86 CHAPTER FOUR
the information they had received, and attempted to resolve them by
distinguishing between several kinds of Sabians. Masudi, for example,
suggests in one of his books a sociocultural stratifi cation of the Sabians,
distinguishing between the pagan Sabian masses, on the one hand, and
the philosophically oriented elite, on the other.^10 In another treatise, how-
ever, Masudi suggests different distinctions, including a distinction be-
tween the Greco- Byzantine, Egyptian, Chinese, and Zoroastrian Sabi-
ans.^11 Another taxonomy can be found in the work of Shahrastani, who
distinguishes between the “original Sabia,” in whose description there is
an evident Hermetic element, and other Sabians, whose description mainly
emphasizes their idolatrous practices revolving around the worship of
the planets.^12 In yet another common division, a distinction is made be-
tween the Sabians living in Harran and the splinter group that settled in
Baghdad.^13
The Sabian religion is sometimes described as polytheistic, character-
ized by a large number of divinities and spirits whose worship follows
the seasons of the year and is dictated by an agrarian calendar. On other
occasions, however, it is described as an essentially mono theistic religion
in which the celestial bodies are worshipped in order to safeguard the
absolute transcendence and incorporeal nature of God. The sacrifi ces of-
fered by the Sabians are sometimes described simply as pagan rites aimed
at placating the gods, at other times as theurgical practices, employed by
philosophers who believe in an eternal world governed by the planets.
Even the magic attributed to the Sabians is presented in some of our
sources as the scientifi c pursuit of alchemy.
The archaeological fi ndings at Harran and in its surroundings reveal
little regarding the period following the Muslim conquest. As for the
preceding period, they do confi rm the existence of a pagan culture in
(^10) Masudi,Muruj al- dhahab, ed. C. Barbier de Meynard (Paris, 1865), 4, 64.
(^11) Al-Tanbih wa- al-ishraf, ed. Abdallah Ismail al-Safi (Cairo, n.d.), 4, 18, 101, 138– 39. As
noted by Corbin (“Rituel sabéen”, 182), the name “China” sometimes refers to the borders
of the inhabited world. Hämeen- Anttila’s suggestion (that by “Egyptian Sabians” Masudi
actually means Harranians, as their esoteric learning was seen as the continuation of the
Alexandrian school, deported to Harran in 717 by the caliph Umar II), presupposes a real
community of Sabians in Harran; cf. J. Hämeen- Anttila’s The Last Pagans of Iraq: Ibn
Wahshiyya and His Nabatean Agriculture (Leiden, 2006), 49n131.
(^12) Shahrastani,al-milal wa’l-nihal, 202– 3. It is likely that the expression “al-Saba al-ula”
appearing in Shahrastani’s work is inspired by the Quranic expression (33 [al-Ahzab]: 33)
“al-jahiliyya al-ula.” On Maimonides’ identifi cation of the Sabians with the jahiliyya, see
apud notes 49– 50, below.
(^13) See Strohmaier, “Die Harranischen Sabier,” for a summary and refutation of this com-
mon description.