Conversion and Other Viiith Century Community Issues

CONVERSION AND OTHER VIIITH CENTURY COMMUNITY ISSUES

CONVERSION AND OTHER VIIITH CENTURY COMMUNITY ISSUES IN MANDAEISM

For Stanley Insler

Understandably enough, questions on the Mandaean religion tend to begin with the topics of the religion’s origins and earliest history. Much less attention is given to Mandaeism in the early Islamic period. But parts of Mandaean literature do offer evidence in this regard. This study brings out a few segments of the neglected historical information. But first, it may be useful to say some words on the problematic term “Peo- ple of the Book,” a category to which the Mandaeans belong. G. Vajda’s article on “ahl al-kitab” (“The People of the Book”) makes a reference to the Koranic “baptismal imprint” in the Koran’s surah 2 (138)1. The text says, “We take on Allah’s own dye. And who has a better dye than Allah’s?” In this particular section, surah 2 is dealing extensively with polemics against other religions. In this regard, scholars have long debated the term “Sabians” (“dyers,” “dippers,” “baptists,” “converters”), and no consensus seem to be forthcoming, despite several recent works dealing with the so-called “Sabians”2. The term “Sabians” may have been used for Jews, Christians, Manichaeans, Elchasaites, Zoroastrians, and/or the Harranian Sabians/ Sabeans/ Sabaeans. If the term has anything to do with baptists, Mandaeans would seem a reasonable choice. F.C. de Blois3 doubts that Muhammad and his companions would have known about the baptists, but he also states that early Koranic commentators identified the Sabians of Kufa and Basra as Mandaeans. To complicate the picture, the Elchasaites seem to have re- sided in those areas in the early Islamic era, too4. My own research in Mandaean colophons shows that around the 8th century we find a surprisingly vital Mandaeism, with well-known lumi-

1 G. VAJDA, art. ahl-al-kitab, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, H.A.R. GIBB et al (ed.), vol. I, Leiden – London, 1960, p. 264-267, p. 266. 2 S. GÜNDUZ, The Knowledge of Life: The Origins and Early History of the Man- daeans and their Relations to the Sabians of the Qur¨an and to the Harranians (Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement, 3), Oxford, 1994, and T. GREEN, The City of the Moon God. Religious Traditions of Harran, Leiden, 1992. 3 F.C. DE BLOIS, art. ∑abi¨, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. VIII, Fasc. 141-142, C. E. BOSWORTH et al. (ed.), Leiden, 1980, p. 672-675, p. 672. See also F.C. DE BLOIS, The ‘Sabians’ (∑abi¨un) in Pre-Islamic Arabia, in Acta Orientalia, 56 (1995), p. 39-61 (= DE BLOIS, The Sabians). 4 For a thorough discussion, see DE BLOIS, The Sabians.

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naries among the local community leaders in the south of Iraq. But I shall wait with the colophonic evidence, and first deal with materials from the Ginza,5 the main “sacred book” of the Mandaeans. Specifics in the often overlooked historical information in Right Ginza (= GR) 1 and 2 turn out to offer a portrait of how Mandaeans dealt with issues pertain- ing to community membership and boundaries. Using a few sources from the Dead Sea Scrolls, I compare specific community issues in the Qumran group with the Mandaean material in GR. In a third section, I use information from selected Mandaean colophons – all colophons con- tain firm historical source materials – as evidence for a thriving Mandaeism in the south of Iraq in the Umayyad period.

Conversion, Intermarriage and Apostasy

That conversion to Mandaeism is prohibited has been taken for granted among present-day Mandaeans and in scholarship on Mandaean traditions. In fact, many discussions among Mandaeans nowadays re- volve around this issue. In terms of the steadily increasing exilic popula- tion, and the resulting intermarriages, conversion constitutes a difficult, urgent topic, especially because the Mandaeans fear their own extinc- tion. The orthodox view states that one must be born into the religion in order to be a Mandaean. Still, a puzzling passage in GR states something different. I was made aware of this fact, again, by one of the leaders of the Mandaean Society of America, Dr. Suhaib Nashi. In his living room in Morristown, New Jersey, in June 2004, we went straight to our available sources. Subsequently, I have also controlled the text against the Mandaic-font Ginza published in Australia6. The larger context of the investigated passage, GR 1, 1, is one of moral instructions: how to deal properly with people, in business and in society. The topic of conversion is treated in the following words (my translation), “Keep yourself far away from anyone who worships the evil ones, idols and images. Do not be his friend. But if you have a longing for him and love him, let him hear the scriptures and speeches and adorations that your Lord has given you. If he listens, becomes a believer and is convinced of the elevated King of Light – the God who was created

5 M. LIDZBARSKI, Ginza. Der Schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandäer, Göttingen, 1925. The book is separated into Right Ginza and Left Ginza (= LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, GR and GL [GR and GL in the text]). 6 M.F. MUBARAKI – H.M. SAEED – B. MUBARAKI, Ginza Rba, Sydney – New South Wales, 1996.

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from himself – then love him, approach him and prove to him the ben- efits of everything that you have. If he does not listen, does not become a witness, and not a believer, he will be held accountable for his own sins”7. After Dr. Nashi and I had read this, he said, “So, yes, here it says that conversion is possible. But our present-day priests tend to deny its rel- evance for the modern time, saying that such was the case in the old days, not now.” Still, the fact remains: the stance of the Mandaean holy text on this issue cannot be doubted. A reader immediately notes that the Ginza’s statement on conversion is not set in an aggressive proselytizing context. The text advises a careful approach, based on sincere friendship and trust. Moreover, the close personal interest is underscored, for the potential convert listens to the Mandaean scriptures, preachings, and praising (ktabia umimria utusbihta). Importantly: the texts are read to him. But by whom? A priest? Were laypeople literate in the early Is- lamic period? We do not know. Furthermore, it is worth stressing that the Ginza passage pronounces no direct judgment on a listener who refuses to accept what he hears. The person is simply dismissed, left alone in order to be held accountable for his sins in his own religious fold. Together with GR 2.1, GR 1 has been characterized as a “moral codex.” The list-format demonstrates a certain associative mindset. Lidzbarski considers that one source underlies the versions of the texts found in GR 1 and GR 2,1. This source dates to several centuries before Islam, says Lidzbarski, and the text as we have it was not authored in Islamic times8, despite the reference to “Ahmat, son of the sorcerer Bizbat” (i.e. Muhammad) in section 203. There are no references to Arabic influence in the GR 1 text itself, though GR 1 and GR 2.1 were edited in their final forms in the VIIIth century. Lidzbarski’s calculation finds support in the colophon belonging to this part of the Ginza, for the earliest copyist of the text, Ram ∑ilai, lived in the early Islamic era, in the VIIIth century. This is a time of intense Mandaean text copying and scribal activity, as we shall see9. In a subsequent context, that of anti-Christian polemics, in GR 110, the Mandaean messenger Anus-¨utra arrives in Jerusalem as the real savior, Jesus being an impostor. The text warns against loyalty to Jesus, who

7 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, GR, 1,1, p. 17, section 102. 8 Ibid., GR, p. 4. 9 See especially chapters 2 and 3 in J.J. BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls: Recon- structing Mandaean History, Piscataway (New Jersey), 2005 (= BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls). 10 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, GR 1, p. 29-30, sections 200-201.

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falsely claims to be another Mandaean Light-world personage, viz. Hibil Ziwa. But Hibil Ziwa does not appear in that world-era (Mandaeism counts four such eras), according to GR, so Jesus is untrustworthy. The important piece of information here is that the miracle-performing Anus- ¨utra converts Jews to the name of the King of Light. However mytho- logical, this passage shows Mandaeism as a convert-seeking religion. But this is hardly borne out elsewhere in Mandaean texts, and especially not with respect to Jewish converts11. If there is any historical kernel in the Anus-¨utra story in GR 1, one finds no concern for preserving an already consolidated ethnic or national Mandaean identity. Regarding intermarriage, the practice is condemned in GR 1, in a complaint against those who take foreign women as wives12. We hear nothing of these foreign women’s religious identities. Present-day Mandaeans tend to assume that marriage to those of other religions is a relatively new practice, but this is not borne out by my colophon research. It happens, in postscripts, that a copyist will make a sad statement about intermarriages. But, to my knowledge, we have no statement in Mandaean texts (i. e. external to colophon postscripts) as early as GR on this matter. We know very little of what direct connections Mandaeans had to other Gnostic groups in Mesopotamia or southwest Iran during the for- mation of their mythologies and rituals. But what we do know remains unduly neglected. An exception is the scholarship by John C. Reeves, who draws attention to the lack of studies on the Mandaeans’ connections to other Syro-Mesopotamian Gnostic communities13. Older scholarship has dealt with the Manichaean borrowings of certain parts of Mandaean literature14, and there are connections to the Mesopotamian Audians15. All of this needs further investigations, especially as regards the Audians’ use of the Apocryphon of John and the Audians’ Sethian associations. Ephraim the Syrian attests to the Audians as extant before

11 See BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls, chapter 15, and also J.J. BUCKLEY, Turning the Tables on Jesus: The Mandaean View, in R.A. HORSLEY (ed.), A People’s History of Christianity (vol. 1: Christian Origins), Philadelphia, 2005, p. 94-109 (= BUCKLEY, Turn- ing the Tables on Jesus). 12 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, GR 1, p. 20, section 127. 13 See his perceptive and thorough study, J.C. REEVES, Heralds of That Good Realm: Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis and Jewish Traditions (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Stud- ies, 41), Leiden, 1996. Reeves focuses particularly on the apocalypses in the Cologne Mani Codex. 14 T. SÄVE-SÖDERBERGH, Studies in the Coptic-Manichaean Psalm-Book, Uppsala, 1949. 15 H.-C. PUECH, art. Audianer, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 1, Stutt- gart, 1950, col. 910-915.

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373. In my most recent book, I have pointed out (along with a new theory of Mandaean origins and a novel west-to-east emigration route) that the early Mandaeans consolidated themselves on a specific part on the Silk Road network in western Iran16. This means that religious influ- ences came to the early Mandaean settlements from all directions, and the Mandaeans were, I suggest, masters of creating what we can call the first Gnostic religion. What they had already carried with them from the West to Iran of their own religious ideas, remains disputed, of course.

Qumran

Potential connections between the Qumran sect and the Mandaeans have been discarded in recent years, perhaps too rashly. While I have no intention of advocating a direct, historical connection, I do wish to raise two specific community ethics issues: how to deal with disobedience and apostasy. According GR 2, 117, a disobedient person is given three chances to re-conform to the religion. But if he refuses, even after these opportunities to mend his ways, he faces expulsion. The sinner is brought to the gate of the temple (baba d-maskna) in order to “let him hear the prayers and books [or: “commandments”] and show him the scriptures and sermons” (asmia drasia usidria uhauiuia ktabia umimria). Elements in this expression are close to those in GR 1’s section 102, regarding conversion. If the obstreperous one repents and mends his ways, he rejoins the community, and the text states that he shall not be punished. But a person who persists in his errors, shall be uprooted, cut off, and handed over to external authorities to be killed. We must assume that Muslim legal forces enter the picture. But then, evidently in order to keep the number of congregants stable, another person, a “good vine,” is brought in to replace the apostate. One might well ask: were there rules for the religious identity of such a sub- stitute? The text gives no answer, but I assume that the new person might come from any religious community, as long as he (or she) is sin- cerely interested in becoming a Mandaean. The poetic term used for the expelled person is gupna (vine). Here, it is a synonym for a “soul” or a community member. Gupna as a multi- vocal Mandaean symbol has recently investigated in the Norwegian doc- toral dissertation by J.O. Ryen18. Lidzbarski did not understand the way

16 See BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls, chapter 15. 17 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, GR 2, 1, p. 41-42, section 97. 18 J.O. RYEN, The Tree in the Lightworld: A Study in the Mandaean Vine Motif (Acta Humaniora, 266, Faculty of the Humanities, University of Oslo), Oslo, 2006.

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the gupna metaphor was used in GR 2, 119, and Ryen is a bit tentative in his interpretation of the passage. But the meaning of the vine symbol seems quite clear, and a very apt one for viticulture: a doubter and an apostate resemble vines bending according to their own will. A true believer, however, lets himself be straightened, made upright (i.e. literally: “made orthodox”) by the community and its leaders. A comparison with the Dead Sea Scrolls, with respect to 4QS 169, Commentary on Nahum, yields an interesting result, for there, too, an apostate shall be handed over to outsiders20. These are the kittim (Roman authorities), executors of the transgressing person. Geza Vermes considers it unlikely that Jewish or Roman authorities would have let the Qumranites possess execution rights over their own members21. The Da- mascus Document states that the sole, clear transgression meriting death is the utterance of the Lord’s name22. The sinner is handed over to external authorities for capital punishment. 1QS testifies to public repentance, but unlike the Mandaean GR evidence, the repentance concerns sins committed before the person enters the covenant, and there is no mention of where such testimony takes place23. No rules are stipulated in this text for dealing with apostasy within the community, though there are a great number of regulations for penalties regarding other types of sins. According to the Damascus Document, apostasy is due to dominion of the spirits of Belial, and thus such loyalty merits the death penalty. No specifications occur, and a reader finds none of the leniency offered in GR 2, 1, which offers several opportunities to recant. Again, I make no suggestions about a direct influence to or from the Dead Sea community, but it seems advisable to widen the comparative field regarding the Qumranites’ community rules for apostasy to areas outside of Judaism.

Protecting and Ruling the Community

B. Ye¨or’s book on the protected religious minorities, the dhimmi, mentions the covenant of Umar as including a body of rules concerning the dhimmis24. The rules date either to Umar I (634-644) or to Umar II

19 See LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, p. 41, note 6. 20 G. VERMES, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, New York – Harmonds- worth, 1997, p. 473. 21 Ibid., p. 38. 22 Ibid., p. 141. 23 Ibid., p. 80. 24 B. YE¨OR, The Dhimmi. Jews and Christians under Islam. Rutherford – Madison – Teaneck (New Jersey), 1985 (French original, 1980) (= YE¨OR, The Dhimmi).

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(717-720). The more liberal policies, however, occurred during the Umayyads (661-750), followed by the repressive laws of the Abbasids. Usually, the treatment of the religious minorities fluctuated, but the Muslims did recognize the head of each community, and the poll tax imposed on the subjected religious minorities was upheld25. Sometimes bribes would secure a temporary protection when a minority’s status was in doubt. Many centuries after the period I am concerned with, we find the following statement from Ibn al-Fuwati (d. 1323 A. C. E) regarding the Sabians: As for the Sabians, who are outright idol-worshippers, who live in the province of al-Wasit [Iraq], they are not dhimmis, although they were so in the past. When the Caliph al-Qahir Billah inquired of Abu Sa¨ad al- Istakhari the Shafi¨i concerning their status, he declared their blood licit26 and refused their poll tax. When they had wind of this, they bribed him with 50.000 dinars and he left them alone. Consequently, today they do not even pay the poll tax and nought is demanded of them even though they be under Muslim domination. May the will of the sultan be done!27

™ib in Wasit is a Mandaean scribal center long before the time of Ibn Fuwati, and the information that the Sabian used to be dhimmis in the past begs the question: how far into the past? We cannot know, but I keep Ibn Fuwati’s information in mind as I now view GR 1’s statement on the openness to conversion in the particular context of information found in Mandaean colophons. In the VIIth and VIIIth centuries there is evidence for interaction between Mandaeans and other religions. Around 700, we find a statement by a copyist named Nukraya, son of Sitil. This is in the first – of a total of eight – Canonical Prayerbook28 colophons. The first one appears right after the Mandaean liturgies, prayers # 1-7429. These prayers include those for the baptism, the death mass, and the so- called “letter” (¨niania) prayers. The copyist Nukraya says that he consulted no fewer than seven manuscripts of the liturgies CP # 1-74 when he created his own copy of the liturgical collection30. Among the seven manuscripts, he states, one belonged “in a library in a house of a ‘People of the Book,’” i.e. probably in a Jewish or Christian library. Another copy came from a Byzantine (i.e. Christian) town31.

25 Ibid., p. 49 26 Meaning: they could be legally killed. 27 YE¨OR, The Dhimmi, p. 192. 28 E.S. DROWER, The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans, Leiden, 1959 (= DROWER, CP [CP in the text]). The original manuscript is # 53 in the Drower Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 29 Ibid., p. 69-72 (facsimile p. 92-99). 30 Ibid., facsimile. p. 98. 31 For more details, see chapter 9 in BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls.

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This raises a number of questions. Why would Mandaean liturgies be present in non-Mandaean libraries during this period? We recall that, according to GR 2, 1, in the case of apostasy, there is a community quota to be filled. This certainly proves a certain openness, that persons of other religions would have had access to Mandaean teachings. Man- daean religious knowledge could hardly have been so alien that a potential convert would encounter a totally new form of religiosity when in- quiring about the religion. To have Mandaean texts read and explained, as we saw in GR 1, 2, implies curiosity and therefore a modicum of prior knowledge. To return to Nukraya, the copyist of the liturgies, we see that he was granted access to the specified, non-Mandaean library. Still, the reference to a liturgy copy from a Byzantine town remains enigmatic. Were such copies in the Mandaean language, and could outsiders, such as Christians, read it? If not, we may entertain the possibility that in a mi- lieu of inter-religious commerce, some Mandaean texts may have been available in translations. The inter-religious exchanges and trade in “magical bowls” among Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, and others are relevant in this context. I imagine Nukraya settling down to his correlating task, with copies of all seven liturgies in front of him. As for the term “People of the Book,” Nukraya’s information does not specify whether the Mandaeans themselves are included in this category in Nukraya’s time. But we must assume that Jews and Christians are (compare the Koran references in surahs 2:62, 5:69, and 22:17). If the Mandaeans are identified with the Koranic “Sabeans” at this time, perhaps the three religions refer to one another as “People of the Book.” And it is possible that the Mandaean baptism and death-mass prayers, along with the ¨ngirta prayers were “generically Gnostic” enough to be included in libraries belonging to non-Mandaean literate households. This would then show a surprisingly high level of inter-religious tolerance and interaction. The situation brings up, again, Reeves’ concept of Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis as in- volving more groups than we usually envision. We do not know Nukraya’s location, but it may be in southern Iraq, in or near the Mandaean scribal center ™ib, in Wasit. It is from this town that we have the most intriguing information about some of the reigning Mandaean priestly scribal dynasties in the time of early Islam. Several Mandaean ethnarchs (“heads of the people”) safeguard the religious community through the early Islamic period. One ethnarch, Ramuia, son of ¨Qaimat, witnessed the arrival of Islam in 638. Giving a priceless piece of historical information, he says that 368 years separate him from

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Zazai of Gawazta, one of the earliest copyists and luminaries in Man- daeism, active in the 270s. Ramuia’s city is ™ib, in Wasit – and ™ib was also the city of Sganda, one of Ramuia’s scribal predecessors. Even in the XIVth century, ™ib was known as the residence of the ‘Sabeans,” as we have seen in Ibn Fuwati’s statement. Ramuia made his copy of the liturgical section CP # 1-74 “when Anus, son of Danqa, departed with the heads of the people (ethnarchs) in the years when the Arabs ad- vanced”32. The Mandaean delegation set out to meet with Muslim authorities in order to secure protection from forced conversion to Islam. One of the most famous Mandaean ethnarchs is the woman Haiuna, daughter of Yahia. She often copied from Ramuia’s texts. She and her son Bainai, also an ethnarch, can be dated to ca. 700. Both mother and son were busy copyists of texts. The last colophon in The Thousand and Twelve Questions states that the mother and son “were with the children of the World, the House that is unclean, (but) yearned for the Holy”33. I hazard the guess that this is a reference to a Muslim environment. Did Mandaeans and Muslims live relatively peacefully, side by side, in that time and place? So it seems. It fits the time of the tolerant Umayyads, enabling the Mandaeans to thrive in southern Iraq, in communities headed by important priestly luminaries. Prior to Haiuna, another priest dynasty, that of ¨Qaiam, son of Zindana, led the Mandaean community in the era before Islam. ¨Qaiam’s maternal grandfather was the grandson (or initiate) of Ramuia, and the latter, as we have seen, is dated to 638. Among the members of this fam- ily dynasty, with named leaders in at least four overlapping generations, only Ramuia himself is an ethnarch. Because priest initiations cannot al- ways be assigned to firm time-slots, we often find that three generations of priests are active in the same time period. A priest may also initiate someone older than himself into priesthood. On the basis of the information about ¨Qaiam and his relatives, I calculate that Ramuia was an old man when Islam arose. Around the year 700 we find the two Mandaean female “heads of the people,” i.e. the highest Mandaean priestly office: Hawa, daughter of Daiia, and Anhar Kumraita, daughter of Simat34. About the same time, we have another woman priest, Marspindu Abuzdaqad, and, perhaps a bit later, the priest Hawa, daughter of Nukraya. The name of Hawa’s fa-

32 DROWER, CP, p. 71. 33 E.S. DROWER, The Thousand and Twelve Questions. A Mandaean Text (Alf Trisar Suialia), Berlin, 1960, p. 290. 34 For women priests, and for the importance of prayer CP # 170, see chapters 8 and 10, respectively, in BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls.

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ther/initiator is rare enough to link her to the already mentioned Nukraya, who consulted the seven liturgy manuscripts. All of these persons, including Haiuna, fall within the Umayyad period, and the promi- nence of women in the priesthood at this time is striking, indeed. Were the Umayyads not worried about such female leadership in a protected religion, or were the Muslim authorities simply unaware of the situation? At this point, I know of no evidence to aid in an answer to these questions. Internal Mandaean rifts had been overcome before the Umayyads’ reign, for heresies threatened the religion in and around the VIth century. But by the time of the prominent Mandaean priest dynasties mentioned here, the dangerous period had passed. The renegade leader Qiqel, whom E.S. Drower sees as a legendary figure in Mandaeism, was, according to the text Haran Gawaita35, historical, and I connect him to the Quqite heresy, a Jewish-Christian branch first discernible in the IInd century. Haran Gawaita states that the Mandaean leader Qiqel was seduced by Ruha and, under her influence, made changes in the Mandaean texts. For Mandaeism, this entailed a return to Jewish customs, and to Adonai. Later, Qiqel realized that he had been led astray, and burned the texts (though some seem to have survived). Qiqel’s heresy in Mandaeism can be dated to 55436. The Armenian bishop Marutha of Maipherkat lists the Quqite group in his heresy-catalogue in 410. Other Mandaean (and quasi-Mandaean) heresies include the Kantaeans and the Dositeans, none of which lasted past the VIth century. At Haiuna’s time, then, these groups have been suppressed or were extinct, and the Mandaean “orthodoxy” reestablished. I have often been puzzled by the relative paucity of Mandaean scribes between Ramuia and Zazai (i. e. between 638 and the 270s), because copyist lineages often show only one intervening scribe, namely Sganda, son of Yasmin. However, both the first colophon in CP and the lone Left Ginza (GL) colophon have additional, named scribes during this time37. I now suspect that these scribes preserve the more orthodox strain, omitting any potentially “suspect” copyists, for the time period from the 200s to 638 includes the centuries of the Mandaean heretical turmoil. It is worth not- ing that CP 1-74 and GL comprise the most ancient Mandaean literature,

35 E.S. DROWER, Haran Gawaita and The Baptism of Hibil Ziwa (Studi e Testi, 176), Città del Vaticano, 1953, p. 12-14. See also chapter 15 in BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls. 36 E. LUPIERI, The Mandaeans. The Last Gnostics, Grand Rapids (Michigan), 2001, translated by Charles Hindley (Italian original: I Mandei. Gli ultimi gnostici, Brescia, 1993), p. 158, note 46. Consult also BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls, chapter 15. 37 See BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls, chapter 13.

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indeed, the earliest “core” of the religion. Furthermore, it is precisely in the colophons to these texts that we find additional copyists between 638 and ca. 200, i.e. between Ramuia and Slama. The latter is a woman, and the earliest documented Mandaean copyist. In the last chapters of The Great Stem of Souls, I spell out the details in my historical reconstruction of Mandaeism, a wide-ranging study based on colophon research. The present essay relies to a large extent on materials in the book, but my particular angle is new. I see the information on Mandaean co-existence (however tenuously) with other religions in the earliest Islamic period as an indication of a recently secured religious orthodox identity. This may indeed have strengthened the Man- daeans’ status as a “People of the Book” during the Umayyad period. We still need to research the fuller significance of several topics: 1) Mandaean liturgies being present in the libraries of persons belonging to other religions; 2) conversions to Mandaeism around the VIIIth century; 3) whether the official Islamic status of the Mandaeans as a “People of the Book” remained fluid for several centuries. Among additional sub- jects, the long neglected theories of Mandaeism’s relationship to Jewish Christian groups in the East need renewed attention38. Furthermore, these glimpses of Mandaean testimonies from the early Islamic era invite further research into Mandaean polemics. Dan Shapira has begun this inquiry39. Is polemics to be placed in a context of relative religious safety vis-à-vis other religions? If so, one may link the various strains of pre-Islamic Mandaean polemics (anti-Jewish, -Christian, -Zo- roastrian, -Manichaean) to the apparent tolerance in Umayyad times. The community ethics information in the GR 1 and 2, 1 segments, and the powerful Mandaean priest families in the immediate centuries of Is- lam’s emergence are relevant in the context of religious openness and tolerance. Official protection as a “People of the Book” would allow an expansive view and a feeling of safety, both necessary for conversions to occur. As a result, bold stances – even a level of aggressiveness – and polemics seem to go together.

Bowdoin College Jorunn J. BUCKLEY Department of Religion 7300 College Station Brunswick, ME 0411-8473, USA [email protected]

38 I refer, again, to BUCKLEY, Turning the Tables on Jesus. 39 D. SHAPIRA, Manichaeans (Marmanaiia), Zoroastrians (Iazuqaiia), Jews, Christians and Other Heretics: A Study in the Redaction of Mandaic Texts, in Le Muséon, 117 (2004), p. 243-280. See also J.J. BUCKLEY, Polemics and Exorcism in Mandaean Baptism, in History of Religions, 47 (2007), p. 156-170.

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Abstract — The article investigates the topics of conversion, recruitment, intermarriage and apostasy in Mandaeism in the early Islamic period. Source materials are found in the Ginza and in the historical evidence from scribes’ postscripts and colophons added to transcribed Mandaean texts. Comparative issues from the Dead Sea Scrolls are adduced. This study forms part of an ongoing project in widening the scope of interpretations in and reconstructions of Mandaean history. In early Islamic times, Mandaeism, far from being isolated from other religions and intellectual streams, had considerable interaction with and openness toward their neighbors.

1650-08_Mus08/3-4_03_Buckley 296 01-08-2009, 15:46