PAGANS AND GNOSTICSbeginning with 'Umar's instructions to Jaz' ibn Mu'awiya in Dasti-i
Maysan in 643 to kill every magician and sorceress there. As a result
three of them were killed.^62 However, the actual state of affairs is
illustrated best by the famous story of Jundab and the sorcerer at Kufa
in 647, when al-Walid ibn 'Uqba was governor. A sorcerer called
Ba!roe of Kufa entered the courtyard of the masjid with a female
camel, where he collected a crowd that followed him out of the court-
yard and watched him work wonders. jundab ibn Ka'b of the tribe
of Azd took it upon himself to kill the sorcerer. AI-Wand intended to
behead Jundab for this act but imprisoned him instead because the
tribe of Azd objected to his execution. Jundab spent the entire night
praying, and in the morning the jailer let him go. Jundab's attack on
the sorcerer thus seems to have been provoked by his own pious
indignation, although the governor regarded it as murder, which im-
plies that he considered the sorcerer to be a protected subject.^63
Pagan traditions and practices were still very much alive in Iraq in
the early Islamic period. According to IshO'yahbh III (648-58), there
were more pagans than Christians in Beth Aramaye.^64 YOQannan bar
Penkaye says that there were still people who worshiped the sun, moon,
and stars, the demon Ba'al-Shamen, Ba'alzebub, Tammuz, or a Bab-
ylonian sea monster, and sacrificed to idols. Chaldaeans worshiped
the stars; some of them said that the world was created and set in
motion by angels, although others believed that the world moved by
itself as determined by fate, the signs of zodiac, and horoscopes.^65
Two rather sensational charges of human sacrifice by "Mani-
chaeans" at the village of Shatru in Bihqubadh in the 640s are made
in a contemporary, seventh-century Syriac chronicle. People at Shatru
were arrested for shutting a man underground, sacrificing him, and
using his head for divination and spells. The possibility of such a thing
happening seems to be confirmed by a skull with a magical text in-
scribed on it which was found among the incantation bowls at nearby
Nippur. The possibility is increased by a nearly exact parallel reported
by al-KindI about the pagan ~abians at Harran who put a man who
looked like the planetary deity Mercury in a solution of oil and borax,
62 Ibn Salliim, Amwiil, p. 44; Ibn Sa'd Tabaqiit, VII(1), 94.
63 Ya'qiibi, Ta'rzkh, II, 190. For a somewhat different version, see Tabari, Ta'rzkh,
I, 2845-46. The question of whether or not a dhimmf should be allowed to practice
magic was discussed in lJadith, and Muf:\ammad was said not to have killed a dhimmz
magician who bewitched him (Bukhiiri, $alJzlJ, V, 250).
64 Fiey, Assyrie chretienne, Ill, 78.
65 De Menasce, "Texte syriaque," p. 600.