The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People JORUNN JACOBSEN BUCKLEY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS The Mandaeans AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION THE RELIGIONS SERIES SERIES EDITOR Paul B. Courtright, Emory University A Publication Series of The American Academy of Religion and Oxford University Press Religions of Atlanta Religious Diversity in the Centennial Olympic City Edited by Gary Laderman Exegesis of Polemical Discourse Ibn Hazm on Jewish and Christian Scriptures Theodore Pulcini Religion and the War in Bosnia Edited by Paul Mojzes The Apostolic Conciliarism of Jean Gerson John J. Ryan One Lifetime, Many Lives The Experience of Modern Hindu Hagiography Robin Rinehart Sacrificing the Self Perspectives on Martyrdom and Religion Edited by Margaret Cormack The Mandaeans Ancient Texts and Modern People Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION The Mandaeans Ancient Texts and Modern People jorunn jacobsen buckley 1 2002 3 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and an associated company in Berlin Copyright © 2002 by The American Academy of Religion Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Buckley, Jorunn Jacobsen. The Mandaeans : ancient texts and modern people / Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley. p. cm. — (AAR the religions) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-515385-5 1. Mandaeans. I. Title. II. AAR the religions (Unnumbered) BT1405 .B83 2002 299'.932—dc21 2001052364 The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint the following: “The Mandaean Appropriation of Jesus’ Mother, Mirai.” Novum Testamentum 35, no. 2 (1993): 181–96. “A Rehabilitation of Spirit Ruha in Mandaean Religion.” History of Religions 22, no. 1 (1982): 60–84. “The Salvation of the Spirit Ruha in Mandaean Religion.” In Female Fault and Fulfilment in Gnosticism by Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley. Copyright © 1986 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. “Why Once Is Not Enough: Mandaean Baptism (Maƒbuta) as an Example of a Repeated Ritual.” History of Religions 29, no. 1 (1989): 23–34. “The Mandaean Šitil as an Example of ‘the Image Above and Below.’” Numen 26, no. 2 (1979): 185–191. Used by permission of Brill Academic Publishers. “The Mandaean Tabahata Masiqta.” Numen 28, no. 2 (1981): 138–163. Used by permission of Brill Academic Publishers. “The Making of a Mandaean Priest: The Tarmida Initiation.” Numen 32, no. 2 (1985): 194–217. Used by permission of Brill Academic Publishers. “Frouzanda Mahrad,” a poem by Lamea Abbas Amara. Reprinted by permission of Lamea Abbas Amara. 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Tim and Jesse This page intentionally left blank Preface I wrote a postcard to my professor, Gilles Quispel in Utrecht, to say that I would be unable to keep my appointment with him because I was going to Iran the next morn- ing, over land, on eight hours’ notice. Mark, my boyfriend, had come back to our apart- ment and asked whether I wanted to go to Iran the next day. We had an offer to drive a car from Amsterdam to Tehran for an Iranian businessman. Istanbul would be just midway. After a late evening meeting with the businessman and his family—they would drive their other car the same route—I agreed to go. I was on a Norwegian-Dutch fellow- ship in the Netherlands, and I grasped the chance to go to Iran because I wanted to meet Mandaeans in the Persian Gulf area. Since the late 1960s, I had studied Mandaeism. Now, it was late September 1973. A fourteen-day-long, strange, and wonderful journey began. While we were in Yugo- slavia, the war started between Israel and Egypt. For a day and a half, on the Turkish Anatolian high plains, continuously overtaken by Bulgarian cheese trucks spewing high- lead gasoline fumes, we contemplated Mount Ararat, in and out of thunderstorms, a serene 17,000-foot pyramid at the end of a long mountain range. At Dogubayazit, we entered Iran. The landscape of Iranian Azerbajan is impressed in my mind: dramatic brown mountains with green, steep slopes dotted by tiny sheep and shepherds; then came flatter deserts and haughty-looking camels. In Tehran we stayed six days, spending much time trying to find information about the Mandaeans in the Gulf. No one seemed to know much. Finally, one official said, “Why don’t you just go?” Indeed. The political situation down there had eased; be- cause of the war, Iran and Iraq had established diplomatic relations so that the Iraqi soldiers could be ready on the western frontier in case Egypt needed help. We took as our guide and translator a contact, Hawa, an Iranian professor of En- glish in Tehran. The three of us boarded an evening plane to Abadan, Khuzistan. In the air, I briefed Hawa on Mandaeism, of which she knew nothing. In Abadan, an oil center, a couple of tall Texans in large hats were among the few guests in the hotel’s lavish dining room, where a huge fish, carved out of yellow butter, swung its tail above a frozen, green waterfall. We ate excellent food and chatted with the cook, who told us he had been a chef in Copenhagen and would soon be headed for Tokyo. viii Preface The next day I watched a man struggle with his goat in the place where taxi rides could be negotiated. Hawa fixed us up with a driver who said he would take us to the church of the Subbi, the Mandaeans. I became suspicious, for the Mandaeans do not have “churches.” It was a sad sight, a small, white painted Roman Catholic chapel, but boarded-up and abandoned. Try again. At first, I did not think that the silversmith, Shaker Feyzi, was a Mandaean, for he had no beard. His little shop was not much more than a cavity in a wall. A group of black-clad women carried handfuls of heavy silver ankle bangles to Mr. Feyzi. They haggled, he bought, and later I purchased a bracelet from him. He was about fifty and very friendly, and we conversed and met his family. Mr. Feyzi stressed that he was an Iranian, and the requisite picture of the Shah and his family, Shah Reza Mohammad, the last of the Pahlavis, hung on the wall. “He is my Shah,” said Mr. Feyzi, inviting no further inquiries on that point. We had already learned that any business that did not sport such a picture would be closed. We had also learned to approach anything resem- bling a political question with extreme care. The Savak, the Shah’s secret police, could be anywhere. “Come back in four months, at Panja,” said Mr. Feyzi, “then we go in the river.” He was referring to the intercalary feast at New Year’s, when many Mandaeans are baptized. Now, only two families were left in Abadan, he told us, but there were many more earlier. Where had he learned English? From English-speaking soldiers during the Second World War, and later from Americans in the oil trade, who came to buy silver from him. In neighboring Khorramshahr, the old Muhammerah, we met another, older smith, a goldsmith who gave his name as Aran. Other goldsmiths advised us to go to Ahwaz, the capital of the province. Soon we moved swiftly through the flat desert, leaving be- hind the junklike sailboats that seemed to float in the shimmering air above the water- way, the Shatt al-Arab. Patches of blooming roses and rows of tall date palms flew by, while the human-sized dust devils, the miniature dust storms, whirled like dancers in the distance. A mythological landscape. In a large, prosperous-looking goldsmith shop in Ahwaz, we were first greeted with reasonable suspicion because we used the “inside” term, Mandaean, not Subbi. This showed that we knew something; the question was what? and why? I explained, via Hawa, and they soon relaxed and showed us a Mandaean calendar, and we admired the jewelry. We should visit their priest, they suggested. Could we do that? Sure, why not? We entered the enclosed courtyard of the house of Sheikh Abdullah Khaffagi, the head of Mandaeans of Iran. I spotted cows tethered off to one side. A strikingly beau- tiful woman, veil-less, with high cheekbones, blue eyes, and dark blonde hair, came across the courtyard and smiled at us. Enchanted by her, Hawa paid her a compliment, laughed and clapped her hands. We were led up the stairs by a young man, one of the priest’s grandsons, as I recall. He warned us not to touch the old man, who must re- main pure. Glasses of Coca-Cola were brought, and we sat down to wait in the upstairs room. Sheikh Abdullah appeared in the doorway, with a slight smile and twinkling keen blue eyes. He was about ninety-five, bent over approximately the same number of degrees, white bearded, clad entirely in white, with white cloth slippers (no animal hide must touch him). Living separately from his family, he cooked his own food. Now we smiled and bowed, but we did not stretch out our hands to him. Preface ix The sheikh sat down on a cushion on the floor, his covered knees almost up to his ears.