Talk:Sabians

Incorporating the view that the Quranic Sabians were Mandaeans

@Nebulousquasar: I have copied the following comment from this page, since this is a better place to discuss it.

Although I would personally strongly agree with Mcvti's argument that the Sabians can indeed by connected to the Mandaeans and that this can be backed up by WP:RS, I do realize that there are other more skeptical points of view that I may not necessarily agree with, per WP:NPOV and that Wikipedia needs to present different viewpoints. Is there a way for everyone to somehow incorporate and synthethize all of their different viewpoints into the relevant articles? Nebulousquasar (talk) 05:06, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I would like that, but with just one caveat: if by 'everyone' you mean all Wikipedia editors with different points of view, that would be a wrong approach, since we need to incorporate and synthesize the reliable sources' points of view, not our own. The article should not reflect the proportion in which Wikipedia editors hold certain views, but the proportion in which scholars hold them.

Now I have mainly seen sources that are skeptical, not necessarily about the Quranic Sabians being Mandaeans as such (which by no means is some kind of standard view, as it has been falsely portrayed lately in our article here), but about whether it is realistic to try to identify the Quranic Sabians with any known religious group at all. Thus Hämeen-Anttila 2006 p. 50, who speaks about the wild goose chase for the identity of the Qur'anic Sabians, which has taken all too much attention. Thus also van Bladel 2009 p. 68, who believes that the real identity of the group intended in the Qur'ān cannot be known for certain given the present evidence. See also de Blois 1960–2012: Their identity, which has been much debated both by the Muslim commentators and by modern orientalists, was evidently uncertain already shortly after the time of Muḥammad and remains uncertain now. They were clearly not Mandaeans (as Chwolsohn and many others believed), and hardly Elchasaites (as proposed below, s.v. ṣābiʾa); there is indeed little reason to believe that Muḥammad and his compatriots could have had any knowledge of either of these communities. Stroumsa 2004 has called the elaborations of scholars on the Sabians as being one specific religious group, especially but not exclusively with regard to the speculations on the Sabians of Harran, a "modern myth". She writes about this at length at pp. 335–341:

Les Sabéens sont mentionnés déjà dans le Coran, mais la majorité des savants s'accorde sur le fait que les Sabéens du Coran ne sont pas identiques à ceux des hérésiographes musulmans. [...] Ces difficultés auraient dû nous inspirer un certain scepticisme à l'égard des textes. Pourtant, les chercheurs modernes, tout en notant le caractère générique ou paradigmatique de cette appellation de Sabéens, tentent depuis un siècle d’harmoniser toutes ces sources contradictoires, afin d'en voir émerger un peuple défini, pratiquant une religion précise. Ainsi, on a pu proposer d'identifier les Sabéens avec les Mandéens, un groupe gnostique, ou des pratiquants de la religion babylonienne. On a pu aussi décrire leur religion comme profondément influencée par le courant hermétiste. [...] Il me semble donc que toute tentative pour harmoniser les brins d’information à notre disposition afin de faire des Sabéens un peuple unique ayant une seule religion, et d'introduire ces Sabéens ainsi figés dans le royaume islamique, court le risque de véhiculer, à côté de véritables intuitions historiques, un fort élément mythique. On peut ainsi parler du mythe moderne des Sabéens, fondé sur une lecture non critique des sources médiévales, ces sources elles-mêmes reflétant déjà une perception mythique des Sabéens.

Courtesy translation from Google translate, emended:

The Sabians are mentioned already in the Quran, but the majority of scholars agree that the Sabians of the Quran are not identical to those of the Muslim heresiographers. [...] These difficulties should have inspired us with a certain skepticism with regard to the texts. However, modern researchers, while noting the generic or paradigmatic character of this designation of Sabians, have been trying for a century to harmonize all these contradictory sources, in order to see the emergence of a defined people, practicing a precise religion. Thus, it has been proposed to identify the Sabians with the Mandaeans, with a Gnostic group, or with practitioners of Babylonian religion. Their religion has also been described as deeply influenced by the Hermetic current. [...] It therefore seems to me that any attempt to harmonize the strands of information at our disposal in order to make the Sabians a single people with a single religion, and to introduce these Sabians as thus having been given a fixed place in the Islamic realm, runs the risk of conveying, alongside true historical intuitions, a strong mythical element. We can thus speak of the modern myth of the Sabians, based on an uncritical reading of medieval sources, these sources themselves already reflecting a mythical perception of the Sabians.

These are all top scholars publishing with the most reputable publishing houses (in order of appearance, Brill, OUP, Brill, and Peeters) and mainly writing in the 21st century. It seems inevitable to me that the idea of uncertainty should therefore be the main approach taken in our article.

But that said, it would of course be great if we could summarize the arguments that different scholars have made for their different conclusions with regard to the identity of the Quranic Sabians. For the identification as Mandaean, it seems that Chwolsohn 1856 and Gündüz 1994 are the two main sources which have argued for this at length. Drower 1960 affirms this identification but does not argue for it (there are probably many others like Drower in this regard, as de Blois 1960–2012 notes). It would be especially helpful if someone would read Gündüz 1994 and summarize his arguments in a separate section of the article. Do you feel like taking this on? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 10:16, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Good source for detailed overview of the various scholarly identifications of the Quranic Sabians

Right now we're citing in the lead paragraph the various religious groups with whom scholars have identified the Sabians of the Quran. However, this should of course also be covered in the article body. I don't have time to do this myself now, but I've found that a good source for this is Green 1992, p. 101–120. She treats all of the arguments advanced by different scholars before her in great detail, and given that she herself has no preference (cf pp. 119–120) she's also quite neutral about it. Obviously, she doesn't treat of the important arguments of scholars who came after her, like Gündüz 1994 and de Blois 1995, for which we should find another source. But if anyone is willing to write a section on this, Green 1992 is a great start.

• Green, Tamara M. (1992). The City of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World. Vol. 114. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-09513-7.

☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 21:18, 11 June 2022 (UTC)