated scholars of their time, but the failure of these projects reflects their fundamental naiveté.
Unial (also known as Universal) was one such project. Unial was first introduced as "Pan-Roman" in 1903 by Dr. Heinrich Molenaar (1870–1965), a German philosopher, poet, and language teacher. Molenaar, who was a lifelong social activist and committed pacifist, believed that the search for an international auxiliary language was redundant, as all of the languages of Europe and the European colonial empires shared a common scientific vocabulary ultimately derived from Latin and Greek. Unial represents Molenaar's attempt to impose an easily acquired schematic grammar upon this vocabulary.
This grammar, now available for the first time since 1920, has been enlarged significantly with a new introduction situating it in the context of other international auxiliary language projects and outlining Molenaar's philosophy of auxiliary language design.
The Mandaean Book of John Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2020
This is an Open Access Version. The full version includes a critical apparatus, scholarly footnot... more This is an Open Access Version. The full version includes a critical apparatus, scholarly footnotes, and a full commentary.
Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.
Papers by Charles Häberl
![Research paper thumbnail of Hebraisms in Mandaic [Pre-Publication Proof]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/104597968/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Linguistic and Philological Studies of the Hebrew Bible and its Manuscripts in honor of Gary A. Rendsburg, 2023
[Follow Link above for Pre-Publication Proof] Mandaic is an Eastern Aramaic language. Within t... more [Follow Link above for Pre-Publication Proof]
Mandaic is an Eastern Aramaic language. Within the context of the philological tradition of the study of the Aramaic languages, as it has evolved over the past two centuries, few such categorical statements are so incontrovertible. No less an authority than Theodor Nöldeke has declared it to be the “purest” example of its category, and subsequent generations of scholars have unanimously upheld his classification. Even so, its purity, and particularly its absolute freedom from any “traces of Western Aramaic influence” has lately become a pervasive concern within descriptions of the language and the community that has preserved it. Chief among these diagnostic traits are lexical and syntactic influences from Greek (as in the Christian literary varieties of Aramaic) and Hebrew (as in the Jewish literary varieties).
The question of Western Aramaic influence upon Mandaic does not have merely linguistic or literary relevance, but also historical and even legal significance. Mandaeans maintain that John the Baptist was a member of their community, and indeed the foremost of their prophets, and at least some of his followers migrated to their present location from Palestine during the decades following his mission there. On this basis, the various medieval and modern Islamic states that have governed the region since the 7th century have guaranteed them the status of a protected religion within. According to the consensus among western scholars that has emerged in recent centuries, Mandaean self-representations are fantastic, not historically constituted, and likely derivative of other religious traditions. This consensus has in turn severely complicated their relationship with Muslim authorities in their countries of origin. This consensus has developed upon several factors, but in the realm of philology no single factor carries greater weight than the question of the Mandaic language. Consequently, there is a strong case for interrogating this claim more aggressively than has historically been the case.
![Research paper thumbnail of A Modern Western Aramaic Account of the Syrian Civil War [Pre-Publication Proof]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/95408001/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](WORD, 2022
Modern Western Aramaic is one of the most critically endangered Aramaic languages, and the only e... more Modern Western Aramaic is one of the most critically endangered Aramaic languages, and the only extant member of the Western Aramaic subfamily. Its speakers are among the few who have not migrated away from their original territory, but the Syrian Civil War (2011-present) has accelerated its endangerment and resulted in the abandonment of one of the three villages in which it was previously spoken. Modern Western Aramaic thus provides us with an opportunity to document a language precisely as it succumbs to some of the primary causes of language endangerment, i.e., conflict and migration. The following text, collected in 2020, discusses this community's experience during this conflict from the perspective of one of the few remaining competent speakers. We have contextualized this text with a discussion of the language and its grammar in comparison with the most recent descriptions, all of which were made decades prior to the war, when the language was much less endangered.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2020
Versions of the folktale Zêrka Zêra (in Kurdish)/Stērka Zerá (in Ṭuroyo) circulate throughout sou... more Versions of the folktale Zêrka Zêra (in Kurdish)/Stērka Zerá (in Ṭuroyo) circulate throughout southeastern Anatolia. The story belongs to a widely-disseminated tale type, the ‘Bear's Wife’, which concerns a young woman who is abducted by a bear (or other wilderness creature) and is forced to spawn and rear his children before escaping or being rescued. The following Ṭuroyo version was recorded during the 2018 winter field season of the Russian expedition to Ṭur Abdin in the village of Ḥaḥ/Anıtlı from a speaker of the dialect of Bequsyone. It represents the first scholarly publication not only of the Ṭuroyo version, but of any version of this folktale. In addition to the folktale and a translation, the study includes a glossary of the vocabulary used within the text, reflecting some Ṭuroyo words that have not been documented elsewhere. The paper also discusses the motifs of the Stērka Zerá folktale according to the standard classification scheme of folk motifs.
Pp. 365-399 in Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World, eds. Julia Rubanovich and Shaul Shaked (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
The subject of this paper is a corpus of texts composed within a relatively narrow time frame, du... more The subject of this paper is a corpus of texts composed within a relatively narrow time frame, during the late Sassanian and early Islamic period. These texts were inscribed upon terracotta bowls and buried in courtyards and under thresholds. Thus far, most attempts to interpret these texts have been narrowly philological, and the primary focus of these attempts has been their relationship to other written texts, particularly those from the canons of religious literature. The philological approach has yielded impressive results towards the interpretation of these texts, but much about them still remains a mystery.
In this paper, I discuss a common feature of this genre – namely, the illocutionary act – in order to illustrate its fundamentally performative nature. I submit that our interpretation of these texts can be much refined by approaching them not only as written texts, but also as transcriptions of ritual utterances, and therefore the actual speech of the magician. While the inscriptions on the bowls were obviously the final product of the ritual, and the texts are clearly products of the literate cultures of late antique Mesopotamia, they nonetheless bear all of the hallmarks of oral composition. As such, no treatment of these texts can be considered comprehensive unless it attempts to address issues of their composition, transmission, and reception.
Encyclopædia Iranica
BĀLAYBALAN, aka Bālaïbalan, Bāl-a i-Balan, and Bâleybelen, an a priori constructed language, repr... more BĀLAYBALAN, aka Bālaïbalan, Bāl-a i-Balan, and Bâleybelen, an a priori constructed language, represented by a single dictionary, manuscript copies of which are preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Princeton University Library. It was possibly used by the adherents of Ḥorūfīsm (q.v.), a mystical movement that flourished in Iran from the end of the 14th century to the mid-15th century. It is the earliest attested constructed language, and one of a very few that are not of European origin.
Numen 60 (2013) 586–615
One of the smallest ethno-religious groups native to Iraq and Iran, the Mandæans can claim to be ... more One of the smallest ethno-religious groups native to Iraq and Iran, the Mandæans can claim to be one of the region’s longest surviving traditions as the last remaining Gnostic religion from Late Antiquity. Their survival is as puzzling as it is remarkable. According to their own traditions, they have always lived in close proximity to members of other faiths, never composing more than a small fraction of the population, and were always subject to the rule of others. Perhaps for this reason, the Mandæans have often presented their faith to outsiders in a manner that emphasizes common practices and shared beliefs, while still establishing barriers to full assimilation. While this strategy may have sustained the Mandæans as a community over the centuries, it has also repeatedly failed to protect them in times of intense sectarian conflict and is beginning to break down as Mandæans increasingly spread throughout the world.
pp. 56 - 87 in The Gulf in World History: Arabia at the Global Crossroads, ed. Allen J. Fromherz (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 2018
To what degree should we be prepared to accept the Mandæans’ own accounts of their origins, as op... more To what degree should we be prepared to accept the Mandæans’ own accounts of their origins, as opposed to external accounts and those constructed for them by scholars? This question – often implied, but seldom articulated – lies at the heart of all scholarship on the Mandæans over the last hundred years or more.
Middle Eastern Languages and Diaspora Communities in the United States
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Jan 1, 2006
In his 1997 novel Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson writes, “The life of the mind is an imaginary ... more In his 1997 novel Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson writes, “The life of the mind is an imaginary relationship to a real situation; but then the real situation keeps happening, event after event, and many of those events are out of our control, but many others are the direct result of the imagination’s take on things.” Historical and comparative linguists share the same utopian ideals concerning the use of experimental data, reproducibility of results, ontological parsimony, and peer review as others who identify primarily as scientists, but to what extent are our cherished axioms the “direct result of the imagination’s take on things,” and how have they impinged upon reality through their own referential and representational powers? This video will reflect upon the 18th century Orientalist August Ludwig von Schlözer, his seminal article “von der Chaldäer” (about the Chaldæans), and the discovery of Semitics.
38 views
The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran are adherents of the last surviving Gnostic tradition from the per... more The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran are adherents of the last surviving Gnostic tradition from the period of Late Antiquity, and the Book of Kings is the capstone to one of their most sacred scriptures. A universal history in four parts, it concisely outlines the entire 480,000 year span of the material world, from its creation to its destruction in the maw of the great Leviathan, with details including a succession of antediluvian cataclysms that have previously wiped out all human life, the reigns of the kings who have reigned over humanity and are still yet to reign, a lament on the end of pagan antiquity under the reign of the Arabs, and the apocalyptic drama attending those who have the misfortune to live at the end of the world era. For the first time ever, this work appears in English in its entirety, complete and unabridged, and directly translated from original Mandaic manuscripts, with the events mentioned within it coordinated with our calendar. It also includes an extensive commentary illustrating its relationship to contemporary historical writing and with the sacred literature of Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other neighbouring religious communities living under Sasanian rule.
Neo-Mandaic is the only surviving dialect of Aramaic to be recognized as a direct descendant of a... more Neo-Mandaic is the only surviving dialect of Aramaic to be recognized as a direct descendant of any of the classical dialects of Late Antiquity. The Mandaeans who speak it are adherents of a pre-Islamic Gnostic sect, the only such sect to survive to the present day. As such, Mandaic may be considered as both a living language of the modern Middle East and also the vehicle of one of the great religious traditions of that region, along with Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. Unfortunately, Neo-Mandaic is severely endangered, and all signs indicate that the current generation of speakers is likely to be the last. As a description of an endangered language, this work addresses one of the chief concerns of linguists in the 21st century, namely the impending loss of the majority of the world's languages and the immense threat to both linguistic and cultural diversity that it represents. This grammar is the first account of a previously undocumented dialect of Neo-Mandaic, and the most thoro...
A reprint of J. Heinrich Petermann's classic edition of the Ginza Rba, with an English translatio... more A reprint of J. Heinrich Petermann's classic edition of the Ginza Rba, with an English translation of his original Latin preface and a new introduction.
Robert Hetzron first organized the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL) a... more Robert Hetzron first organized the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL) at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1973 and passed away only six months after it had completed a quarter century of annual meetings. He would undoubtedly have been pleased to know that NACAL is still going strong, and that ten years after his passing it attracted no fewer than thirty-six scholars from the United States, Canada, and eight other countries, who presented on topics near and dear to his heart such as phonology, morphology, syntax, language contact, classification, subgrouping, and the history of scholarship, in languages such as Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Omotic, and others, as well as the groups to which they pertain. Since he established it, NACAL has served a unique role among the meetings of learned societies in North America. Only a handful of organizations worldwide hold annual meetings dedicated to Afroasiatic linguistics, and NACAL is one of a very small number of venues where linguists from all sub-disciplines and schools of thought meet to share their research. NACAL is also an academic nexus, a unique node at which graduate students at the beginning of their careers rub shoulders with the native speakers of the languages which they study and with the titans of their fields, men and women of an almost legendary stature such as Hetzron himself. This volume contains sixteen contributions from these scholars, on a broad cross-section of topics within the field of Afroasiatic linguistics.
Abstract The entire destiny of modern linguistics is in fact determined by Saussure’s inaugur... more Abstract
The entire destiny of modern linguistics is in fact determined by Saussure’s inaugural act through which he separates the ‘external’ elements of linguistics from the ‘internal’ elements, and, by reserving the title of linguistics for the latter, excludes from it all […] the political history of those who speak it, or even the geography of the domain where it is spoken, because all of these things add nothing to a knowledge of language taken in itself.
Bourdieu 1991: 33
With these words, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) undermined the foundation of modern linguistics established by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). Drawing upon the insights of his Russian predecessor, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), Bourdieu argued that language is neither solely a means of communication nor solely a system of internal rules. Situating language within society, he implored linguists to go beyond the internal elements of language to consider its external elements equally, exploring the interaction of language with its surrounding social variables, such as power, politics, ideology, and so forth.
This special issue can be considered a response to Bourdieu’s call. By situating Middle Eastern languages within the diasporic context of the United States, it brings together scholarship that explores the intersection and intersectionality of language with the social variables that exist in society and the implications of such interactions upon languages and their speech communities with regard to language use, attitudes, learning, maintenance, and/or attrition. Although the Middle East is our geographical focus, the eight languages that are brought together in this volume have different origins, belonging to different language families, including Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, and Turkic. Not only does this volume focus upon vibrant and widely spoken Middle Eastern languages that are national in their countries of origin, namely Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, and more recently Kurdish, but also upon smaller languages that enjoy no official or national status anywhere, notably Western Armenian, Turoyo (a form of Neo-Aramaic), and Juhuri (or Judeo-Tat a form of Tat and part of the larger Judeo-Persian language family). This special issue will be in print soon.
The turn of the 20th century witnessed a unprecedented mania for constructed languages. Born out ... more The turn of the 20th century witnessed a unprecedented mania for constructed languages. Born out of the utopian ideals of a motley assemblage of philosophers, artists, poets, and scientists, these languages reflect the virtues and vices of their age in their designs. Their developers aimed at nothing less than the unification of all humanity by substituting a linguistic unity for a fractious diversity, but the sources they employed in constructing their projects reflect their limited perspectives with regard to that diversity of languages and of the peoples they would unite. The men who participated in the vast and collective project of designing a world language were some of the foremost intellectuals and most sophisticated scholars of their time, but the failure of these projects reflects their fundamental naiveté.
Unial (also known as Universal) was one such project. Unial was first introduced as "Pan-Roman" in 1903 by Dr. Heinrich Molenaar (1870–1965), a German philosopher, poet, and language teacher. Molenaar, who was a lifelong social activist and committed pacifist, believed that the search for an international auxiliary language was redundant, as all of the languages of Europe and the European colonial empires shared a common scientific vocabulary ultimately derived from Latin and Greek. Unial represents Molenaar's attempt to impose an easily acquired schematic grammar upon this vocabulary.
This grammar, now available for the first time since 1920, has been enlarged significantly with a new introduction situating it in the context of other international auxiliary language projects and outlining Molenaar's philosophy of auxiliary language design.
The Mandaean Book of John Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2020
This is an Open Access Version. The full version includes a critical apparatus, scholarly footnot... more This is an Open Access Version. The full version includes a critical apparatus, scholarly footnotes, and a full commentary.
Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.
Linguistic and Philological Studies of the Hebrew Bible and its Manuscripts in honor of Gary A. Rendsburg, 2023
[Follow Link above for Pre-Publication Proof] Mandaic is an Eastern Aramaic language. Within t... more [Follow Link above for Pre-Publication Proof]
Mandaic is an Eastern Aramaic language. Within the context of the philological tradition of the study of the Aramaic languages, as it has evolved over the past two centuries, few such categorical statements are so incontrovertible. No less an authority than Theodor Nöldeke has declared it to be the “purest” example of its category, and subsequent generations of scholars have unanimously upheld his classification. Even so, its purity, and particularly its absolute freedom from any “traces of Western Aramaic influence” has lately become a pervasive concern within descriptions of the language and the community that has preserved it. Chief among these diagnostic traits are lexical and syntactic influences from Greek (as in the Christian literary varieties of Aramaic) and Hebrew (as in the Jewish literary varieties).
The question of Western Aramaic influence upon Mandaic does not have merely linguistic or literary relevance, but also historical and even legal significance. Mandaeans maintain that John the Baptist was a member of their community, and indeed the foremost of their prophets, and at least some of his followers migrated to their present location from Palestine during the decades following his mission there. On this basis, the various medieval and modern Islamic states that have governed the region since the 7th century have guaranteed them the status of a protected religion within. According to the consensus among western scholars that has emerged in recent centuries, Mandaean self-representations are fantastic, not historically constituted, and likely derivative of other religious traditions. This consensus has in turn severely complicated their relationship with Muslim authorities in their countries of origin. This consensus has developed upon several factors, but in the realm of philology no single factor carries greater weight than the question of the Mandaic language. Consequently, there is a strong case for interrogating this claim more aggressively than has historically been the case.
WORD, 2022
Modern Western Aramaic is one of the most critically endangered Aramaic languages, and the only e... more Modern Western Aramaic is one of the most critically endangered Aramaic languages, and the only extant member of the Western Aramaic subfamily. Its speakers are among the few who have not migrated away from their original territory, but the Syrian Civil War (2011-present) has accelerated its endangerment and resulted in the abandonment of one of the three villages in which it was previously spoken. Modern Western Aramaic thus provides us with an opportunity to document a language precisely as it succumbs to some of the primary causes of language endangerment, i.e., conflict and migration. The following text, collected in 2020, discusses this community's experience during this conflict from the perspective of one of the few remaining competent speakers. We have contextualized this text with a discussion of the language and its grammar in comparison with the most recent descriptions, all of which were made decades prior to the war, when the language was much less endangered.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2020
Versions of the folktale Zêrka Zêra (in Kurdish)/Stērka Zerá (in Ṭuroyo) circulate throughout sou... more Versions of the folktale Zêrka Zêra (in Kurdish)/Stērka Zerá (in Ṭuroyo) circulate throughout southeastern Anatolia. The story belongs to a widely-disseminated tale type, the ‘Bear's Wife’, which concerns a young woman who is abducted by a bear (or other wilderness creature) and is forced to spawn and rear his children before escaping or being rescued. The following Ṭuroyo version was recorded during the 2018 winter field season of the Russian expedition to Ṭur Abdin in the village of Ḥaḥ/Anıtlı from a speaker of the dialect of Bequsyone. It represents the first scholarly publication not only of the Ṭuroyo version, but of any version of this folktale. In addition to the folktale and a translation, the study includes a glossary of the vocabulary used within the text, reflecting some Ṭuroyo words that have not been documented elsewhere. The paper also discusses the motifs of the Stērka Zerá folktale according to the standard classification scheme of folk motifs.
Pp. 365-399 in Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World, eds. Julia Rubanovich and Shaul Shaked (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
The subject of this paper is a corpus of texts composed within a relatively narrow time frame, du... more The subject of this paper is a corpus of texts composed within a relatively narrow time frame, during the late Sassanian and early Islamic period. These texts were inscribed upon terracotta bowls and buried in courtyards and under thresholds. Thus far, most attempts to interpret these texts have been narrowly philological, and the primary focus of these attempts has been their relationship to other written texts, particularly those from the canons of religious literature. The philological approach has yielded impressive results towards the interpretation of these texts, but much about them still remains a mystery.
In this paper, I discuss a common feature of this genre – namely, the illocutionary act – in order to illustrate its fundamentally performative nature. I submit that our interpretation of these texts can be much refined by approaching them not only as written texts, but also as transcriptions of ritual utterances, and therefore the actual speech of the magician. While the inscriptions on the bowls were obviously the final product of the ritual, and the texts are clearly products of the literate cultures of late antique Mesopotamia, they nonetheless bear all of the hallmarks of oral composition. As such, no treatment of these texts can be considered comprehensive unless it attempts to address issues of their composition, transmission, and reception.
Encyclopædia Iranica
BĀLAYBALAN, aka Bālaïbalan, Bāl-a i-Balan, and Bâleybelen, an a priori constructed language, repr... more BĀLAYBALAN, aka Bālaïbalan, Bāl-a i-Balan, and Bâleybelen, an a priori constructed language, represented by a single dictionary, manuscript copies of which are preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Princeton University Library. It was possibly used by the adherents of Ḥorūfīsm (q.v.), a mystical movement that flourished in Iran from the end of the 14th century to the mid-15th century. It is the earliest attested constructed language, and one of a very few that are not of European origin.
Numen 60 (2013) 586–615
One of the smallest ethno-religious groups native to Iraq and Iran, the Mandæans can claim to be ... more One of the smallest ethno-religious groups native to Iraq and Iran, the Mandæans can claim to be one of the region’s longest surviving traditions as the last remaining Gnostic religion from Late Antiquity. Their survival is as puzzling as it is remarkable. According to their own traditions, they have always lived in close proximity to members of other faiths, never composing more than a small fraction of the population, and were always subject to the rule of others. Perhaps for this reason, the Mandæans have often presented their faith to outsiders in a manner that emphasizes common practices and shared beliefs, while still establishing barriers to full assimilation. While this strategy may have sustained the Mandæans as a community over the centuries, it has also repeatedly failed to protect them in times of intense sectarian conflict and is beginning to break down as Mandæans increasingly spread throughout the world.
pp. 56 - 87 in The Gulf in World History: Arabia at the Global Crossroads, ed. Allen J. Fromherz (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 2018
To what degree should we be prepared to accept the Mandæans’ own accounts of their origins, as op... more To what degree should we be prepared to accept the Mandæans’ own accounts of their origins, as opposed to external accounts and those constructed for them by scholars? This question – often implied, but seldom articulated – lies at the heart of all scholarship on the Mandæans over the last hundred years or more.
Middle Eastern Languages and Diaspora Communities in the United States
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Jan 1, 2006
Mandaeans vi. Neo-Mandaic Language or modern Mandaic, the contemporary form of Mandaic, the langu... more Mandaeans vi. Neo-Mandaic Language or modern Mandaic, the contemporary form of Mandaic, the language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. As such, it is the only known form of any of the classical literary dialects of Aramaic to survive to the present date, but it is severely endangered today.
Religion Compass 6/5 (2012): 262–276
The evidence for a history of Mandaeism during the period of Late Antiquity (3rd–8th c. CE) and i... more The evidence for a history of Mandaeism during the period of Late Antiquity (3rd–8th c. CE) and its evolution as a religious tradition prior to and immediately following the advent of Islam is surveyed. This evidence includes the Mandaean manuscript tradition, the testimony of outside witnesses, and the corpus of incantation texts from Late Antique Mesopotamia. It is noted that the study of this evidence has typically been subsumed under the study of related traditions, and that it could benefit from a reassessment. The issues addressed include Mandaeism’s relationship to other religions, such as Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Manichaeism, the antiquity and authenticity of its traditions, and the extent of Islamic influence upon them.
The Semitic Languages (2nd Edition), 2019
Mandaic (in the form generally described as ‘Neo-Mandaic’ or ‘Modern Mandaic’; ISO/DIS 639–3: mid... more Mandaic (in the form generally described as ‘Neo-Mandaic’ or ‘Modern Mandaic’; ISO/DIS 639–3: mid) is the language of the Mandæan community, which was formerly based in Iraq and Iran (Map 26.1) but is today distributed throughout the world, principally in Europe, Australia and North America, as the result of ethnic cleansing in its homeland. Despite its long history of attestation and copious literature, it is moribund today. Even though the members of the Mandæan community, numbering perhaps 60,000 adherents, are familiar with Mandaic through their sacred literature and liturgy, only a few hundred Mandæans, located primarily in Iran, speak it as a first language. Of these, even fewer use it regularly in writing, primarily to compose the colophons that accompany manuscripts.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2021
In his 1875 description of the language, Theodor Nöldeke describes Mandaic as among the purest o... more In his 1875 description of the language, Theodor Nöldeke describes Mandaic as among the purest of the Aramaic languages and the furthest from Western Aramaic, particularly with respect to its lexicon. As Mandæans identify their faith with that of John the Baptist and his community of followers, this observation is not without relevance for assessing the veracity of their accounts and reconstructing their history prior to the advent of Islam. Departing from the assumption that these accounts are either inaccurate or willfully dishonest, all recent descriptions of the Mandaic language maintain that it is completely free from any western influences whatsoever, employing a considerably stronger form of Nöldeke’s original claim. This article subjects the strong form of this claim to a critical analysis, surveying the evidence for western influence upon the lexicon of the Mandæan scriptural canon, principally the Canonical Prayerbook, the Great Treasure, and the Mandæan Book of John. It...
![Research paper thumbnail of Meryay, Standing at the Boundary [Uncorrected Pre-Press Proof]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/88923304/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Zimrat JAH: A Tribute to Jo Ann Hackett. Na’ama Pat-El and Jonathan Kaplan (eds). Maarav 25.1–2 (2021): 65–89., 2021
The Mandaean proselyte Meryay, best known from her representations in the Canonical Prayerbook, t... more The Mandaean proselyte Meryay, best known from her representations in the Canonical Prayerbook, the Great Treasure (Genzā Rabbā), and the Book of John (Drāši d-Yaḥyā), serves as an illuminating example of the sort of figure who partially and ambiguously bridges the interests and concerns of differently constituted religious communities, allowing for a certain degree of collaboration between them. Christians readily identify this Mandaean figure with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Muslims similarly identify her with Maryam bint ʿImrān of the Qur'ān. Mandaeans today identify their Meryay with neither of the above, insisting that theirs was a different woman of the same name, but prior generations were content to permit such identifications in the interest of dialogue across religious boundaries. In its most extensive retelling, that of the Book of John, her legend situates her at a literal boundary, the Euphrates, where a pursuing Jewish host is drowned, in an inversion of the Exodus narrative. These days, however, she stands not at the boundary but rather the center of the debate over contentious issues such as the permissibility of conversion and the role of women in the priesthood.
The Semitic Languages, 2011
One of the earliest attested texts in Neo-Mandaic, and one of the few witnesses to the now extinc... more One of the earliest attested texts in Neo-Mandaic, and one of the few witnesses to the now extinct Iraqi dialect of Neo-Mandaic, was a letter first published among the texts in the fifth volume of Jacques de Morgan's Mission scientifique en Perse. Unfortunately, de Morgan offered no translation of this text or of any of the other Mandaic texts he claimed to have collected in Persia between 1889 and 1891. Nearly a centmy after de Morgan's mission, Rudolf Macuch transcribed this text with the help of his informant Nasser Saburi of Ahvaz, Iran, and supplied a translation in his Neumanddische Chrestomathie. With the help of my informant, Nasser Sobbi of Flushing, New York, USA, I have prepared a new transcription, using the system I developed for the Neo-Mandaic dialect of Khorramshahr, and a new translation, filling some of the gaps in Macuch's earlier attempt and offering a few variant readings in the process.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
This article documents the evolution and survival of an institution that has persisted nearly two... more This article documents the evolution and survival of an institution that has persisted nearly two and a half millennia until the present day. This institution, the Mandæan calendar, has evolved since its origins in the early Hellenistic period, and has been faithfully maintained since 472 ce at the latest. Its essential structure, 12 equal months of 30 days extended with the addition of five days to maintain its correspondence with the passage of the seasons, has evidently not changed since its initial adoption. After introducing the basic elements of time-keeping among Mandæans today, the article addresses the system of days, months, years, eras, and ages employed in the Mandæan scriptures, and correlates them with the present Mandæan calendar as well as the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
The Glossarium Sabicum, Persicum, Turcicum, et Arabicum (henceforth, Glossarium) is a quarto manu... more The Glossarium Sabicum, Persicum, Turcicum, et Arabicum (henceforth, Glossarium) is a quarto manuscript in the collection of the Leiden University Library, where it is accessioned as Acad. 222. Even though the Glossarium has the appearance of a set of field notes, hastily compiled and subsequently left unedited, a cautious analysis of its pages will reward the reader with a remarkably accurate and surprisingly consistent first attempt at documenting a language. This language, identified herein as “Sabian,” must not be confused with either Classical Mandaic or Neo-Mandaic, but approached as a separate language in its own right.
The arid pre-desert lands along the fringe of the Sahara have proven to be an especially fertile ... more The arid pre-desert lands along the fringe of the Sahara have proven to be an especially fertile source of epigraphic remains from Roman Late Antiquity. In particular, the former Roman region of Tripolitania has yielded a small corpus of roughly sixty Punic inscriptions, dating from the first century of the common era to the fifth century. This corpus differs from other inscriptions in that language not only for its comparatively late time span, but also by virtue of the script in which it was composed. In the final stage before it disappeared completely from history, the Punic of Tripolitania was written in a modified form of the Latin script, which was apparently adapted to the phonology of Late Punic much as the Latin script was later adapted to represent other languages, including related languages like Maltese. In this paper, I will argue that the orthography of the Latino-Punic inscriptions represents the first unified and consistent system to render any Semitic language alphabetically, with full indication of vowels, rather than by syllabary or abjad. That is to say, I will argue that the orthography of the Latino-Punic inscriptions was unique in its time because it reflects the phonemes of Late Punic as it was spoken in Tripolitania at the time, solely for the benefit of Tripolitanian Punic speakers, rather than an attempt to render the sounds of Late Punic according to the orthography of other languages for the benefit of their speakers, such as Origen and Jerome’s roughly contemporary efforts to transcribe a closely related Semitic language (Hebrew) into the Greek and Latin scripts, respectively, for the express benefit of speakers of these two languages.
The Soulfisher (Mandaic ṣaida ana ṣaida ḏmn ṣaidia bhir) may best be described as an allegorical ... more The Soulfisher (Mandaic ṣaida ana ṣaida ḏmn ṣaidia bhir) may best be described as an allegorical story akin to the metaphor of the Good Shepherd (e.g. John 10:1-21) but resituated within and assimilated to the marshes of what is today southern Iraq. As these marshlands constitute a unique environment within the otherwise arid region of the Middle East, and marshlands the world around are not typically known for producing or preserving written corpora of literature, this particular text stands alone within the corpus of Semitic literature and indeed the literatures of the world. Its alien vocabulary and seemingly impenetrable colloquialisms nearly caused Mark Lidzbarski to throw in the towel on his translation of the Mandaean Book of John. His frustration is palpable from the introductory comments to the Soulfisher:
The section includes many expressions from the daily life of fishermen and sailors which are not otherwise attested in either Mandaic or other Semitic languages. For this reason, its interpretation is extremely difficult. I have made every conceivable effort to elucidate its many obscurities, but with few results.
Nevertheless, Lidzbarski hit upon a potential solution:
Because technical terms that are typical of a narrow circle remain attached to the ground and pass from one language to another, I assumed that some of these terms survive even with the now Arabic-speaking sailors and fishermen of Iraq, and I was able to figure some out with certainty. Therefore, I made up some questionnaires, the first containing general questions about fishing and sailing in Babylonia, and the second containing a list of eligible words with their possible contemporary forms in Arabic.
Though brilliant and far-sighted, his project foundered when his attempts at securing responses to these questionnaires proved largely unsuccessful. Of course, Lidzbarski composed his translation around the turn of the century; in the intervening eleven decades, numerous advances have been made in the study of Mandaic, Aramaic, and the vernacular dialects of Arabic, as well as daily life in southern Iraq, and these advances have yielded resources such as lexicons and ethnographies that were not available to Lidzbarski. While the Soulfisher may be the most challenging section of the Mandaean Book of John, it is also the one most likely to benefit from a reassessment.
Bibliotheca Orientalis, 2022
Few Mandaean literary works are explicitly historical in scope. The Scroll of Inner Harran (Diwān... more Few Mandaean literary works are explicitly historical in scope. The Scroll of Inner Harran (Diwān Harrān Gawaytā), the subject of a new critical edition by Bogdan Burtea, is one such work. The Inner Harran revisits the world era of prior Mandaean works and revises it in light of subsequent developments, most notably the advent of Islam and the conclusion of the prior world era on Saturday, 5 June 678. In his edition, Burtea adeptly contextualizes this work within the body of philological scholarship that has grown around it since its editio princeps in 1953, albeit without situating it within the body of literature from Mandaeans and other related communities during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In this review article, I attempt to supplement Burtea’s edition by placing its subject within a broader literary and specifically historiographic context.
Journal of the American Oriental Society
Prostitution in the Eastern Mediterranean World: The Economics of Sex in the Late Antique and Med... more Prostitution in the Eastern Mediterranean World: The Economics of Sex in the Late Antique and Medieval Middle East. By Gary Leiser. London: I.B. Tauris, 2017. Pp. xv + 332. $52.50, £35.
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2010
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2012
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2012
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2007
Journal of the American Oriental Society
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2019
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, volume 45, issue 04, pp. 829-831, Nov 2013
Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, Rutgers, State ... more Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, N.J.; e-mail: haberl@rutgers.edu
(Presentation, March 11, 2023, at the 233rd annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, in L... more (Presentation, March 11, 2023, at the 233rd annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, in Los Angeles, CA).
Mandaic, first attested sometime around or after the 6th century CE, evidently shares numerous Canaanisms with Achaemenid Aramaic (ca. 550–330 BCE), despite the graphic dissimilarities between these scripts and the innovative and otherwise thoroughgoingly phonemic nature of Mandaic orthography. Scholars of Mandaic have long recognized the conservative and even archaizing nature of its literary form, generally attributing them to direct or indirect literary influence from Achaemenid Aramaic, but the gap of nearly a millennium between the floruits of these two languages obliges us to consider alternative and/or intermediary sources for these Canaanisms.
The conservative nature of the Mandaic lexicon may explain some of the forms, e.g., the frequent verb ktr ‘to detain (D)’, which means ‘to remain’ elsewhere in Aramaic but cf. Hebrew ktr ‘to surround (D)’ and Gəʕəz ktr ‘curtain off; bar (D)’. Another rich source of such forms in Aramaic more generally is Akkadian, e.g., the Mandaic doublet ʾbṭ ‘hold fast, fetter (D)’ and ṣbt ‘grab jointly (G)’, of which the first represents the authentic Aramaic reflex of PS *ɬ’bt’, presumably ‘to grasp’, cf. Arabic ḍbṭ ‘grab, seize, hold (G)’ and Gəʿəz ḍbṭ ‘grasp, take hold of, lay hands on (G)’, and the second is an indirect reflex of the same root via Akkadian ṣbt ‘seize, take, hold’ with the characteristic dissimilation of emphatics à la Geers, despite its somewhat Canaanite-looking appearance, cf. Hebrew ṣĕḇāṯîm ‘bundles’ and the post-biblical Hebrew root ṣbt ‘join’. A third, more intriguing explanation, entails the same process by which Achaemenid Aramaic initially came by its Canaanisms, namely on the model of a Canaanite language, cf. the Mandaic couplets zahba and dahba ‘gold’ or ziqna and diqna ‘beard’. The former forms recall Hebrew zāhāḇ ‘gold’ and zāqān ‘beard’, but the latter reflect the common and expected Aramaic forms dahḇā and daqnā id.
The most characteristic figures in the Mandaean religion are the beings known as the eutria. Unli... more The most characteristic figures in the Mandaean religion are the beings known as the eutria. Unlike the Great First Mind and Its various emanations, who remain largely aloof from the material world, the eutria repeatedly intervene in the affairs of mankind to protect the Mandaeans and punish those who threaten them. Even though the Mandaeans worship the Great Life as their supreme being, the eutria, and particularly the triad Hibel, Shitel, and Ennosh, are ever present in their thoughts and prayers.
The eutria are so quintessentially Mandaean that the term is entirely absent from the vocabulary of other contemporary religions, although the category of beings to which they refer is routinely compared to the angels of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the aeons of western Gnostic traditions. As a consequence, the origin and precise meaning of the term eutra has been the subject of some debate.
In this brief communication, I shall challenge the scholarly consensus that has developed over the past fifteen decades, namely that Classical Mandaic eutra is cognate with Aramaic ˁuṯrā ‘riches’ and therefore means ‘riches’, citing internal evidence from the Mandaic literature and the comparative evidence from the other Semitic languages. By comparing its contemporary form, Neo-Mandaic oṯrɔ, with related words in all other branches of Semitic, I shall demonstrate that Classical Mandaic eutra clearly derives from the PS root *w-t-r ‘to exceed’, that it is one of an extremely small class of relic C-stem deverbal adjectives in Aramaic, that its original meaning with reference to divine beings is ‘excellent’, and that in Classical Mandaic (and only in Classical Mandaic) it secondarily came to be used as a proper noun referring to an entire category of supernatural beings (‘the excellencies’).
Hayat Tarih Mecmuası 1, Feb 1966
Draft article on the Endangered Languages of the Middle East and North Africa for the next editio... more Draft article on the Endangered Languages of the Middle East and North Africa for the next edition of the Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages (Routledge).
While the broader question of Mandaean origins is a vexing and contentious one, the consensus am... more While the broader question of Mandaean origins is a vexing and contentious one, the consensus among western scholars that has emerged over the previous century maintains that the Mandaeans’ own accounts of their origins are completely fantastic, not at all grounded in historical reality, and therefore derivative of other religious traditions, particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This consensus has in turn severely complicated the Mandaeans’ relationship with Muslim authorities in their countries of origin. This consensus has developed upon several factors, but in the realm of philology no single factor carries greater weight than the question of the Mandaic language.
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2016
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2016
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2021
This article documents the evolution and survival of an institution that has persisted nearly two... more This article documents the evolution and survival of an institution that has persisted nearly two and a half millennia until the present day. This institution, the Mandæan calendar, has evolved since its origins in the early Hellenistic period, and has been faithfully maintained since 472 ce at the latest. Its essential structure, 12 equal months of 30 days extended with the addition of five days to maintain its correspondence with the passage of the seasons, has evidently not changed since its initial adoption. After introducing the basic elements of time-keeping among Mandæans today, the article addresses the system of days, months, years, eras, and ages employed in the Mandæan scriptures, and correlates them with the present Mandæan calendar as well as the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
One of the earliest attested texts in Neo-Mandaic, and one of the few witnesses to the now extinc... more One of the earliest attested texts in Neo-Mandaic, and one of the few witnesses to the now extinct Iraqi dialect of Neo-Mandaic, was a letter first published among the texts in the fifth volume of Jacques de Morgan's Mission scientifique en Perse. Unfortunately, de Morgan offered no translation of this text or of any of the other Mandaic texts he claimed to have collected in Persia between 1889 and 1891. Nearly a centmy after de Morgan's mission, Rudolf Macuch transcribed this text with the help of his informant Nasser Saburi of Ahvaz, Iran, and supplied a translation in his Neumanddische Chrestomathie. With the help of my informant, Nasser Sobbi of Flushing, New York, USA, I have prepared a new transcription, using the system I developed for the Neo-Mandaic dialect of Khorramshahr, and a new translation, filling some of the gaps in Macuch's earlier attempt and offering a few variant readings in the process.
Neo-Mandaic is the modern reflex of Classical Mandaic, the liturgical language of the Mandaean re... more Neo-Mandaic is the modern reflex of Classical Mandaic, the liturgical language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. Severely endangered, it survives today as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans (possibly as few as 300-500 speakers) in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are bi- or even tri-lingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon and the morphology of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic dialects. As the only known surviving modern reflex of any literary dialect of Aramaic, it has one of the longest continuous histories of attestation of any Aramaic dialect and is therefore potentially of great interest to scholars of Aramaic.
Religion Compass, 2012
The evidence for a history of Mandaeism during the period of Late Antiquity (3rd–8th c. CE) and i... more The evidence for a history of Mandaeism during the period of Late Antiquity (3rd–8th c. CE) and its evolution as a religious tradition prior to and immediately following the advent of Islam is surveyed. This evidence includes the Mandaean manuscript tradition, the testimony of outside witnesses, and the corpus of incantation texts from Late Antique Mesopotamia. It is noted that the study of this evidence has typically been subsumed under the study of related traditions, and that it could benefit from a reassessment. The issues addressed include Mandaeism’s relationship to other religions, such as Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Manichaeism, the antiquity and authenticity of its traditions, and the extent of Islamic influence upon them.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2016
To what degree should we be prepared to accept the Mandæans' own accounts of their origins, a... more To what degree should we be prepared to accept the Mandæans' own accounts of their origins, as opposed to external accounts and those constructed for them by scholars? This question – often implied, but seldom articulated – lies at the heart of all scholarship on the Mandæans over the last hundred years or more.
Numen, 2013
One of the smallest ethno-religious groups native to Iraq and Iran, the Mandæans can claim to be ... more One of the smallest ethno-religious groups native to Iraq and Iran, the Mandæans can claim to be one of the region’s longest surviving traditions as the last remaining Gnostic religion from Late Antiquity. Their survival is as puzzling as it is remarkable. According to their own traditions, they have always lived in close proximity to members of other faiths, never composing more than a small fraction of the population, and were always subject to the rule of others. Perhaps for this reason, the Mandæans have often presented their faith to outsiders in a manner that emphasizes common practices and shared beliefs, while still establishing barriers to full assimilation. While this strategy may have sustained the Mandæans as a community over the centuries, it has also repeatedly failed to protect them in times of intense sectarian conflict and is beginning to break down as Mandæans increasingly spread throughout the world.
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2017
Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World, 2015
Neo-Mandaic is the only surviving dialect of Aramaic to be recognized as a direct descendant of a... more Neo-Mandaic is the only surviving dialect of Aramaic to be recognized as a direct descendant of any of the classical dialects of Late Antiquity. The Mandaeans who speak it are adherents of a pre-Islamic Gnostic sect, the only such sect to survive to the present day. As such, Mandaic may be considered as both a living language of the modern Middle East and also the vehicle of one of the great religious traditions of that region, along with Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. Unfortunately, Neo-Mandaic is severely endangered, and all signs indicate that the current generation of speakers is likely to be the last. As a description of an endangered language, this work addresses one of the chief concerns of linguists in the 21st century, namely the impending loss of the majority of the world's languages and the immense threat to both linguistic and cultural diversity that it represents. This grammar is the first account of a previously undocumented dialect of Neo-Mandaic, and the most thorough description of any Neo-Mandaic dialect. In addition to a description of its phonology, inflectional paradigms, and morphosyntax, it includes a collection of ten texts, transcribed and translated, as well as a concise lexicon of the vocabulary found within these texts.