Harran, but are far from refl ecting the colorful descriptions in the Arab
sources.^14
The plethora of diffi culties and contradictions was bound to arouse a
degree of caution and even skepticism regarding the information pro-
vided by our sources. Indeed, most of those scholars who have carefully
considered this issue since the mid- twentieth century comment on the
collective or paradigmatic nature of the Sabians in the Muslim sources.
Yet many among the same scholars also attempt to harmonize the con-
tradictory texts in a manner that would allow us to point to the Sabians,
and in par ticular to those Sabians who lived in Harran, as a people en-
dowed with a more or less clear identity, a nation possessing its own re-
ligion, or at least as a family of religions.^15 It has thus been suggested that
the Sabians of the Quran should be identifi ed as Mandeans,^16 a Gnostic
group,^17 or as adherents of a Hermetic religion.^18 For de Blois, who iden-
tifi es the Sabians of the Quran with the Manicheans, the Sabians of Har-
ran are “a community following an old Semitic polytheistic religion, but
with a strongly Hellenized elite, one of the last outposts of late antique
paganism.”^19
(^14) For a summary of the textual and archaeological fi ndings, see Greene, The City of the
Moon God, 65– 72; H. Drijvers, “The Per sistence of Pagan Cults and Practices in Christian
Syria,” in N. Garsoïan et al., eds., East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative
Period; Dumbarton Oaks Symposium, 1980 (Washington, D.C., 1987), 35.
(^15) Pines, for example, cautiously maintains that the name “Sabian” “came to be applied to
a Syriac- speaking pagan community which survived in Harran and practiced a cult which
is reported to have been impregnated with philosophical elements.” And yet, he also adds
that “Sabia” “became a blanket designation for pagan religion”— s.v. “philosophy,” in
The Cambridge History of Islam, 786– 87. Drijvers (“The Per sistence of Pagan Cults,” 34)
views Sabians as “a paradigm of later Syrian intellectual paganism rather than an isolated
phenomenon.” Despite this, he subsequently seems to relate to them as an isolated phenom-
enon, since, referring to Bardaisan’s observation of the syncretism of pagan rites and philo-
sophical ideas, he states that these “should be compared with the Sabians in nearby Harran
who did the same” (ibid., 38). See also F. Rosenthal, “The Prophecies of Baba the Harra-
nian,” in W. B. Henning and E. Yarshater, eds., A Locust’s Leg: Studies in honour of S. H.
Taqizadeh (London, 1962), 232.
(^16) D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, 2 vols (St. Petersburg, 1856).
(^17) See, for example, J. Pedersen, “The Sabians,” in T.W. Arnold and R. A. Nicholson, eds.,
A Volume of Oriental Studies Presented to Edward G. Browne on His Birthday, (Cam-
bridge, 1922), 383– 91; J. Hjärpe, Analyse critique des traditions arabes sur les sabéens
harraniens (Uppsala, 1972); A. Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley,
1993), 144. The association with the Gnostics is also mentioned by Rosenthal, “The
Prophecies of Baba the Harranian,” 232.
(^18) See A. E. Afi fi , “The Infl uence of Hermetic Literature on Muslim Thought,” BSOAS 13
(1951): 840, 855, esp. 842; J. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in
Western Mono theism (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 58.
(^19) De Blois, “Sabi,” 672. See also Strohmaier, “Die Harranischen Sabier,” 51, 53.