Chapter Four
La Longue Durée:
Maimonides as a Phenomenologist of Religion
Through his studies of what he considered to be ancient pagan texts
Maimonides believed to have cracked the code of biblical command-
ments. He identifi ed these ancient texts with the culture of the Sabians.
This chapter will analyze Maimonides’ insight, which he himself describes
as his great scientifi c discovery. It will also study Maimonides’ ensuing
analysis of contemporary religions: Islam and Christianity, as well as con-
temporary Judaism.
SabiansThe Sabians (al-saba,al-sabia, or al-sabiun) appear in Arabic literature
as an ancient nation that lived in the Near East from antiquity up to the
Abbasid period. This nation is never mentioned in the writings of histo-
rians and thinkers in antiquity, and it makes its fi rst appearance in Ara-
bic, Islamic literature.^1 Despite this surprising fact, most scholars accept
at its face value the testimony of Arab writings, and invest considerable
effort in the attempt to identify the Sabians. The sudden appearance of
this nation is not the only diffi culty involved in identifying it. Sabians are
mentioned already in the Quran,^2 but most scholars believe that the Sa-
bians of the Quran are not identical with the Sabians who appear in
heresiographical Arabic literature.^3 The descriptions of this latter group
are beset with contradictions. They are usually referred to as the “Sabi-
ans of Harran,” but their alleged descendants are encountered primarily
in Baghdad. In some writings, the Sabians are described as a people who
(^1) See F. C. de Blois, “The ‘Sabians’ (Sabiun) in Pre- Islamic Arabia,” Acta Orientalia (1995):
41n8; Stroumsa, “Sabéens de Harran et Sabéens de Maïmonide.” I wish to thank Jessica
Bonn for her help in translating this article.
(^2) Quran 2 [al-Baqara]: 26; 5 [al-Maida]: 69; 22 [al-Hajj]:17. See also J. D. McAuliffe,
“Exegetical Identifi cation of the Sabiun,Muslim World 72 (1982): 95– 106.
(^3) Regarding the Sabians of the Quran, see de Blois, “Sabi,” EI, 8: 672– 75, esp. 672; idem,
“Sabians”; G. Strohmaier, “Die Harranischen Sabier bei Ibn an- Nadim und al- Biruni,” in
Ibn al- Nadim und die mittelalterliche arabische Literatur: Beiträge zum 1. Johann Wilhelm
Fück Kolloquium (Halle, 1987) (Wiesbaden, 1996), 55– 56.