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Van Bladel, Kevin, from Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes (Leiden Studies in Islam and Society—6), Leiden-Boston: “Brill”, 2017— 164 Pp

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Van Bladel, Kevin, from Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes (Leiden Studies in Islam and Society—6), Leiden-Boston: “Brill”, 2017— 164 Pp Book Reviews / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 211-213 211 Van Bladel, Kevin, From Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes (Leiden Studies in Islam and Society—6), Leiden-Boston: “Brill”, 2017— 164 pp. The sources van Bladel examines, derive mostly from Christian, especially Syrian, authors, and have been all written in the second half of the first millennium. The earliest reference to the Mandaeans is found at around 540 A.D. in Cyrus of Edessa’s Explanation of the Feasts, and the most re- cent, for the first time introduced here, is an Islamic testimony from ca. 900 A.D., which is preserved in a passage of Bar Bahlul’s work (end of the 10th century). The other sources were already known in the Mandaean studies (e.g., Theodore bar Konay), but are newly evaluated here by the author (18-59 pp.). The year 540 A.D., when Cyrus of Edessa mentions the Mandaeans, serves van Bladel as the terminus ante quem (35p.): we have no other ear- lier, precise date for the existence of the Mandaeans. Cyrus and Theodore bar Konay both knew about the tradition, which connected the Mandae- ans with another sect called Kentaeans (the etymological link with kinta sounds plausible, cf. 38-40 pp.). Theodore says that the Mandaean com- munity was founded by a certain Ado, a wandering charismatic, while the Kentaeans derive from Battay who fashioned his own religion by adapting Manichaean, Christian and Zoroastrian elements. Van Bladel can identify this second group with a sect mentioned in the Mandaean sources: the Kewanaeans (“worshippers of Saturn”) are portrayed as similar to the Mandaeans but not as part of the community. The author believes that the two sects must be related, and that some kind of schism happened (38-40 pp.). This seems quite reasonable to me. For the main problem, the origins of the Mandaeans, van Bladel gives the following scenario: although the Mandaeans came into existence in the second half of the 5th century (89 p.), there has been a “prior group” (92 p.), which was identical with the Nasoraeans known from the Man- daic sources. This group was an elite of priests deriving from some baptist sect in Mesopotamia. The priests condemned their former Judaeo-Chris- tian literature and organised a new baptist movement among former pa- gan followers who later became the Mandaeans (94 p.). Van Bladel con- nects his hypothesis with the end of the Old Babylonian cults in the Sasa- © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 DOI: 10.1163/1573384X-20180210 212 Book Reviews / Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 211-213 nian times (102-110 pp.): the edicts Kerdir and king Peroz reflect that Sasa- nian authorities despoiled Babylonian temples and their treasures—not continuously, but frequently (e.g., in case of famine). This process de- prived the cult functionaries of their financial basis. Many of them started to organise new religious communities and adapted contemporary dualis- tic tendencies: “These religions were generated as a supply to meet a new demand among people who had been deprived of their ancestral cults” (113 p.). In the same manner, the Nasoraean priests found new followers, the Mandaeans. The Mandaeans since their emergence had lived in the marshes of southern Mesopotamia, outside of the political centres. Hidden from the Islamic authorities for a long time, they appeared first at the end of the 9th century as a separate group and identified themselves with the Qur’anic Ṣābians in order to get the status of a recognised religion (64-66 pp.). Van Bladel’s argumentation has several problems, which make me quite sceptical. There are doubts about the plausibility of the described scenario. If the Mandaeans developed as late as in the 5th century, we might find some echoes in the Mandaean literature. The fact that the Na- soraeans rejected their former scriptures cannot be regarded as proven evidence to explain the “amnesia” (that Mandaeans forgot their roots and their late development in the 5th century). When Mandaean texts po- lemicise against the Christians or Jews, they always do this relating to the actual neighbours (i.e., monks and nuns, Mesopotamian Jews, etc., see, e.g., Left Ginza 9.1) without any autobiographical intent. The idea that Na- soraeans and Mandaeans were originally two distinct groups, was also proposed by Burtea1 whom, by the way, the author does not mention Another problem lies in the connection between the origins of the Na- soraeans and the author’s view about the decline of the Old Babylonian cults. The Nasoraeans, as baptist leaders, cannot be simply paralleled with the priests of the old gods with their temples and treasures, which were expropriated by the Persians. We know little about the baptist milieu in 1 See Burtea, B., “Zur Entstehung der mandäischen Schrift. Iranischer oder aramäischer Ursprung?”, Rainer Voigt (ed.), Und das Leben ist siegreich! Mandäische und samaritanische Literatur, Wiesbaden, 2008: 47-62. .
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