Mandaeism

                                         

Mandaeism or Mandaeanism (Modern Mandaic: מנדעיותא‎ Mandaʻiūtā; Arabic: مندائية‎ Mandāʼīyah/Mandāʾiyyah) is a gnosticreligion^[1]:4 with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aramand especially John the Baptist, but reject Abraham, Moses and Jesus. The Aramaic manda means "knowledge," as does Greekgnosis.^[2][3]

According to most scholars, Mandaeans migrated from the Southern Levant to Mesopotamia in the first centuries CE, and are of pre-Arab and pre-Islamic origin. They are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. They may well be related to the Nabateans who were pagan, Aramaic-speaking indigenous pre-Arab and pre-Islamic inhabitants of southern Iraq.^[4]

Mandaeans appear to have settled in northern Mesopotamia, but the religion has been practised primarily around the lower Karun,Euphrates and Tigris and the rivers that surround the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, part of southern Iraq and Khuzestan Province in Iran. There are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide.^[5] Until the 2003 Iraq war, almost all of them lived in Iraq.^[6] Many Mandaean Iraqis have since fled their country (as have many other Iraqis) because of the turmoil created by the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation by U.S. armed forces, and the related rise in sectarian violence by Muslim extremists.^[7]By 2007, the population of Mandaeans in Iraq had fallen to approximately 5,000.^[6] Most Mandaean Iraqis have sought refuge inIran,^{[citation needed]} with fellow Mandaeans there. Others have moved to northern Iraq. There has been a much smaller influx into Syria and Jordan, with smaller populations in Sweden, Australia, the United States and other Western countries.

The Mandaeans have remained separate and intensely private—reports of them and of their religion have come primarily from outsiders, particularly from the Orientalist Julius Heinrich Petermann, Nicolas Siouffi (a Yazidi) and Lady Drower. An Anglican vicar, Rev. Peter Owen-Jones, included a short segment on a Mandaean group in Sydney, Australia, in his BBC series, Around the World in 80 Faiths.