Flights of Fancy: A Mandaean Folktale of Escape from Persecution (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Mandaeans and the Question of Their Origin, ARAM 16, 2004, pp. 47–50.
ARAM, 2004
Browsing the Internet for the Mandaeans one comes across the website “Mandaean World”, where one can read under the logo of the Uroboros snake, the gnostic serpent encircling the world: “The origins of both the peo- ple, and of the religion are one of the continuing mysteries of Mandaean re- search.” This quotation describes exactly the difficulty by which a hundred and fifty years of scholarly discussion was led mostly within Europe concern- ing the “Mandäerfrage”. A scholarly dispute more at home in theological cir- cles or in research groups whose main interest is the study of the world reli- gions than among linguists.
Landscape and Constructs in the Mandaean Culture: Immediacy and Temporality
Journal of Art & Civilization of the Orient (JACO), 2018
Religions present their followers with a religious world that simultaneously set the worldview as well as the ethos of the community of the believers. The Mandaeans are the followers of an ethnoreligious minority who are originally living in Iran and Iraq. By drawing on the landscape of ritual performance and certain ritual constructs among the Mandaeans, this essay intends to show how the Gnostic Mandaean cosmology and ethos are symbolically manifested in their aesthetic sense and the way they approach their rituals.
In the middle of the thirteenth century, Shams al-Din al-Shahrazuri al-Ishraqi (d. between 1287 and 1304) wrote an Arabic history of philosophy entitled Nuzhat al-Arwah wa Raw∂at al-AfraÌ. Using some older materials (mainly Ibn Nadim; the ∑iwan al-Ìikma, and al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik), he considers the 'Modern philosophers' (ninth-thirteenth c.) to be the heirs of the Ancients, and collects for his demonstration the stories of the ancient sages and scientists, from Adam to Proclus as well as the biographical and bibliographical details of some ninety modern philosophers. Two interesting chapters on Adam and Seth have not been studied until this day, though they give some rare – if cursory – historical information on the Mandaeans, as was available to al-Shahrazuri al-Ishraqi in the thirteenth century. We will discuss the peculiar historiography adopted by Shahrazuri, and show the complexity of a source he used, namely al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik's chapter on Seth, which betray genuine Mandaean elements.
Ritual Purity and the Mandaeans' Identity
The Mandaeans are the members of an ethno-religious group living in Iran and Iraq. The religion of the Mandaeans is a written tradition and is the main reference of their identity. As a small endogamous group under the hegemony of the non-Mandaeans and exposed to epidemics, they always have been under the threat of cultural extinction. Therefore, group identity protection has become one of their major concerns, which is reflected in their religious practice. The Mandaeans practice a doctrinal ritualistic religion with recurrence theme of purity. The doctrinal rituals allow them to transmit a large number of religious codes through generations and to re-establish their identity. Simultaneously, the obsession with bodily purity symbolically shows their preoccupation with the unity and integrity of the threatened group boundaries. Since recent decades the Mandaeans' homeland in Iran and Iraq has undergone dramatic socio-political changes caused by the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the first and second Persian Gulf Wars and their entailed instabilities. These circumstances led to the emigration of many Mandaeans to other countries and formation of Mandaean diasporas around the world. These new social conditions are making a crucial effect on the Mandaeans' religious system and identity policy. The article is based on a long-term ethnographic study on the Mandaeans of Iran.
The Mandaean Identity Challenge: from religious symbolism to secular policies
The paper addresses the Mandaeans' long lasting identity challenge as a small ethno-religious group living under the threat of cultural extinction. The Mandaeans are followers of an ancient gnostic tradion and they have been living in Mesopotamia for several centuries. Because of their unkown and partly esoteric relgion, they have always been the subject of the religious intolerance of thier neghbouring people. This have made the identity concern one of the main social concerns of the Mandaeans. This concern, in turn, reflects in the religious system of the Mandaeans. The Mandaeans have developed elaborated rituals with the repetitive theme of body purification. Babtism, ablutions and food taboos show this carful concern about purity. This obsession with body purification symbolically expresses the Mandaeans' anxious care about the purification of the group body. In last decades, because of the wars and social and plitical unrests in their homeland, the Mandaeans have started to emigrate from their countries to Europe, North America and Australia. Fromation of scattered diaspora and living in mulitcultural scular societies can bring about dramatic changes in the Mandaeans religious practice and cosmology. There are some signs that show this changes have been started.