RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESgeometrically shaped temples and kept their images in human form
in underground chambers where they performed their rituals. Mas'iidi
describes how they impressed their children by having hidden attend-
ants make the idols "speak" through acoustic tubes. 100 They worshiped
three times daily after purifying themselves by performing multiple
prostrations. They burned incense and made animal sacrifices of cattle,
sheep, goats, and birds (mostly of cocks) to each of the planetary gods
on its day of the week, and they observed a liturgical calendar of
sacrifices, fasts, and feasts throughout the year. They observed the
ancient New Year on the first of Nisan (April) with sacrifices; women
wept for Tammuz in mid-July; and they fasted for twenty-one days
in November, nine days in December, seven days in February, and
thirty days in March, ending with the New Year celebration. They
broke their fasts at night and ended them with feasts. A book of
instructions taught them incantations and how to make knots and
amulets.10l
They seem to have survived by adapting themselves to changing
conditions. They provided their cult with a more intellectualized neo-
Platonic overlay by recognizing and worshiping the First Cause as a
supreme being.^102 They also established a priestly hierarchy which
corresponded to the nine spheres,103 and seem to have conformed to
the general trend toward communal organization. It is probably sig-
nificant that the list of their headmen begins in 693 with Thabit ibn
A4iisa (693-717) during the reign of 'Abd al-Malik, just after the
end of the second fitna.^104 But they did not call themselves Sabians
until the ninth century.
MANDAEANS
The seventh century also saw the formation of the Mandaean sect
in lower central Iraq, which emerged out of a combination of native
pagan and gnostic traditions. The Mandaic dialect of eastern Aramaic
was being written down in its own alphabet in about 600 on incan-
tation bowls that have been found at Nippur, Bismaya, and Khuabir,
100 E. Drawer, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Oxford, 1937), pp. 165-66,325-
26; Mas'udi, Muruj, I, 263; II, 391-96; Sarakhsi, Sharip, p. 149; Tha'iilibi, Ghurar,
p.258.
101 Ibn an-Nadim, Fihrist, II, 747-48, 754-55, 758; Mas'udi, Muruj, II, 391-92.
102 Mas'udi, Muruj, II, 391.
103 Ibid., I, 109; idem, Tanbth, p. 162.
104 Ibn an-Nadim, Fihrist, II, 768.