![]() ![]() 930) used the term for a type of Mesopotamian paganism that preserved elements of ancient Assyro-Babylonian religion. įrom the early tenth century on, the term 'Sabian' was applied to purported 'pagans' of all kinds, such as to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, or to Buddhists. Īnother important religious group who adopted the epithet were the Mandaeans (the Mandaean Sabians), a Gnostic sect living in the marshlands of southern Iraq. Most of the historical figures known in the ninth–eleventh centuries as al-Ṣābiʼ were probably either members of this Harranian religion or descendants of such members, most notably the Harranian astronomers and mathematicians Thabit ibn Qurra (died 901) and al-Battani (died 929). These Harranian Sabians practiced an old Semitic form of polytheism, combined with a significant amount of Hellenistic elements. Among those are the Sabians of Harran, adherents of a poorly understood pagan religion centered in the upper Mesopotamian city of Harran, who were described by Syriac Christian heresiographers as star worshippers. Īt least from the ninth century on, the Quranic epithet 'Sabian' was claimed by various religious groups who sought recognition by the Muslim authorities as a People of the Book deserving of legal protection ( dhimma). Some scholars believe that it is impossible to establish their original identity with any degree of certainty. Modern scholars have variously identified them as Mandaeans, Manichaeans, Sabaeans, Elchasaites, Archontics, ḥunafāʾ (either as a type of Gnostics or as "sectarians"), or as adherents of the astral religion of Harran. Their original identity, which seems to have been forgotten at an early date, has been called an "unsolved Quranic problem". The Sabians, sometimes also spelled Sabaeans or Sabeans, are a mysterious religious group mentioned three times in the Quran (as الصابئون al-Ṣābiʾūn, in later sources الصابئة al-Ṣābiʾa), where it is implied that they belonged to the ' People of the Book' ( ahl al-kitāb). For other uses, see Sabian (disambiguation). For the followers of Sabbatai Zevi, see Sabbateans. ![]() For the people of ancient Italy, see Sabines. For the ancient people in South Arabia, see Sabaeans.
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