Tag Archives: Sabianism

Sabian Mumbo Jumbo: Ishmael Reed and the Polemics of the Modern Sabians

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Ishmael Reed’s 1972 Afrofuturist novel, Mumbo Jumbo, is a classic and masterful literary work. However, behind the words on its pages lies a modern Sabian polemic and interpretatio afro-americana. The novel is set in a pandemic-era 1920’s America. The disease was a Vodoun-inspired, dance and free-love hysteria called “Jes Grew” that primarily infected African Americans, who needed to be quarantined if they succumb to the disease. It is obvious that Reed aligns with this behavior and sees it as the true means to liberation, while he directs his sharpest criticism to the “Atonists,” monotheists who follow a traditional religion but are secretly controlled by a Freemasonic cabal called the Wallflower Order. In other words, he believes that Traditionalists/Hanifs are close-minded prudes who oppose the essential elements of humanity.

Such a perspective is not new. The dialectic between Sabian/Spiritualists and Hanif/Traditionalists has been at the heart of metaphysical debates since the inception of religious history. Perhaps the fact that he was on of the first to articulate this concept in an African American context is his greatest feat and few, if any, have discussed this aspect of his book. In this post, I will examine Ishmael Reed’s novel in light of what we know of Sabianism. We will uncover his Sabian polemics, counter-narratives, and his vision for Black liberation.

Sabian Polemic

Mumbo Jumbo represents a modern-day Sabian polemic against the Hanifs of our times, or as he refers to them, the Atonists. Throughout the novel, Reed characterizes the Atonists as anti-nature, anti-fun, authoritarians who have made the world a terrible place to live by enforcing laws, making people work, and limiting freedom. They thrive on paranoia and a sense of control over people’s actions as demonstrated by his pairing the malevolent Wallflower Order with monotheism and the righteous virus known as Jes Grew with polytheism and liberation.

Reed constantly mocks Christian and Muslim sentiments throughout the novel. In Reed’s world, they are on the side of the Wallflower Order who oppress those they consider heretics and apostates. There is a Muslim character by the name Abdul Sufi Hamid (an allusion to Abdul Hamid Sufi, the Harlemite convert to Islam and labor leader who died in 1938) who had possession of an ancient Egyptian text that held the secret wisdom of the Black man. He is part of the Black resistance along with Papa LaBas (a Vodoun priest and the book’s protagonist) and Black Herman (a medicine man). However, because Abdul is Muslim he is incapacitated by his  “Atonist” belief that the people infected by the Jes Grew “Epidemic” are just primitive, superstitious heathens. He does not identify with them because he is an arbiter of people’s tastes and clings to a belief that Muslims are superior to pagans. In one instance, he belittles the epidemic by claiming it’s “a lot of people twisting they butts and getting happy. Old, primitive, superstitious jungle ways. Allah is the way. Allah be praised.”

In a dialogue in which Abdul attempts to distance himself from Christianity, Papa LaBas goes on a diatribe stating that Islam derived from Christianity. He repeats the theories of Orientalists who believe that Muhammad wanted to impress Christians with his knowledge of the Bible. He goes on to say that both Christianity and Islam find women to be evil and acknowledge the same angels like Gabriel and prophets like Abraham, Isaac, and Moses. Then he says that they both condemn the Jews because of the “pantheistic contingent” among them. Here he points out that the Jews are God’s chosen people and yet there are Sabians among them who do not deny the worship of other gods. Black Herman brings up the fact that the “Koran” has been accused of lacking chronology and Muhammad of being ambiguous and inaccurate with regards to the identity of Miriam, Moses’ sister, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Abdul has no response but a scripted intolerant retort telling them not to criticize his religion. “Atonists Christians and Muslims don’t tolerate those who refuse to accept their modes,” he claims. Abdul is said to have “picked up the old Plymouth Rock bug and [is] calling it Mecca.” LaBas says that the images in the temples of ancient Egypt were so explicit that other nations burned them and called it obscene and pornographic.

While these extensive dialogues feature between the plot of the novel, they tell us a lot about the position of the author and the debates that existed in the Black community at the time of the book’s publishing. Reed skillfully brings the ancient Sabian polemic to 20th century Black urban America, a population situated for such influences. As Sabian movements with Islamic overtones like the Nation of Islam and Moorish Science Temple directed people from Christianity with their harsh critiques of the religion, their orientation to their roots, and programs for Black liberation, the Afrocentrists went one step further by calling Black people to reject the monotheistic Hanif paths all together and to join them in their polytheistic Sabian paths. This coupled with the Free Love Movement of the 60’s made Sabian-inspired ideas particularly attractive during that era.

Sabianism as Liberation

It is clear that Reed’s idea of Black liberation is a syncretic hedonism linked to jazz music and diasporic African cultures, a position taken by many Black cultural nationalists of the 60’s and 70’s. As early as 1962, Oseijeman Adefunmi (formerly Serge King), founder of the Yoruba Temple in Harlem, articulated a sentiment aimed to critique Islam’s austerity: “The African, being supremely creative and cosmopolitan, will eventually revolt against a culture which debars plastic sculpture and other traditionally African expressions such as dancing, syncopated singing, smoking and drinking.”

Moreover, Adefunmi challenged Islam’s efficacy in protesting White supremacy. He believed, as Reed insinuates, that Islam and Muslims detests the same things the White power structure hates about Africans: its pantheon of gods, dancing, and drumming. As such, Islam is not sufficiently African and is thus, more tolerated by White supremacists. The Islam of enslaved African Muslims, he contends, vanished because it was not authentically African, as opposed to other African spiritual and cultural elements that survived slavery. Of course, Adefunmi brings up the East African slave trade as another reason as to why Blacks should reject Islam. (Adefunmi, Oseijeman. Tribal Origins of African-Americans. New Oyo [Harlem]:Yoruba Temple, 1962, 1, cited in Knight, 2020, p. 33).

In my estimation, the things to which Afrocentric Sabians are calling are not a means to liberation but they are the means to bondage both physically and spiritually. Did the Europeans not trade alcohol for slaves? Did this addiction not lead certain tribes to fight others and sell them into slavery? Does sexual promiscuity not lead to broken families and disease; the exact things that destroy our communities in the U.S.? Were African people not singing and dancing before, during, and after slavery? If so, what difference does it make if they choose not to now? While it is natural for people to enjoy themselves (according to their personal tastes, which might or might not include singing and dancing), fun is not a sole means to ending oppression and other social ills.

Moreover, practicing a tribal religion did not protect Africans from capture and enslavement any more than practicing Islam or Christianity. At least Islamic law regulates the trade and treatment of slaves and prohibits slavery on the basis of race. The Mamluks of medieval Egypt were not Africans but Eastern Europeans and Central Asians. Likewise, the African Tippu Tib played a major role in the East African slave trade just as much as the Ibāḍī sultans from southern Arabia.

What is more, African Muslims played just as much a role in fighting the European slave trade as their participation in it. In fact, more Africans (including those who practice traditional religions) participated in the slave trade than Europeans. The Europeans that traded in slaves were a minority of rich and opportunistic royalty and businessmen. The peasants of Western Europe were not part of this.

Oba Oseijeman Adefunmi

Counternarratives and Interpretatio Afro-americana

Even deeper than than their challenge against a single Abrahamic religion is the neo-Sabian tendency to create counter-narratives to what we know of the scriptures. Starting in Chapter 52, Reed recounts a history of religious figures that has no basis in tradition or scripture. Rather, it is a myth (i.e. false story) that serves the purpose of undermining people’s beliefs about the prophets and their works.

In Reed’s myth, Osiris is the hero and hip prophetic personality who spread knowledge of agriculture, music, and most importantly dance. He was an Egyptian prince who studied at a university in the Arabian town of Nysa. He typified the Jes Grew infection discussed previously in the novel. Osiris even ventured to Teotihuacán and Olmeca in South America to spread his knowledge.

The first villain was Set, who opposed his brother, Osiris. Set was obsessed with war, hated nature and agriculture, and had an egotistical jealousy of Osiris. Plus the fact that Osiris married their sister, Isis, further intensified Set’s hatred. Reed writes of Set in the following words:

He went down as the 1st man to shut nature out of himself. He called it discipline. He is also the deity of the modern clerk, always tabulating, and perhaps invented taxes.

The next villain was Akhenaton, the devotee to Aton, from which the Atonists in the novel take their name. The Egyptians rejected his creed of monotheism and killed him.

Next in his succession of villains is Moses, the adopted son of a Pharaoh and initiate of the Osirian Mysteries. He sought leadership in the order by tricking Jethro, a genuine follower of Osiris, into teaching him the secret tunes that he inherited from Osiris as well as the Book of Thoth acquired from a conjured vision of Isis. Yet, his plan did not work. Moses only attained from it the aggressive and violent magic, which made the people mock and hate him. As a result, he loathed the book and hid it in a tabernacle.

The next villains were the Knights Templar, a Christian Atonist group modeled after the rogue Ismāʿīlī Assassins. A librarian for the Knights Templar named Hinckle Von Vampton found the copy of the Book of Thoth in their library. As the Knights Templar were being executed throughout Europe for worshiping the “Black god Baphomet,” Hinckle escaped with the book and lived for hundreds of years. He eventually ended up in the U.S., where the Wildflower Order, created by the Atonists, aimed to find him and the book in order to put an end to the Jes Grew pandemic, which evoked fun and benevolent magic.

These counter-narratives are reminiscent of the Mandaean (Sabian) narratives about Noah, Moses, Abraham, and Jesus. As we know, rejection of the prophets or a selection of them is a common trait of Sabianism. Beyond their simple rejection of the Hanif prophets is the Sabian proclivity to invert prophetic narratives to demean them and champion their beliefs. This inversion lies at the heart of the Sabian/Hanif divide and is at the heart of many religious conflicts as alluded to in the novel. I would even argue that this is why non-canonical texts like the Book of Enoch and the Nag Hammadi were rejected from inclusion in the Bible by some religious denominations. These books’ presentations of the prophets align too much with the counter-narratives of the Sabians. As the Hanifs sought to subdue the slander, turmoil, and licentiousness of the Sabians and prevailed, the Sabian response was to operate secretly and to foment doubt and rebellion from behind the scenes. The Afrocentrist, with his worship of ancient Kemet and infatuation with traditional African religions has succumb to the Jes Grew disease, and it has stunted their intellectual and spiritual growth as liberators for the Black community because they focus their efforts against the Hanifs among them. This mantle was picked up by Ishmael Reed in his novel. Though it will go down in history as a post-modern literary masterpiece it will forever be cast in the heap of Sabian mumbo jumbo.

References

Adefunmi, Oseijeman. Tribal Origins of African-Americans. New Oyo [Harlem]:Yoruba Temple, 1962

Knight, Michael Muhammad. Metaphysical Africa: Truth and Blackness in the Ansaru Allah Community. Pen State University Press, 2020.

Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo: A Novel. Ebook. New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 1972.

Is God the Universe?

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It has become popular to refer to God as the Universe in recent years but few know that this practice is rooted in ancient philosophical debates over ḥulūl (pantheism) and the eternity of the universe. Sabians generally argued that the universe was eternal and thus equal to God. Because of this, they accepted the concept of pantheism, i.e. that God can be found within His creation as celestial bodies, inanimate objects, living things, a man or mankind in general, etc. On the other hand, Hanifs argued that eternity was an attribute of God alone and thus the universe was not eternal but a creation of God. As a consequence of this thinking, God was an entirely different genus from His creation and this, among other qualities, made Him worthy of worship.

While these debates are not prominent in popular contemporary discourse , they nonetheless influence much of our thinking, knowingly or unknowingly. Therefore, every time we hear someone praising the universe, we are hearing the residuals of Sabian thought echoing in the current day. While some might see these debates as benign or akin to splitting hairs, they most definitely have metaphysical, if not physical consequences on the masses past, present, and future. In this post, I will present the ancient debate and identify strains of Sabian thought in the modern day.

Al-Ghazālī vs. the Muslim Sabians

In the 11th century, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī penned his landmark work, Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (often translated as The Incoherence of the Philosophers). While the work is pivotal to Islamic theological debates as well as the intellectual history of philosophy from the ancient world to modern times, it is also relevant to the study of Sabian thought. Moreover, it allows us to understand the fallacies of Sabian thought from a Muslim perspective as well as how to recognize them and refute them in our times. He noticed a trend among the Muslim intellectuals of his day who, upon studying the works of the ancient Greeks, would adopt their philosophies uncritically. This meant that they embraced the belief of the eternity of the universe, which led to other blasphemous ideas such as the weakness of God, the possibility of two deities, and the purposelessness of existence.

In addition to this mistake having detrimental effects on the personal faith of these Muslim philosophers, they would also submerge Muslim civilization in the same theological turmoil that the Naṣārā (Christians) suffered. If we recall from Islam and the Mystery Schools Part 10, the Naṣārā of the Roman Empire, Persia, and beyond were plunged into the philosophical debates of the Mystery Schools i.e. Sabians. Although they won debates about the supremacy of the prophet of their time (i.e. Jesus Christ/ʿĪsā), they compromised on the topic of ḥulūl or pantheism, with the caveat that only Christ occupies the position of God to the exclusion of others in His Creation. In the Muslim Ummah, the likes of al-Farābī and Ibn Sīnā would spearhead this dangerous slip into Sabian philosophy. To others, it was Ibn ʿArabī’s concept of waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of existence). Wherever the concept was raised it was refuted.

Ibn ʿArabī

We should understand that al-Ghazālī did not categorically refute the knowledge of the Sabian philosophers. Rather he enumerated 20 points in which the philosophers went wrong and jeopardized their metaphysical futures. While seemingly benign, al-Ghazālī is serious about the magnitude of these mistakes. As I read his words, I cannot help but see some similitude to our current situation. Here, I will turn to al-Ghazālī’s criticisms that are related to the nature of the universe.

Ancient Sabian philosophers argued that it was impossible that a temporal creation emanate from an intemporal creator, i.e., that a finite universe proceed from an eternal God. Instead, they argued that the universe always existed or always had the potential to exist. So, if the universe came into existence at a particular point in time, then why? In their line of questioning, they asked: Was God incapable of bringing the world into existence before this point, thus changing from weakness to power or impossibility to possibility or futility to purpose? They contended that if God was All-Powerful and All-Knowing, then all the conditions were met to bring the universe into existence prior to its existence. So, there must have been some catalyst or cause to bring it into existence.

Al-Ghazālī responds to this conundrum by stating that the creation of the universe at the point that it came into existence was part of God’s eternal will and essentially that God sees the big picture and man does not and cannot. Man might ascribe perceived changes in God’s will to some sort of flaw based on man’s experience and dispositions but these experiences and dispositions do not apply to God. Therefore, the burden of proof is on the philosopher to demonstrate that the creation of the universe was not God’s will. (Ghazālī, 1963, 14-19) Indeed the entire debate is God’s will. We only need to choose the side on which we stand.

Malachi Z. York (leader of the Nuwaubians)

Sabians in the Modern Day

If we turn our attention to the current American metaphysical landscape, we find that our communities are infested with Sabian “manifestations” (or perhaps man-infestations). The New Age movements, Black conscious community, and woke culture represent Sabian thought in our day. Movements such as the Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters have adopted the concept of hulūl, when they deem the Black man as God. The Nuwaubians, with their multifarious deifications of Malachi York have done the same. Some Afrocentric Egyptophiles are also guilty of this in their claims that the Black woman is God, while also postulating their pseudo-intellectual arguments for the existence of multiple gods in the form of ancestors.

Even though modern-day Sabians often pose their questions as intellectual speculation, their intent is mostly mockery of God and His prophets with the aim of leading people to confusion and disbelief in God. Their speculation into the nature of God and the universe is not aimed at a higher Truth but confusion. You will barely find one who can understand the ancient arguments of the Sabians, let alone debate an intelligent Hanif. Their solution is to embrace a multitude of beliefs because in reality they do not believe in anything.

Though modern-day Sabians go by many names, they all have similar traits, like the veneration of the creation over the Creator. Equating the universe to God is tantamount to denying God because it omits the initial Cause and opens up the gates of pantheism, which allows creation to be regarded as God or part of God. These ideas were accepted by the ancient Sabians but opposed by the Hanifs, whose strongest proponents were the Muslims. Yet, within the ranks of the Muslim world these ideas would need to be refuted when they gained traction in its societies. But few among the Muslims are debating these ideas in our times. Even among the droves of Muslim students of knowledge, who study ʿaqīda, kalām, the works of al-Ghazālī, and Muslim philosophers, we have not raised conscious minds who understand the Sabian-Hanif dichotomy and can construct strong rebuttals of the modern Sabians. Rene Guenon (Abd al-Wahid Yahya) was perhaps one of the last to champion Traditional (Hanif) religion over the aberrations of the Spiritualists (Sabians) of his time. I call on my Hanif brethren among the Muslims and the People of the Book to stand up to the Sabian confusion of the current day with knowledge and grace by which we can restore the order of the universe to its proper place.

Reference

Ghazālī, Abu Hamid. Al-Ghazali’s Tahāfut al-Falāsifah: Incoherence of the Philosophers. Translated by Sabih Ahmad Kamali, Pakistan Philosophical Congress, 1963. lib.aucegypt.edu Library Catalog, https://www.ghazali.org/books/tf/index.htm.

The Mawlid: Between Sabians and Hanifs

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Love for the Prophet Muhammad is an indisputable cornerstone of the Islamic faith, but the celebration of the Prophet’s birth has in modern times surfaced as a matter of contention. Despite its long-standing and widespread tradition, modern detractors have insisted that it is a blameworthy invention within the religion because it was not observed during the lifetime of the Prophet or his immediate predecessors. Others see it as an odd parallel to Christmas and a segue to the excesses of the Christians in their love for Jesus. While I will leave the legal debates to the experts, I seek to offer an additional perspective on the Mawlid. Given what we know of Sabian views on prophets and angels, there is more wisdom to celebrating the advent of the prophet than we may think.

The Archangel Israfil

Angels vs. Prophets

As mentioned in previous posts, one of the core disagreements between the Sabians and Hanifs according to Muhammad al-Shahrastani was the issue of prophecy and prophethood. The Sabians glorified the angels and deemed them superior to human prophets, because they are sinless and pure. To them, man is tainted both physically and spiritually because he is subject to carnal desires and temptations that distract his worship of God. The Hanifs, on the other hand, exalted the human prophets as God’s chosen guides to mankind. They believed that human beings who have overcome their desires and temptations through the grace of God, such as prophets, have more merit. They contend that angels have no choice but to worship God at all times and there is no merit in compulsion (Shahrastānī and Muhammad, 1993, 16-22).

By no means did these debates end in pre-Islamic times. Rather, they ensued well into Abbasid-era Islamic scholarly discourse and beyond. Ibn Rawandi, a Mu’tazilite scholar turned skeptic, was in conversation with a Sabian group called the Brahmins concerning the role of the intellect in religion. This group argued that the intellect was a sufficient alternative to revelation. They figured that even if the prophets brought teachings that were compatible with the intellect, the prophet would be superfluous because humans were already endowed with intellect. Likewise, they reasoned that sanctuaries in Mecca like the Kaʿba, Black Stone, Ṣafā, and Marwa, etc. were no different from other places in the world. So it made no sense to perform rituals at these sites to the exclusion of others and this was thus opposed to the intellect. Similarly, they deemed the prophets no different from other men even if they could predict future events. This is because they could determine the future by the stars and are thus in no need of prophets (Lawrence, 1976, 80).

The 15th century Egyptian scholar, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī wrote a book on Islamic angelology titled, Al-Ḥabā’ik fī Akhbār al-Malā’ik (The Arrangement Concerning the Traditions of the Angels), in which he collected the opinions of various Muslim scholars concerning the merits of angels versus human prophets. In a section, not featured in its English translation, he enumerates the various opinions of Muslim scholars on the preference of human prophets or angels. In summary, he states that there were three main positions:

1) the prophets are greater than the angels. This is the majority opinion for Sunnis and Shi’as.

2) the angels are greater than the prophets. This is the position of the Muʿtazilites, but there are some Sunni scholars who hold this opinion.

3) that there is no comparison; except that all are agreed that the Prophet Muhammad is the best of creation. (Suyūṭī, 1988, 203)

We find here, that the Muʿtazilites inherited the positions of the Sabian philosophers with regards to the angels and prophets. It is therefore the reemergence of Sabian thought within the Islamic umma that seeks to belittle the prophets to the level of ordinary men, rather than guides and examples who should be followed and celebrated. It is the core Hanif strain within Islam that opposes this diminution of the prophets and exalts their status and benefits for all of mankind.

References

Lawrence, Bruce B. Shahrastani on the Indian Religions. De Gruyter, 1976.

Shahrastānī, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm al-, and Ahmad Fahmi Muhammad. Al-Milal Wa al-Niḥal. 2nd ed., Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyyah, 1992.

Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn al-. Al-Ḥabā’ik Fī Akhbār al-Malā’ik. Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyyah, 1988.

Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools Part 12

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I would like to return to my original thesis that was sparked by George G.M. James’ Stolen Legacy several years ago (see Islam and the Ancient Mysteries Part 1and Part 2). Although this thesis has undergone modifications since I began my research, the premise has remained the same. In the midst of this series I have found that the word Ṣābi’a is the general term in Arabic for the Ancient Mystery Schools, while theorizing that other terms such as Naṣārā and Chaldean refer to the leaders of temporal and geographic Mystery Schools. In the following post, I will summarize my theory and trace the genealogy of Sabian/Mystery School thought to this day.

Islam and the Revival of the Ancient Mysteries

The Sabians mentioned throughout classical Arabic literature are what the Greeks called the Mysteries. Like the Jews and Christians before them, the Muslims wrestled with the perceived harms and benefits of Sabian thought. On the one hand, the scriptures of the Abrahamic traditions were deeply critical of the theological distortions in Sabian doctrine. Abrahamic doctrines and rituals were in response to the beliefs and practices of the Sabians, which opened up the gates of polytheism among the unlearned laymen. On the other hand, the Sabians had benefited the world by their advances in other areas of human knowledge. The Abbasid Caliphate, like Eastern Christianity, came to terms with the knowledge produced by the Sabians. However, the Muslims strived not to take the road of the Christians, whose doctrine ultimately succumbed to the philosophical influences of the Sabians.

What we witness from the 9th to 11th century in the Islamic world with the codification of both traditional religious knowledge as well as the translation of ancient empirical and occult texts, is a race to retain knowledge of the Prophet Muhammad, while also reviving the knowledge of the Sabians (i.e. the Mystery Schools). The Islamic empire and its scholars sought to uphold the Abrahamic doctrine in the face of Sabian doctrine by calling people to Islam and granting protection (i.e. dhimmi status) to the People of the Book, i.e. Jews and Christians. At the same time, they were vehemently opposed to the polytheistic elements of Sabian thought.

Statue of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in Córdoba, Spain

As such, the Muslims had revived the Mystery Schools under the Abrahamic creed of Islam. This, however, was not without its conflicts. As certain groups of Muslims had the tendency to slip back into the beliefs of the Sabians, such as:

  • The Khawārij, who embraced the Stoic (Mystery School) concept of perfection and sinlessness as a sign of righteousness.
  • The Muʿtazilites would later stress the primacy of reason over revelation, which placed the philosopher sage on level with and sometimes over the prophets and rekindle the notion that human beings attain prophethood through their own efforts and merits rather than the grace and ordinance of God.
  • Al-Ghazālī’s criticism of the Muslim philosophers (primarily Ibn Sīnā) in his Incoherence of the Philosophers, identifies certain ancient beliefs held by these philosophers, which he believes led them to apostasy. This, while maintaining the utility of ancient Sabian empirical knowledge.
  • Ibn Rushd (Averroes) would later take issue with al-Ghazālī’s conclusions, claiming that the “craft of ḥikma” (wisdom/ancient knowledge) needed to be passed down like any other craft.

Ibn Rushd’s defense of Sabian philosophy would be rejected or ignored by the greater Muslim world, but the means by which Sabian knowledge would gain interest and popularity in Western Europe.

Modern Day Mysteries

In the last few centuries, Western civilization has become the battleground between Abrahamic and Sabian thought since the so-called European Renaissance. As such, Renè Guenon considered the beginning of the West’s decline to be Renè Descartes’ hyper-skepticism. Even as the West was philosophizing itself out of the Abrahamic tradition, it was making a dash for Eastern empirical and esoteric knowledge, which they harbored in their secret societies. This would lead to the separation of religion from science, politics, sociology, and the many other sciences needed for human civilization.

In the 20th century, Western philosophy and esotericism trickled down to the populace by way of clandestine organizations, theosophy, and counterculture movements. In no place were these ideas more prevalent than in the United States. As a result, we witness Sabian thought proliferate in the society everyday. More specifically, Sabian thought has entered African American communities through such groups as the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, the Five Percenters, Nuwaubians, and Afrocentrists. All of these groups have explicitly or implicitly embraced the erroneous notion that they can reconstruct the Mystery Schools. I understand that this is a bold claim, but I will show the parallels between their theosophies and ancient Sabian thought. I will argue that they based their movements on incomplete knowledge of the ancient Mysteries because they did not received their knowledge through an unbroken chain of living teachers. This knowledge of the Mysteries/Sabians has been filtered by the Abrahamic faiths, primarily Islam in the current day, and cannot be accessed except through these traditional channels.

Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools (Part 11)

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If we cede that the primordial religion was a comprehensive spiritual and intellectual tradition resembling what we know as the Ancient Mystery Schools, then we should be able to map them to a single origin, whose name and appearance differed throughout time and space, but whose essence remained the same.To better illustrate the relationship between the major religions of the Near East and the Ancient Mystery Schools see the graphic below. Following that, I will provide a brief description of each of these names for Near Eastern religions with the aims of illuminating the similarities and differences.

The various forms of Near Eastern Mystery Schools

Chaldeans

The priests of the Mystery Schools in Prophet Ibrahim’s day were referred to as the Chaldeans. This is the Latinized form of the Semitic term, Kasdīm. Seated in ancient Iraq, they were known for their knowledge of astrology and worshipful reverence of the stars. When they went astray, Ibrahim was sent to rectify their religion. Those that followed him were known as Ḥanīfs. The Muslim polymath, al-Fārābī believed that the Chaldeans were the first to harvest the “wisdom teachings,” which they transmitted to the Egyptians, who transmitted them to the Greeks, who transmitted them to the Syrians (i.e. Naṣārā), who ultimately transmitted them to the Arab Muslims (43).

Sabians

The leaders of the Mystery Schools of Egypt and the lands that fell under their rule were known as Sabians (Ṣābi’a). This is attested to in Mandaean sources as well as in hieroglyphics. Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar found in a papyrus scroll that the word for knowledge was ṣabāwi (صباوٍ), which is derived from the word ṣabā, which means guidance in the ancient Egyptian language. Moreover, another derivative of this root is the word for teachings, ṣabāyat, which also indicates a scripture or a message (Sayyār, 1995, 274-5). He also demonstrates that this root carried connotations to the stars (Sayyār, 2020, 142).

How this Egyptian term entered the Arabic lexicon is a matter of speculation, but it suffices us to say that historians writing in Arabic after the advent of Islam used the term to refer to the unreformed Mystery Schools and the antithesis to Ḥanīf. This is attested to by the Andalusian Jewish scholar, Maimonides in his Guide For the Perplexed, Ṣa’id al-Andalusī’s Biographies of the Nations, and Muhammad al-Shahrastānī’s Sects and Creeds.

Ḥanīfs

Though the term Ḥanīf referred to Ibrahim and his followers who taught an unwavering monotheism and deference to human prophets as opposed to the angels, the term was inverted by many Semitic languages and religions. Other groups took it to mean pagan among other things discussed in Part 10 of this series. The Arabic of the Qur’an corrected this understanding and freed Ibrahim of any allegations of polytheism (as discussed in Part 9).

In later Arabic writings, the term Ḥanīf could be understood as the reformed versions of the Mystery Schools guided by the prophets as opposed to the Sabians, who represented the unreformed versions. While Muslim jurists, theologians, and historians acknowledged that Sabian beliefs had a foundation in monotheism, they also invented ideas that misled the masses into polytheism. Therefore, later religions would lie on the continuum between Sabian, a kind of proto-polytheism, and Ḥanīf, an orthodox monotheism.

Yahūd

It is my understanding that the Bani Isra’il (the Children of Israel) represented the Ḥanīf opposition to Egyptian, Chaldean, and Arabian Sabianism, as expounded by Maimonides. The Yahūd, on the other hand, are frequently spoken of negatively in the Qur’an, in contrast to Bānī Isrā’īl. Thus it is plausible that the Yahūd were those Jewish priests who relapsed into the practices and beliefs of the Sabians, particularly those of Northern Arabia where the kingdoms of Israel and Judah (perhaps a cognate to the Arabic word, Yahūd) were located. As we know, the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Assyrians and fell under the influence of the Chaldeans of their day.

One should note that the Mandaean Sabians believed themselves to have once been of the Jews, who were called Yahutai in Aramaic. However, they were from the faction who doubted the immaculate conception of Miriam (Buckley, 4), meaning they contributed to the distortion of the revealed doctrine. It should also be noted that Madaeans see the ancient Yahutai (i.e. Yahūd) and the Chaldeans (their spiritual predecessors) as one and the same. This can account for the Qur’an’s repeated critique of the Yahūd and other Sabian-style beliefs. A deeper look into the language of the Qur’an will reveal that most of their mentions in the Qur’an refer to them as “those who claim to be Jews” (الذين هادوا) revealing that God is casting doubt on their claims.

http://history-of-israel.org/history/chronological_presentation11.php

Philosophers

The Greek Philosophers, though not mentioned directly in the Qur’an, are generally known as Sabians among Muslim scholars. Ibn Taymīya, for instance, stated as such in his Al-Radd ʿalā al-Shādhulī. He believed that the philosophers were originally rightly guided (al-Ṣābi’a al-Ḥunafā’), just as the Yahūd and Naṣārā were originally rightly guided. However, only those among them who did not contradict the prophets remained guided (Ibn Taymīya, 136-7). We should also note that the Greek philosophers are also most commonly associated with the Mystery Schools. The likes of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Zeno were all associated with versions of the Mysteries, although there were philosophers also not associated with a particular Mystery school.

Naṣārā

As discussed in Part 10 of this series, the Naṣārā were most likely the Nasoraeans, a Neo-Platonic priestly class that became infused with the prophetic lineage (i.e. Ḥanīf) following the advent of Īsā. They were apparently Judeo-Christian in their beliefs and practice, but they retained a philosophical element inherited from the Sabians that influenced their approach to the prophetic tradition. As such, God in the Qur’an rebukes those beliefs that came from the Sabians such as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and his sonship of God, while affirming the Ḥanīfs among them as Ahl al-Kitāb (People of the Book). The concepts of the Trinity, divination of man, and pantheism are all recurring themes in Sabianism and the ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mysteries.

Majūs

As for the Majūs, they are only mentioned once in the Qur’an among those who claim to be Jews, Sabians, and Naṣārā. They were the priestly class of the Zoroastrians, the Persian Mystery Schools. Medieval European Biblical scholars referred to Zoroastrians as Eastern Chaldeans and Sabians (Elukin, 624).

The Abbasid court astrologer, Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht, gives a testimony to the Persian Mysteries in Ibn al-Nadīm’s al-Fihrist. According to Abū Sahl, Hermes taught the “wisdom teachings” to the people of Babylon, which included present-day Iran, then he traveled to Egypt to teach to them. The knowledge taught by Hermes remained in Persia uninterrupted until the invasion of Alexander, in which he killed the leader Dara II, defaced the inscriptions on their buildings, and looted all their manuscripts. Alexander then took these works on medicine, astronomy, etc. and had them translated into Greek and Coptic, then burned the Persian originals. Following this catastrophe, the Persian kings began the process of reconstructing their knowledge by acquiring manuscripts from the peripheries of the Persian Empire like those of India and China and re-establishing their chains of transmission in Persia. This project persisted into the Muslim conquest of Persia and was continued until the height of the Abbasid empire (Ibn al-Nadīm, 333-4).

Summary

Now that we have provided a synopsis for each of these terms, we see that the common denominator is that these terms primarily referred to the learned class within their respective traditions, whose nomenclature varied depending on the locale and time period. Secondly, these traditions all had similar trajectories. For instance, they all excelled at the empirical and occult sciences, especially astrology. However, the standard for measuring the veracity of a tradition was how close it conformed to the Ḥanīf system, which was championed by the prophets, as opposed to the Sabian system, championed by the polytheists (i.e. Mushrikūn). Finally, many exegetes of the Qur’an interpreted al-Baqara: 62 and its cognate verses to mean: Whosoever affirms a belief in God as taught by the Prophet Muhammad among the Yahūd, Sabians, Naṣārā, and Majūs will not be treated unjustly by God in the end. An unraveling of this nomenclature and their respective beliefs has relevance for 21st century America. As many individuals, young and old, gravitate to expressions of Sabianism in one form or another, it is necessary to know where these ideas came from and the pre-modern debates that ensued around them. I will touch on these discussions in subsequent posts.

References

Buckley, Jorunn Jacobsen. The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Elukin, Jonathan. “Maimonides and the Rise and Fall of the Sabians: Explaining Mosaic Laws and the Limits of Scholarship.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 63, no. 4, 2002, pp. 619–37. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3654163.

Farabi al-. Al-Farabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Translated by Muhsin Mahdi, Free Press of Glencoe, 1962.

Ibn Nadīm, Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ibn Isḥaq. Al-Fihrist. Dar al-Ma’rifah, 937.

Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn Abū’l-’Abbās Aḥmad, and ʿAlī Muhammad ʿUmrān. Al-Radd ʿalā al-Shādhulī Fī Ḥizbayhi Wa Mā Ṣannafahu Fī Ādāb al-Ṭarīq. Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawā’id, 2008.

Sayyār, Nadīm al-. Qudamāʼ Al-Misṛīyīn Awwal al-Muwahḥịdīn. 2nd ed., 1995.

Sayyār, Nadīm al-. Laysū Āliha Wa Lākin Malā’ika. 2020.

Is Fusha Elitist? – The Maurchives

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://maurchives.com/2020/05/22/is-fusha-elitist/ — Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maurice-hines3/support
  1. Is Fusha Elitist?
  2. Sabian Mumbo Jumbo: Ishmael Reed and the Polemics of the Modern Sabians
  3. Nationalism in the Nile: Egyptians, Afrocentrism, and Kevin Hart
  4. Is God the Universe?
  5. America is Not Egypt

Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools (Part 10)

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In this post, I would like to revisit the notion of Naṣarā mentioned in Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools (Part 5). If you recall, the results from our readings of Fadil al- Rabi’i’s were inconclusive. Upon further exploration, I have come across some information that has provided me a bit more perspective on who was intended by this term in the Quran. However, before we get into this exploration, let’s review some of the most compelling arguments espoused by Al-Rabi’i:

  • Nasrani/Naṣarā is not a relative adjective describing a person from Nazareth. This means that the Naṣarā are not called as such solely on their affiliation with Jesus of Nazareth.
  • The root of the word Naṣarā is related to the word meaning to be “uncircumcised.” This means that the Naṣarā were known for their opposition to or at least their ambivalence to the practice.
  • In Muslim writings, the pre-Islamic Naṣarā were few in number and often associated with the Hanifs. This should make us ask: why do these few people warrant such attention in the Quran? If they were Christians, why didn’t they build a church? And why have they been historically classified as Hanifs?
Panini, Giovanni Paolo. An Architectural Capriccio of the Roman Forum with Philosophers and Soldiers among Ancient Ruins. oil on canvas, c.  -1750 1745, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_Architectural_Capriccio_of_the_Roman_Forum_with_Philosophers_and_Soldiers_among_Ancient_Ruins_…,_by_Giovanni_Paolo_Panini,_c._1745-1750,_oil_on_canvas_-_National_Museum_of_Western_Art,_Tokyo_-_DSC08515.JPG. National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan.

I posit that the Naṣarā were a type of Hanīf or Sabian that was found in pre-Islamic Arabia. Most likely remnants of Neoplatonic Mysteries from the Roman Empire, who were dispersed into Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia, and the interior of Africa. More specifically, they probably considered themselves a priestly class of the Greater Mysteries who pontificated on a number of metaphysical matters of the day, which fomented much confusion in pre-Islamic times. Let’s first look at the historical links between the Mystery Schools of Rome and religion in pre-Islamic Arabia.

Christianity and the Mystery Schools

Christianity emerged in the Roman Empire as a reviled religion, with clear Semitic roots. It was opposed by the emperors because they were considered the ultimate legal and religious authorities. They believed that there was only one religion, the Mysteries. Different schools of the Mysteries had different expressions of it based on their culture and language because religion was associated with citizenship (Ando, 2021,13). Constantine, upon his conversion to Christianity in the early 4th century was the first Roman emperor to ease the repression of Christians in the empire. By the end of the century, Theodosious would make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and commence the official closing of the Mystery Schools. Justinian would continue this project of closing the Mysteries in the 6th century. In turn, many of its die-hard members who refused to convert to the state religion fled to Asia Minor, like the city of Ḥarrān, Persia, the Arabian peninsula, and the interior of Africa (Errington, 2006, 249-52).

Quraysh and the Mystery Schools

As for those who fled to the Arabian peninsula, it is possible that the Quraysh tribe was one such group. Scholars are unsure of their exact origins, but some have proposed that they were one of the groups that who fled Byzantium. This would make sense since the Quraysh only emerge in the 5th century and appear to take over the most important shrine in Arabia (Ḍayf, 1960, 49). Furthermore, prior to the prophetic mission of Muhammad, the Quraysh exhibited traits common to followers of the Mysteries. First, the Dār al-Nadwa that managed the affairs of Mecca only allowed wealthy men over the age of forty. In the Mysteries, this age was significant because it represented the age at which men attained wisdom and the position of teacher and leadership. They were also learned in advanced mathematics because they set interest rates and performed the duties of bankers. Similarly, they were also the religious authorities because they controlled the rites of the pilgrimage to the Kaʿba, which they believed to be a Saturnalia shrine. For these reasons, it is likely that there was a substantial influence on the pre-Islamic Arabs from the Ancient Mystery Schools.

Naṣārā and the Mystery Schools

When we look into the Qur’an, we find numerous mentions of Naṣārā, but never of Masīḥiyīn, a more direct translation of the word Christians. I believe this was the case because Naṣārā actually referred to a group known as the Nāṣūrati or Nasoraeans, who scholars call a Jewish-Christian Gnostic sect that emerged during the post-Christian religious milieu in the Near East (Bladel, 2017, 6). However, they are more commonly associated with the Mandaeans of southern Iraq; the only group in the world commonly labeled Sabians. Members of their priestly class are called Nasoraeans, who assiduously guard the secret rituals and doctrines of the Mandaeans, which they perceive as having a more ancient origin. Much like the Mystery Schools, the Nasoraeans function as the Greater Mysteries that requires a much more rigorous training in the secret arts, while the rank-and-file Mandaean constitutes the Lesser Mysteries that is open to those who are inclined to Gnosticism. Their doctrine consists of a worshipful regard for angels and the stars and opposition to the practice of circumcision. Indeed, they are those that many Muslim jurists, historians, and theologians identified as the last visages of the Qur’anic Sabians.

Concluding Remarks

With the above understanding, we can gather that:

1) the Nasoraeans were around and active in the Near East before and during the time of the Prophet Muhammad

2) the Nasoraeans constitute a hybrid of the Ancient Mystery Schools and Judeo-Christian beliefs and practices

3) the Nasoraean’s minority status and secretive nature explains why no “Naṣrānī” church was established in the heart of Arabia

4) if the Naṣārā are the Nasoraeans, then this is cause to reconsider the identities of the Yahūd (or “those who became Jews”) and the Majūs

Linking the Naṣārā of the Qur’an to the Nasoraeans of the Mandaean religion will introduce us to a different way of understanding certain arguments put forth in the Qur’an. I will show in future posts how verses that discuss the angels and pre-Islamic ideas about nature and prophethood are actually a polemic against the positions of the Nasoraeans. In addition, we will see that the Qur’an’s criticism of other religions is based on the degree to which they adopted beliefs associated with the Nasoraeans and other Sabians, which were remnants of the Ancient Mystery Schools in Islamic lands. The Naṣārā who were deemed as Christians were those who were closer to the Ḥanīfs in their beliefs. Not only will we witness the historical implications of this information, but we will begin to see how these doctrines continue to shape the current religious discourse.

References

Ando, Clifford. “Religious Affiliation and Political Belonging from Cicero to Theodosius.” Acta Classica, vol. 64, no. 1, 2021, pp. 9–28. https://doi.org/10.1353/acl.2021.0013.

Bladel, Kevin Thomas Van. From Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes. Brill, 2017.

Ḍayf, Shawqi. Al-ʿAṣr al-Jāhilī. 11th ed., vol. 1, Dār al-Ma’ārif, 1960.

Errington, R. M. Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius. University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools ( Part 9)

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In the year 377 AH/987 CE, at the heart of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, a bookseller and lover of the Prophet Muhammad’s family by the name of Ibn al-Nadīm published a catalog of books that were in circulation throughout the Islamic-controlled world at the time. Al-Fihrist (The Catalog), as it was called, went beyond simply listing books and their authors, it also included a survey of scholarship in all fields of knowledge, pivotal scholars, and often times excerpts from works that may or may not be extant today. Through his work we can deduce that Muslims throughout the Ummayad period and well into the Abbasid period primarily studied the works of the ancients prior to the codification of the transmitted Islamic sciences. Al-Fihrist is cited by Islamic and western scholars alike for its information on ancient people and their knowledge. In fact, he transmits a few interesting takes on Sabianism. I will present two in this post. Then I will show how the two different narratives bring us closer to understanding the differences between the Sabians and the Ḥanīfs.

Al-Kindī’s View of Sabianism:

Al-Kindī was considered the first Arab philosopher, who took knowledge from the ancient Sabians. His student, Ahmad ibn al-Ṭayyib, recorded his description of the Sabians, which is related in al-Fihrist. To him, the Sabians were a monotheistic people who believed in a transcendent deity who was unlike His creation in every way. He selected purified individuals to be guides to people, such as Arānī, Aghāthādhīmīn, and Hirmīs (Heron, Agathodaemon, and Hermes Trismegistus), and some even included Solon, one of the grandparents of Plato. They prayed three times a day with ablution facing the North Star. They shunned people who were missing body parts or suffered from contagious diseases like leprosy. They did not eat pork and avoided some other types of meat and vegetables. (Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-Fihrist, 442-4)

Abū Saʿīd Wahb ibn Ibn Ibrāhīm

Abū Saʿīd was a Christian writer and the Christians were usually no friends of the Sabians. With this caveat, his depiction of the Sabians was completely different from al-Kindī’s. It gives a detailed account of monthly rituals, which include animal and human sacrifices to “gods, jinns, devils, and spirits.” In the month of August (Āb), they made wine to their gods and sacrificed a newborn child. They ground its flesh into powder and baked it into small disks. They then distributed these disks to all sane free male onlookers. In addition, Abū Saʿīd gives the Sabian names for the days of the week as corresponding with celestial deities, not unlike the origins of the day names used in European Romance languages (Ibn Nadīm, Al-Fihrist, 447-8).

Ethan Doyle White. Scroll of Abathur. 18th century, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68493361. Bodleian Library.

One Eye, Two Heads: Alternating the Narratives

These two characterizations of Sabians put forth by Ibn al-Nadīm from his sources are starkly contrast. Al-Kindī depicts them as a monotheistic, gnostic, proto-Islamic group, while Abū Saʿīd depicts them as a heathenistic, pagan cult. Which characterization is correct?

I believe them both to be correct characterizations of two different Sabian factions. The former was known as Ḥanīfs and the latter retained the name of Sabian. If we look into the Qur’an, we will find 12 instances of the word Ḥanīf (plural Ḥunafā‘), most of them in reference to the Prophet Abraham (Ibrāhīm). These references contrast him to the mushrikūn (polytheists). Take Surat al-Naḥl: 120 for instance, which can be translated as: Indeed Abraham was an ummah, obedient to God as a Ḥanīf, and he was not of the polytheists. It appears to be common knowledge by anyone reading or hearing the words of the Qur’an that Abraham was not a polytheist, so why is the elaboration needed?

Apparently, the Mandaeans (known to Arabs as the only extant Sabians) have an alternate narrative of the story of Abraham in which he was on his way to becoming a high priest (Nāṣūrā’ī – more on this term later) among the Chaldean Sabians of Babylon. However, they believe he came under the possession of an evil spirit named Yūrbā who over powered him to circumcise himself. As mentioned a in al-Fihrist, Sabians believed that missing any part of the body or illness rendered a person impure, and thus Abraham was no longer qualified to become a high priest. Instead, the Mandaeans claim that he became an outcast and he was followed by lepers, amputees, and other reprobates. He then, in the name of Yūrbā, attacked the peaceful Sabians of Babylon, forcibly circumcising the men (Samak, Al-Ṣābi’ūn, 42-43).

The Qur’an is obviously seeking to clarify a narrative that was once misunderstood and continues to be misunderstood. François de Blois, a linguist of Semitic and Iranian languages and historian of ancient Near Eastern religions, notes that the cognates to Ḥanīf in Syriac, Aramaic, Mandaic, and Hebrew, h–n-p, all carry negative connotations like pagan, false god, hypocrite, and pollution (Blois, Naṣrānī and Ḥanīf, 19). It was only the Arabic of the Qur’an that converted it to a positive meaning. We have seen how a look into the Sabian narrative adds another dimension to our understanding of the word Ḥanīf as used in the Qur’an, as well as the lines of division in the Ancient Mystery Schools. Reading into this narrative can also do the same for the use of the word Naṣarā as we will see in future posts.

References

Blois, François de. “Naṣrānī (Ναζωραȋος) and Ḥanīf (Ἐθνικός): Studies on the Religious Vocabulary of Christianity and of Islam.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 65, no. 1, 2002, pp. 1–30.

Ibn Nadīm, Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ibn Isḥaq. Al-Fihrist. Dar al-Ma’rifah, 937. http://archive.org/details/alfihrist-alma3rifa.

Samak, ʿAbdullah ʿAlī. Al-Ṣābiʼūn. 1st ed., Maktabat al-Ādāb, 1995.

Islam and Ancient Mystery Schools (Part 8)

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The primordial religion of mankind is a single phenomenon that goes by different names. The Greeks knew it as Mystai (the Mysteries), the Indians call it Sanātana Dharma (the Eternal Way), and some now know it was Sophia Perennis (the Perennial Wisdom). The Monotheistic Arabs called it Ḥanīfīyah while pagan Arabs knew it as Ṣābi’ah. Authors who have written about Sabians have not yet made this connection for one reason or another, but the consequences are heavy for making the connection between Islam and the Ancient Mysteries as well as noting the reforms Islam made to them.

There are quite a few classical Arabic texts have discussed the identity, beliefs, and practices of the Sabians, but perhaps the text that makes this connection most clearly is that of the 11th century Cordoban scholar, Ṣāʿid ibn Aḥmad al-Andalusī. In his work, Ṭabaqāt al-Umam, he states that there were seven ancient civilizations: 1) Persia, 2) Chaldea (Arabia, Iraq, and Syria), 3) Greece (Europe), 4) Copt/Egypt (Africa), 5) Turkey (Central and North Asia), 6) India (Hind and Sind), and 7) China (East Asia). He declares that they were all Sabians, who believed in one God, but worshiped Him through the intermediaries of heavenly bodies, idols, and statues made of precious stones. They later broke up, their languages branched off, and the religions were divided from one another over time. (Al-Andalusī, 7)

Albategnius. March 7, 2009. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albategnius.jpeg.

Al-Andalusī asserts that all the so-called Arab pagans were initially monotheists. However, they created images and structures and prayed to them, not because they believed they were creator gods of the universe, but because in order to gain nearness to God through these intermediaries, as the Qur’an states (Zumar: 4). (Al-Andalusī, 44) The contemporary Arab author, ʿAbd Allah Samak, explains the stages by which Sabianism transformed to idol worship:

  1. Rūhānīyāt/Spiritualism: In this stage they took angels as intermediaries.
  2. Star Worship: In this stage they took planets and stars as physical representations of angels
  3. Idol Worship: In this stage they created shrines at sites that corresponded with the position of the stars and placed in them pictures and idols.
  4. Reincarnation: In this stage, they deduced that any recompense for worldly deeds are meted out in the physical realm based on the concept of cyclical time cycles that repeated ad infinitum. (Samak, 64-76)

We find these concepts disseminated in one way or another across world religions, save Islam and Judaism, whose divine legal codes are essentially responses to Sabian beliefs and practices. This was the opinion of Maimonides with regard to the Jewish laws prescribed by Moses in the Torah. The evidence from the Qur’an is plenty. However, it seems as though the arguments made against these problematic Sabian beliefs and practices address the mushrikīn (those who make partners to God) from among them. As such, we must consider Sabianism to be on a continuum between monotheism and polytheism. This is why some Muslim legal scholars declared some to be “People of the Book” and others clearly as disbelievers. I will be revisiting the beliefs and practices of Sabians in forthcoming posts and how the understanding of Sabianism is relevant to today’s spiritual environment.

References:

Al-Andalusī, Ṣā’id. Ṭabaqāt Al-Umam. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Kāthalūkīyya li’l Abā’ al-Yasūʿīyyīn, 1912.

Samak, ʿAbd Allāh ʿAlī. Al-Ṣābiʼūn. 1st ed. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ādāb, 1995.

Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools (Part 7)

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 إِنَّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَالَّذِينَ هَادُوا وَالصَّابِئُونَ وَالنَّصَارَىٰ مَنْ آمَنَ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ وَعَمِلَ صَالِحًا فَلَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ

Indeed, those who believed and those who were Jews or Christians or Sabeans [before Prophet Muḥammad (ﷺ)] – those [among them] who believed in Allah and the Last Day and did righteousness – will have their reward with their Lord, and no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve. (Qur’an: 2:62)
— Saheeh International

If you are like me, you might have glossed over the mention of the Sabians the first few hundred times you read this verse and those like it. Mysteriously sandwiched between two groups of people we feel we know about, the Jews and the Christians, we know less about the Sabians in our times. Not only that, but many Muslim scholars appear to have been perplexed as to their true identity and disagreed about who they are, what they believe, and their status vis-a-vis the Muslim community. Many contemporary scholars have tried, but few have arrived at a viable conclusion. It, thus, remains a mystery… perhaps, a mystery school.

My hunch is that the Mysteries of the Greeks – and later the Freemasons and other New Age groups – are what classical Islamic sources refer to as Ṣābi’ah (Sabianism), a complex and multifarious religious tradition that merged different fields of knowledge into its spiritual worldview. Like the Ancient Mysteries described in esoteric sources of modern times, it was thought to be the primordial religion of mankind going back to Adam. It is most often associated with Hermes (Tehuti/Thoth in Egypt, Enoch, in the Bible and Idrīs in the Qur’an). Over time it suffered from corruption and experienced internal reform and slowly dissipated from public attention. Sabianism was overshadowed by other religious movements in the Near East, occasionally taking on different names and descriptions depending on the language, reformer, or public sentiments of the time.

Tehuti aka Hermes aka Enoch aka Idris.
Original source: Budge, E. A. Wallace. “The Nile: Notes for Travellers in Egypt.” (Harrison and Sons, London: 1902). p. 188.

Christopher Buck, in his article, The Identity of the Sabi’un: An Historical Quest, examines the evidences for the various accounts of early Muslim encounters with so-called Sabians according to the listing of Jacques Waardenburg:

  1. Mazdaeans of Mesopotamia, Iran and Transoxania
  2. Christians of various denominations
    1. Nestorians of Mesopotamia and Iran
    2. Monophysites of greater Syria, Egypt, and Armenia
    3. Orthodox Melkites of greater Syria
    4. Orthodox Latins of North Africa
    5. Arians of Spain
  3. Jews of Mesopotamia and Iran, greater Syria, and Egypt
  4. Samaritans of Palestine
  5. Mandaeans of south Mesopotamia
  6. Harranians of north Mesopotamia
  7. Manichaeans of Mesopotamia and Egypt
  8. Buddhists and Hindus of the Sind
  9. Indigenous religions of east Africa (172-173)

Were the early Muslims so oblivious that they went all over the world calling every unfamiliar religious denomination Sabians or did their understanding differ from ours? In future posts, I will attempt to unravel this mystery, step-by-step until we see that classical Muslim writers referred to the Ancient Mystery Schools as Sabianism.

Buck, Christopher. “The Identity of the Sabi’un: An Historical Quest.” The Muslim World 74, no. 3–4 (1984): 172–86. https://www.bahai-library.com/buck_identity_sabiuns.

Islam and the Ancient Egyptian Mystery Schools: The Works of Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar

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The works of Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar are crucial to the discussion about the connection between Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools (i.e. the ancient religion of the world). Though his first book on the topic, Qudamāʾ al-Miṣrīyīn ʾAwwal al-Muwaḥidīn (The Ancient Egyptians the First Monotheists), was published in 1995 and its second part, Laysū ʾĀlihah wa Lākin Malāʾikah (Not Gods, But Angels) in 2003, and had an impact in the Arab world, English readers are largely in the dark about his research. His works address the nature of ancient Egyptian religion, which was the major religious center of the ancient world, and seeks to dispel myths and misinterpretations concerning their worship of the pharaohs and multiple gods. George G.M. James and other authors have made this assertion, but none of them have performed studies with the same rigor of Dr. al-Sayyar’s works. I recently purchased his two publications at the Cairo International Book Fair and thought it would be worth sharing some thoughts about them.

“Knowledge Is the Lost Property of a Believer…”

There is a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ to the effect that “knowledge (or wisdom) is the lost property of the believer; wherever he finds it he is the most deserving of it.” I preamble this discussion with this because many who might be intrigued by this topic may be stifled by their prejudice against Arabs and/or Muslims who speak on this topic. The arguments of the so-called Afrocentrists are that:

  • the current Egyptians, especially those light-skinned Egyptians, are not the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians
  • Arab Muslims, who are supposedly the majority in Egypt, are a colonizing force that supplanted the ancient Egyptian religion
  • the Qur’an, like the Bible, appears to condemn “Pharaoh” and the ancient religion of Egypt

Egyptian Ancestry

To the first point that current Egyptians are not descendants of the ancient Egyptians, this is not completely true. Egypt is a very diverse society. Its location in northeast Africa has always been a site for migration and traveling between the three continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Likewise, the Nile River and its yearly flooding made the land particularly fertile and ideal place to settle. The civilization that resulted from these environmental factors was also attractive to settlers from different places.

While the first inhabitants of this land were undoubtedly dark skinned people, they frequently intermarried with other groups that relocated to the region. In addition to this contact, Egypt also experienced many waves of migration and conquest: the Hyksos, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, etc. Egypt, during the middle ages was ruled by a myriad of Eastern European and Central Asian slaves… Today, most metropolitan Egyptians can count all these groups among their ancestors in addition to their black ancient Egyptian ancestors. Therefore, their offspring would not be cut off from the greatness of their black heritage merely due to the fact that some of their ancestors were from other places.

I understand that this runs counter to popular belief in Afrocentric thought. Unfortunately, Afrocentric thought relies too heavily on a contemporary American concept of race, which does not always allow for multilayers and ways of constructing identity. This is a major fallacy of Afrocentric thought alongside methodological issues in their research. I do, however, find it useful to approach subjects such as African history from a truly “African-centered” perspective. That is, to center the voices and perspectives of Africans on their own histories, which I think is important in the case of Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar.

Arab Muslims?

To the second point, a discussion of what it means to be Arab is beyond the scope of this post. However, it suffices me to say that Arab identity is not a racial identity, but rather a cultural-linguistic identity that includes a number of ethnic, racial, and genealogical groups, similar to the Latinx identity. Though the majority of Egyptians are Muslims, the majority are not “ethnically” Arab (if that is truly a thing), meaning that they track their lineage back to the Arabian peninsula. They are Arab in the sense that they adopted the Arabic language and ascribe to an Arab culture. Since the majority of Egyptians are not “Arab-proper,” we cannot say that they have colonized the land of Egypt. It is ludicrous to suggest, as many Afrocentrics think, that a small group of warriors from Arabia came and conquered all these lands, and changed the majority of people’s language and religion by force and continue to take on this identity to this day.

Furthermore, before Egypt and Nubia became Muslims they were Christian with a minority Jewish population. The same holds true for much of North Africa and the Levant. Why then are Muslims implicated as the ones who supplanted the ancient Egyptian religion when there were other religions that dominated Egypt prior to its spread?

Muslim Views of the Pharaoh

To the third point, which characterizes Islam as being antithetical to the ancient Egyptian religion, the aim of Dr. al-Sayyar’s work is to dispel this myth among other things. For instance, Dr. al-Sayyar holds that pharaoh was the title given to the ruler of Egypt, no matter what their ethnicity. He then finds that the pharaohs of Moses’ day was actually a ruler of foreign Hyksos extraction and that the religion they promoted and their practices was not representative of the ancient Egyptian religious practices. In addition, he brings to the reader’s attention the number of prophets and other noble figures recorded in the Muslim tradition who were from Egypt. One of the aims of his research is to clarify misunderstandings that Muslims have acquired about ancient Egyptian religion based on their reliance on Jewish and western sources.

Laysū ʾĀlihah wa Lākin Malāʾikah (Not Gods, But Angels) published in 2003.
Chapter 1: Egypt and the Prophets,
Chapter 2: The Myth of Multiple Gods,
Chapter 3: The Myth of Worshiping the Neter,
Chapter 4: The Myth of Worshiping the Pharaohs,
Chapter 5: God in the Beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians

Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar

I challenge my Afrocentric brethren to consider Dr. al-Sayyar’s works on its merits and not simply his ethnic, national, and racial background. He was originally a poet and oud player and later obtained a degree in medicine. Fused by the Naksa suffered by Egypt at the hands of the Israeli army in 1967 he began to bury himself in the reading of Egyptian history, which eventually led him to the study of Comparative Religion. In 1985, he traveled to Iraq to live amongst the lasting communities of Sabians (the name of the ancient Egyptian religion) and to study their ways. He would later acquire degrees in Islamic Studies from al-Azhar University and Coptic Studies from Ain Shams University, where he studied a number of languages such as Coptic, which includes Greek, Hebrew, and Ancient Egyptian, as well as Akkadian, Syriac, Armenian, and the ancient Yemeni language. The result of his studies are the three works he published on the topic of Ancient Egyptian religion. He passed away in 2018, but his daughters have since republished his first two books and plan to republish his third book, Al-Maṣrīyyūn al-Qudamāʾ ʾAwwal al-Ḥunafāʾ (The Ancient Egyptians, the First Hanifs) soon.

Al-Sayyar’s Description of the Egyptian Mystery Schools

The works of Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar firmly establish the connections between Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools. He does this in Qudamāʾ, by taking a retroactive examination of the prophets and other notable religious figures from Egypt. He starts off discussing tawhid (monotheism) in Egypt under Greek rule by examining the likes of Plato, Herodotus, Luqman, and Akhenaton. Then he discusses prophets mentioned in the Qur’an who were either from Egypt or had a relationship with it such as Ibrahim, Hajar, Isma’il, Ya’qub, Yusuf, and Musa. He examines the misunderstandings about the pharaoh in the time of Musa, which he attributes to distortions propagated by Jewish scholars over centuries. He follows that by giving examples of monotheistic beliefs across various pharaonic dynasties. He concludes the book by discussing the prophethood of Idris and his impact on Egyptian beliefs.

In Laysū, he establishes that the original religion of Egypt was that which was brought by the Prophet Idris, who Muslim exegetes have believed since the early days of Islam to be the first prophet sent by God after the creation of Adam. That religion, according to al-Sayyar, was called the Saba’iyya (Sabianism), which is alluded to in the Qur’an on a few occasions. If you were like me, then the first time you came across the verses (Quran 2:62, Quran 5:69, and Quran 22:17) when Allah mentions the different Peoples of the Book, you probably glossed over the mention of the Sabians. While it was known to be the Mandeans of Southern Iraq, it was first the religion of ancient Egypt, according to al-Sayyar.

He then shifts into a rigorous linguistic and historical analysis of the Neter. There are many jewels regarding his analysis, in which he illuminates his hypothesis that the Neter referred to in the Book of the Dead are actually what Jews, Muslims, and Christians would deem to be angels. He starts off by making it clear that although Wallis Budge and other early Egyptologists translated this word as “god” (and Neteru as “gods”), they did not have a consensus on how to translate it, nor did they believe that god was the best translation of the word (42-45).

Starting from the premise that we have received mistranslations and misinterpretations, he begins to unravel the meaning of “Neter” linguistically. Then he performs a careful comparison between Egyptian perceptions of the Neter and contemporary beliefs about angels and spiritual beings. In each comparison he examines historical sources in their original languages. He concludes the book by examining the ancient Egyptian belief in God by their attributes for Him, which he found to correspond with common Islamic beliefs concerning the attributes of God.

In many ways, Dr. Nadim al-Sayyar has done a great service to those of us interested in the connections between Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools. Before we can benefit from this scholarship, we need to overcome hurdles of language and prejudice with regards to scholarship coming from the Arab world. Likewise, as Westerners, we have been conditioned to devalue scholarship produced in other languages and overestimate the accuracy of Western scholarship. By overcoming these hurdles, we can gain greater access to the knowledge being produced in the world beyond our own intellectual borders.