90 CHAPTER FOUR
In analyzing the Arabic sources regarding the Sabians, one must take
into account the development of the local religions over the centuries, a
development that enabled the emergence of a syncretistic synthesis of an-
cient traditions, like the synthesis of philosophies and religions in the Ro-
man Empire in Late Antiquity. It is also necessary to consider the develop-
ment of traditions within Arabic literature that, alongside the use of
reliable traditions, also left room for creative imagination. Tamara Greene
collected the Sabian traditions and analyzed them in great detail, and her
balanced evaluation might be used here as a kind of summary:
Muslim interest in pre- Islamic paganism may be broadly character-
ized as antiquarian and perhaps a-historical.... [T]he interpreta-
tion of the esoteric doctrines of Hermeticism is in large mea sure
shaped by ideological concerns of Muslim reporters, the sources of
which may have little to do with the actual beliefs and practices of
the Harranians.^31
As Greene demonstrates, there are various competing elements in the
descriptions of the Sabians in Muslim literature. Any attempt to reconcile
and harmonize all the fragments of information in our possession, to unite
them into an overarching picture in which the Sabians would be presented
as a single people with a single religion, and to set this rigid rendering in a
Muslim context, is doomed to fail. In all likelihood, any such harmonizing
attempt would include, alongside correct historical insights, a substantial
mythical basis. In this context, one might speak of “the modern Sabian
myth,” one based on uncritical reading of medieval sources, sources that
themselves refl ect a mythical conception of the Sabians.
In the effort to collect all possible information about Sabians, propo-
nents of the various theories also look to Maimonides and his discus-
sions of the Sabians.^32 Daniel Chwolsohn, for example, embarked on his
seminal study of the Sabians after reading Guide of the Perplexed. Ulti-
know the title of a single book to have been written at that place.” Despite their critical ap-
proach toward the existence of an academy in Harran, however, Gutas and Lameer accept
the existence of a Harranic identity and a Sabian religion as a matter of course. See Gutas,
“Plato’s Symposion in the Arabic Tradition,” 45; Lameer, “From Alexandria to Baghdad,”
190.
(^31) Greene,The City of the Moon God, 163.
(^32) See, for example, Tardieu, “Sabiens,” 12. While Tardieu rejects Maimonides’ testimony,
he substantiates the rejection in the same way that he argues for a rejection of the testimony
of the Muslim heresiographers, and not because he views him as another type of witness.
Tardieu associates Maimonides with authors such as Abd al- Jabbar, Ibn Hazm, Shah-
rastani, and Dimashqi, regarding whom he states: “None of these authors has visited Har-
ran or the region. Their information is derived from the Harranians’ adversaries, whether
Christians or Muslims, who project scholastic exercises onto contemporary reality. Conse-
quently, all their information should be dismissed.”