RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESand took out his head each year when Mercury was at its height, at
which time his soul spoke and answered questions. Mas'iidi adds that
the Sabians of Harran practiced their cult and kept the images of their
gods in underground chambers.66 It is worth remembering in this
context that the planet Mercury, as Nabu, was associated with Babil.
The people of Shatru were also accused of cooking the child of a
virgin, mixing its flesh with wheat-flour in a mortar, and making cakes
out of it. Again, there is a striking parallel among the Sabians of Harran
who are said to have sacrificed an infant boy when they pressed new
wine for their gods each August, boiled him, kneaded his flesh with
flour, saffron, spikenard, cloves, and oil, and made small cakes which
they baked in a new clay oven.^67 Whether "Manichaean" was simply
a term of abuse or whether there was a recognition of the gnostic
affinities that Sabians had with Manichaeans, there is no question that
the "Manichaeans" who were accused of performing human sacrifice
on the outskirts of Harran in 765 were Sabians.^68 At the very least,
reports of human sacrifice survived well into the Islamic period.
At the same time pagan customs were increasingly relegated to the
level of folklore. Bastomagh, the father of Isho'yahbh III (648-58),
o~ned several small estates in Adiabene. On the way to inspect one
of them, he is reported to have seen "sorceresses" washing clothes
near a bridge and singing the songs of devils. He heard a fragment of
the refrain, and everything around the women seemed to dance as
they sang.^69 Another source tells of a similar instance in which children
were singing "immoral" songs on summer nights at a threshing floor
belonging to the monastery of Sabhrisho' in the time of Sobhalmaran
(693-729), who drove them away and forbade them to sing similar
songs near the monastery in the future.7o
Pagans could still be found in remote, rural parts of Iraq in the
eighth century and later. In Margha, Cyprian of Beth Magoshe had
trouble with a pagan who tried to take figs from the garden of his
66 Guidi, Chronica Minora I, I, 33; 11, 28; Ibn an-Nadim, Fihrist, 11, 751, 753-54;
Mas'lidi, Muru;, 11, 392; Montgomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 256-57. It is almost
impossible to see how this Syriac chronicle could have influenced the accounts of al-
Kindi or Mas'iidi.
67 Guidi, Chronica Minora I, I, 33, 11,28; Ibn an-Nadim, Fihrist, 11, 759.
68 Assemani, BO, 11, 112.
69 Thomas of Margha, Governors, I, 48; 11, 84. Devils are also said to have tried to
make Rabban Hiirmizd an abode for their songs (Budge, Rabban H6rmizd, I, 30; 11,
45).
70 Mingana, Sources Syriaques, p. 252.