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Who were the Sabians?

Sundance

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Hey, everyone! Peace and blessings be upon you all!

Before I begin our discussion on the above topic, let me preface by saying that as a Bahá’í, I love Ahmadis and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. I consider them my cousins, religiously speaking. I pray such feelings are mutual. :)

l was curiously searching through the Ask Islam section of the website of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (may the Peace and Blessings of God be upon all Ahmadis), where I stumbled on a topic that had always struck my curiosity: who are the Sabians? This made me think back to a verse I had read in The Holy Qur’an, Surah 2, verse 62:

“Indeed, those who believed and those who were Jews or Christians or Sabeans - those [among them] who believed in Allah and the Last Day and did righteousness - will have their reward with their Lord, and no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve.”

In addition to this, Shoghi Effendi (The Guardian) mentioned nine religions that were still in existence in his time. One of which was that of the Sabians. He also states that Abraham was a follower of this Faith. Though, one look in the Bible tells us that Abraham was from a polytheistic background.

So, in light of all this, I would like to pose a few questions for both us Bahá’ís as well as Ahmadiyya Muslims:

Who are the Sabians in these traditions?

Is this a broad label covering indigenous religions? Polytheistic religions? Religions not already specified?

Thank you, in advance, each and all for your thoughtful responses!
 
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Longish article here

(a.), the name of two rather mysterious groups in early Islamic times:

1. Ṣābiʾat al-baṭāʾiḥ .

The Mesopotamian dialectal pronunciation of ṣābiʿa , where the ʿayn has been transformed into y or ī , also occurs in Mandaean (cf. Lidzbarski,Ginzā ; Nöldeke, Mandäische Grammatik ; R. Macuch, Handbook , 94, 1. 16: ṣabuia ). This substantive, which became current in Mecca during the period of Ḳurʾānic preaching, irrespective of its etymology, derives from the Semitic root ṣ-b-ʿ (Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac; Ethiopicṣabk̲h̲a ), corresponding to ṣ-b-g̲h̲ in Arabic. The verb signifies, in the first form, “to dye, to bathe, to immerse”, whence, in the second form, “to baptise (by immersion)”. Consequently, the noun denotes “Baptists”, named three times in the Ḳurʾān (II, 62; V, 69; XXII, 17), in the company of the Believers, the Jews and the Christians, with whom they share the title of “people of the Book” ( ahl al-kitāb ). In the last of these verses (XXII, 17), the Ṣābiʾūn occupy the third place after the Believers and the Jews, and are followed by the Christians, the Zoroastrians and the polytheists; which would suggest a closer relationship between them and the Jews. A reference to baptism is to be found in sūra II, 138, where the context is that of the “imprint” ( ṣibg̲h̲a ) of God on the Muslim, which is compared to Christian baptism (J. Penrice, A Dictionary ofthe Koran , repr. London 1970, 81; cf. al-Kulīnī, Kāfī , lith. Tehran 1307/1928, 152, where ṭīna “matter”, is opposed to ṣibgha which “is Islam” ( hiya l-islām ); other references apud Kraus, Jābir , ii, 171, n. 1).

Given the indisputable monotheism of the Ṣābīʾūn of the Ḳurʾān, this can only refer to a baptising religious community. There is a temptation to think immediately of the Mandaeans, who are dispersed, at the present day, on the banks of the Euphrates and of the Tigris in the south of ʿIrāḳ, and along the river Kārūn in Ḵh̲ūzistān. They are called by their Arab neighbours ṣubba or ṣubbī “baptisers”; they form two groups: themandāyē (gnostics) and the nāṣōrāyē (observants). This is the thesis defended by D. Chwolsohn in Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus , dating from 1856. Although it has been severely criticised over certain of its conclusions, this work remains a basis for studies of the Sabians (cf. J. Hjärpe,Analyse critique des traditions arabes sur les Sabéens Ḥarraniens , Uppsala 1972, 1 ff.).

On the basis of a text of Ibn al-Nadīm ( Fihrist , 340), where there is reference to a baptising sect called al-mug̲h̲tasila , also known as ṣābat al-baṭāʾih , “the Sabaeans of the marshes”, whose leader was called ’ l.h.s.y.h (var. ’ l.h.s.h and ’ l.h.s.d̲j̲), Chwolsohn identified the latter with Elchasai (i, 112 ff.), thus identifying Mandaeans and Elchasaites. He found evidence for this in information recorded by Hippolytus in Refutatioomnium haeresium, ix, 13 (ed. Wendland, 251), where it is said that Elchasai, founder of the sect, is supposed to have given a revealed book to a man named Sobai. Chwolsohn made of the last-named “a later personification of the name of a sect, this being that of the Sabaeans—the Mandaeans being called al-ṣubba” (Hjärpe, op. cit., 11). On the basis of the etymological sense of ṣābiʾa , he nabaṭ. 2.].

In a very detailed study, Michel Tardieu sees the Ḥarrānians as Platonists (cf. Ṣābiens coraniques etṢābiens . . . de Ḥarran ”, in JA, cclxxiv [1986], 1-44), “in the academic sense of the term. Plato was the object of their study and the centre of the research activity of their school” (39). He refuses to describe them as “Gnostics” since, according to him, “they were not philosophers by profession. But they utilised the philosophers, and Plato in particular” (ibid.). He bases his argument on a statement by al-Masʿūdī ( Murūd̲j̲ ., ed. Pellat, ii, Paris 1965, 536-7, § 1395; cf. also his K. al-Tanbīhwa ’l-is̲h̲rāf , 162, tr. 3-5), declaring that he “saw at Ḥarrān, on the knocker of the door of the meeting-place of the Ṣābians, an inscription in Syriac characters, drawn from Plato”, which read as “He who knows his nature becomes a god” and “Man is a celestial plant. In fact, man resembles an upturned tree, the root being turned towards the sky and branches [sunk] in the ground” (Tardieu, 13 ff.). He sees, in the first “an echo of Alcibiades , 133.C” and, in the second, “a reminiscence” of Timaeus , 90 A.7-B.2 (cf. ref. 3, n. 8 and 14). It may be noted that echoes of these quotations are to be found in the literature of the “Sayings of the Sages” ( Placita philosophorum) and that the quotation from the Timaeus occurs twice in the Nabataean agriculture (i, 360). There is no evidence to indicate that the Nabataeans of the region of Sūrā were Platonists; it has been observed that various currents of a gnostic tendency had developed there.

At the end of this extremely erudite survey, the author identifies the Ṣābīʾa of the Ḳurʾān with the “Archontics” of Epiphanius ( Haer ., xxix, 7, xl, 1, 5), known also by the name of “Stratiotics” (Epiphanius, ibid., xxvi, 3, 7), followers of the “celestial bands”, a Judaeo-Christian sect of gnostic character, formed in Palestine and known in Egypt (ibid., xl, 1, 8) and in Arabia (ibid., xl, 1, 5). The Ḳurʾānic term would be derived from the Hebrew ṣābā , “army” (an explanation already proposed by E. Pococke). Such an association leads the discussion back to Judaeo-Christian circles, among whom the Elchasmtes/mug̲h̲ü tasila provide, in the present writer’s opinion, the best explanation of the ḲurʾānicṢābiʾa .

Thus, whatever may be the origin of the name of the Ṣābiʾūn , the latter are shown to belong to two distinct groups: on the one hand, the disciples of Judaeo-Christian baptising sects (Ebionites, Elchasaites, mug̲h̲tasila , Stratiotics) and, on the other, Ḥarrānian astrolators, the last representatives of decadent Greco-Roman paganism. Both groups may be described as gnostic: the first, Christian and the second, pagan. Hence the ambiguity of the term denoting them, and the diversity of commentaries relating to the three Ḳurʾānic verses which name them. A degree of corruption has occurred over the centuries, both in the terminology and the concepts, and this has greatly hindered the task of the historian of ideas and of religions.
 
Another view here

Sabians


A religious community mentioned three times in the Qurʾān. The Sabians (ṣābiʾūn) should not be confused with the Sabaeans, the inhabitants of Sabaʾ, the biblical Sheba, a famous ancient nation in south Arabia (see sheba;bilqīs; pre-islamic arabia and the qurʾān;south arabia, lord (q.v.) and there shall be no fear (q.v.) upon them, nor shall they grieve” (see jews and judaism; reward and punishment; faith). q 5:69 is nearly identical with the verse just quoted, apart from the fact that the Sabians are mentioned before the Naṣārā. q 22:17 states: “As for those who have believed and those who professed Judaism and the Sabians and the Naṣārā and theMagians (q.v.; al- majūs, i.e. Zoroastrians) and those who have associated, verily God shall distinguish among them on the day of resurrection” (q.v.). The first two verses mentioned here seem to be imply that the Sabians, like the believers (Muslims), the Jews and the Naṣārā (generally understood to mean Christians; see christians and christianity , but see de Blois, Naṣrānī and ḥanīf), are at least potential candidates for salvation and enjoy the status of People of the Book (q.v.). None of the three verses, however, says anything specific about the beliefs of the Sabians or gives any other indication as to who they actually were.


The classical Muslim exegetes (see exegesis of the qurʾān: classical and medieval ) offer a large number of conflicting suggestions. Some of these are purely abstract, for example, “they are between the Magians and the Jews” (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ad q 2:62), but a few are more concrete. One account (not mentioned in al-Ṭabarī's Tafsīr but cited by some of the later commentators) identifies the Sabians with a pagan community in Ḥarrān, generally described as star People of the Book” and thus to avoid Muslim persecution (cf. de Blois, Sabians). A few authors claim that the “real Sabians,” i.e. the Sabians of the Qurʾān, are a sect living in the swamps of southern Iraq. Ibn al-Nadīm's (d. ca. 385/995) Fihrist (Eng. trans. of this passage in de Blois, Sabians, 53-60) gives a fairly detailed account of these “Sabians of the swamps,” who, he claims, were “numerous” in his own time (late fourth/tenth century), from which description their identity as a remnant of an early Christian sect, the Elchasaites, emerges. And, at a later date, the name “Sabians” was also applied to a different community in southern Iraq, the non-Christian Mandaeans.


In 1856 the Russian scholar Chwolsohn observed, correctly, that Ibn al-Nadīm's “Sabians of the swamps” were Elchasaites but, erroneously, identified the latter with the modern Mandaeans, concluding that the Mandaeans are the Sabians of the Qurʾān. It is unfortunate that western students of Islam almost unanimously accepted this unfounded conclusion for a long time. It is now clear that the Ḥarrānians, Elchasaites and Mandaeans are three different religious communities. It is most unlikely that the original Muslim community in western Arabia had any knowledge of these isolated religious groups in the Tigris-Euphrates area. From the context in which they are mentioned in the Qurʾān, it is also improbable that the qurʾānic Sabians were either polytheist Mecca (q.v.) or Medina (q.v.) and is not covered by other qurʾānic names (associators, Jews, Naṣārā, Magians; see polytheism and atheism ), the present author has suggested tentatively that the Sabians might have been Manichaeans, i.e. those whom Muslims writers on pre-Islamic Arabia called the zanādiqa among the Quraysh (q.v.). In this case, the Arabic ṣābiʾ (or ṣābī) would not be a Babylonian dialect form of the Aramaic ṣābiʿ, “baptizing,” as previously proposed (linking it either to the Elchasaites or the Mandaeans, both of whom placed great emphasis on baptism), but an Arabic participle from ṣabā, “to turn towards,” here with the sense of “to convert to a different religion,” as was proposed by some of the medieval Arabic philologists.


François de Blois

Basically, nobody can remember who they were and different scholars have offered diffing interpretations and explanations of who they were.
 
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The_Fisher_King

Trying to bring myself ever closer to Allah
Premium Member
Who are the Sabians in these traditions?

It's not clear which traditions you are referring to above, but the Sabians as a term cover the 'Gnostic' followers of Bardaisan and Mani, and the Mandaeans. The Mandaeans still existed at the time of Shoghi Effendi, and indeed they still exist today.
 

Sundance

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
It's not clear which traditions you are referring to above, but the Sabians as a term cover the 'Gnostic' followers of Bardaisan and Mani, and the Mandaeans. The Mandaeans still existed at the time of Shoghi Effendi, and indeed they still exist today.

Wonderful answer, Ya’quub! Thank you. I was talking about for Ahmadiyya Muslims, as well as Bahá’ís.
 

URAVIP2ME

Veteran Member
Hey, everyone! Peace and blessings be upon you all!
“Indeed, those who believed and those who were Jews or Christians or Sabeans - those [among them] who believed in Allah and the Last Day and did righteousness - will have their reward with their Lord, and no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve.”
Thank you, in advance, each and all for your thoughtful responses!

In the Bible, the 'Sabeans ' ( notice the difference in spelling ) attacked the property of Job 1:14-15; Job 6:19

Apparently difficult to identify as they could have been descendants from a number of different men named Sheba.
- Genesis 10:6-7
There were tall people mentioned at Isaiah 45:14; Isaiah 43:3 ( Sabeans / Seba )
So, the men of Seba could have been called Sabeans.
The descendants of Sheba (whether from Shem or Ham ) could have formed a kingdom near the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
So, it could have been the queen of Sheba, the one who visited King Solomon, was from that land - 1 Kings 10
 
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