RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIEStradition of "scientific" astrology and proclaiming the power of the
planets and the zodiac, found their way to the swamps of lower Iraq
possibly as early as the third century.82 The presence of Dai~anites or
their influence at Nippur is suggested by the use of Bardesa as a
feminine name on a Mandaic incantation bowl.^83 They still existed in
the seventh century when the Monophysite Severus Sebokht obtained
information from them for the treatise he wrote on the zodiac in 660.
George, the Monophysite bishop of the Arabs (d. 724), stated in a
letter that the information on the conjunction of the planets with the
signs of the zodiac, which he was sending to his correspondent, came
from the Dai~anites via Severus.^84 Dai~anites no longer lived in the
swamps of Iraq by the tenth century, but groups were scattered in
Khurasan and in China.8sMANICHAEANS
Manichaeans originated in Iraq as an ecumenical syncretism of pa-
gan, gnostic, Magian, Judaeo-Christian, and Indian traditions. In a
temple at Ctesiphon, Mani's father, Futtuq, is said to have heard a
voice commanding him to abstain from meat, wine, and marriage.
Thereupon he joined a group that practiced ablutions (Mughtasila) in
Dast-i Maysan. Mani (ca. 216-77) grew up in this sect but left it. He
is said to have been influenced by Dai~anites and eventually found
preferment at the court of Shapiir I (241-72). He taught that there
was a single religious truth and that successive messengers had brought
increasingly perfect versions of it to different places: Hermes to Egypt,
Plato to Greece, Jesus to Judaea. He regarded himself as the bearer
of the last, complete, and universal message; this may have coincided
with the universal ambitions of Shapiir I. In its attempt to overarch
multiple religious traditions and to combine them into a single uni-
versal religion, Manichaeism was the last great syncretistic religion of
the Hellenistic period. Its failure to succeed on its own terms by the
end of the third century marked a turning point in the history of
religion. The new order of Late Antiquity was divided politically and
82 Drijvers, Bardai~an, pp. 104, 107; A. von Harnack, "Der Ketzer-Katalog des Bish-
ofs Maruta von Maipherkat," Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchrist-
lichen Literature 19 (1899), 11; Ibn an-Nadim, Fihrist, I1, 806.
83 Montgomery, Incantation Texts, p. 248; Yamauchi, Incantation Texts, p. 261.
84 Drijvers, Bardai~an, pp. 17,228; F. Nau, "La cosmographie au VIle siecie chez les
Syriens," ROe, n.s., 5 (1900), 226-27.
85 Ibn an-Nadim, Fihrist, n, 806.