Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East

by Gerard Russell

  I also benefited from the lectures and advice of Professor Ali Asani, Professor Oktor Skjaervo, and Dr. Charles Stang of Harvard University.

  Choosing any book to highlight as an introduction to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, other than their sacred texts, is an invidious business. Hans Kung’s series on these religions, including Christianity (Continuum, 1996), Judaism (Bloomsbury, 1995), and Islam (Oneworld Publications, 2008), told me much that I had not known. So did Albert Hourani’s A History of the Arab Peoples (Faber & Faber, 1991) and Eugene Rogan’s The Arabs: A History (Basic Books, 2011) on a more secular front. The Encyclopaedia Iranica, the Oxford History of Islam, edited by John L. Esposito (Oxford University Press, 1999), and the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers (Brill, 1953), were all useful reference documents throughout.

  On the specific issue of conversion to Islam, I read Conversion to Islam, by Richard Bulliet (Harvard University Press, 1979); Rise of Islam on the Bengal Frontier, by Richard Eaton (University of California Press, 1996); The Formation of Islam, by Jonathan Berkey (Cambridge University Press, 2002); and “The Age of Conversions: A Reassessment” by Michael Morony in Conversion and Continuity, edited by M. Gervers and J. Bikhazi (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990).

  Three other books that are referred to in multiple chapters are Michael Morony’s Iraq After the Muslim Conquest (Princeton University Press, 1984), Patricia Crone’s The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Christoph Baumer’s The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (I. B. Tauris, 2006).

  Quotations from the Bible are from the Authorized King James version unless noted otherwise below. Quotations from the Koran are from the Saheeh International version. Quotes from Herodotus are taken from Aubrey de Sélincourt’s translation of The Histories (Penguin, 1954).

  Introduction

  On Identity by Amin Maalouf is available in English in a translation by Barbara Bray (Harvard Press, 2004).

  Al-Ghazali’s polemic against Greek philosophy was called Tahafut al-Falasifa.

  The kaiser’s remark is taken from Kamal Salibi’s Bhamdoun: Historical Portrait of a Lebanese Mountain Village (Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1997).

  Ambassador Morgenthau’s assessment of the Armenian genocide can be read on the website of the Armenian National Institute, at www.armenian-genocide.org/statement_morgenthau.html.

  Suha Rassam’s observation comes in her Christianity in Iraq (Gracewing, 2010), page 196.

  Arthur Balfour’s memorandum of August 11, 1919, can be seen in Woodward and Butter, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939 (HMSO, 1952).

  Chapter 1: Mandaeans

  I met the High Priest when I was head of the political section of the British embassy in Baghdad between 2005 and 2006. I subsequently met Mandaeans in Erbil, northern Iraq, in 2010 and 2013, in the United States, and in Britain. To read more about them, as well as the books listed here, I recommend the Mandaean Associations Union, whose website is www.mandaeanunion.org.

  Those who helped me with this chapter included Nadia Hamdan Gattan and her aunt, Sheikh Sattar, and Wasim Breegi, who all generously gave me their time and confidence. Professor Jorunn Buckley of the University of Maine, author of a learned and humane study called The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People (Oxford University Press, 2000), patiently answered my numerous questions. The staff of the Bodleian Library allowed me to see the Drower collection; likewise the Bibliothèque Nationale in respect to its collection of Syriac and Mandaic manuscripts and books.

  For a general introduction to the Mandaeans, there can be nothing better than E. S. Drower’s books, especially The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Gorgias Press, 2002)—labeled hereafter as MII—but also The Secret Adam (Oxford University Press, 1960). Mandaeans: The Last Gnostics, by Edmondo Lupieri (Eerdmans, 2001) was the source for my stories of Western missionaries’ encounters with the Mandaeans, including the Isa-Iahia quote, and also for the Mandaean magical potions that appear later in the chapter. Another major scholar on the Mandaeans is Edwin Yamauchi, who wrote Gnostic Ethics and Mandaean Origins (Harvard University Press, 1970).

  Excavations at Ur, by Leonard Woolley (E. Benn, 1954), is the source of Woolley’s remark on the Flood. I used Andrew George’s excellent The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation (Penguin, 2003) for the excerpts from the epic in this chapter, including the prostitute’s curse. “Therefore is the name of it Babel . . . ” comes from Genesis 11:9.

  For background on Babylon I read The Sumerians, by Samuel Noah Kramer (University of Chicago Press, 1964), and Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria, by Georges Contenau (W. W. Norton, 1966). Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization, by Paul Kriwaczek (Atlantic, 2012), is a description of the legacy of Babylon in the present day. My account of Saddam’s reconstruction of Babylon was informed by the September 1997 documentary The New Babylon by Journeyman Pictures.

  The Patriarchs’ salutation “From my cell . . . ” is quoted in Baumer’s Church of the East. Insights into the sectarian bloodshed that ravaged Iraq after 2003 can be found in Sectarianism in Iraq, by Fanar Haddad (Hurst, 2011), and Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile and Upheaval in the Middle East, by Deborah Amos (PublicAffairs, 2010). The guidebook to Baghdad alluded to in this chapter was the Bradt travel guide by Karen Dabrowska, published in 2002.

  Jaakko Hameen-Anttila’s The Last Pagans of Iraq (Brill, 2006) was my source on the Nabatean Agriculture, of which it is a translation with an added commentary (I am grateful to Philip Wood for the tip).

  Al-Mas’udi can be read in Islamic Historiography: The Histories of Al Masudi, by Tarif Khalidi (State University of New York Press, 1975).

  Caliph Omar weeping at the conversion of Arameans is reported in Crone, Nativist Prophets, page 10.

  Biruni’s comments on the Mandaeans are in his Chronology of Ancient Nations, which he wrote in ad 1000 at the age of twenty-seven. It was his eighth book. For more on Biruni, see the Encyclopaedia Iranica (e.g., at www.iranicaonline.org). Sarton’s remark comes in his book Introduction to the History of Science (Williams & Wilkins, 1927). Ibn Qutaybah’s quote is taken from Dimitri Gutas’s Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (Routledge, 1998).

  I used my Arabic edition of the Ginza Rabba; an English translation is now available. I read Wilfrid Thesiger’s The Marsh Arabs in the Longmans 1964 edition. The Drasa di Yehia is translated in part in G. R. S. Mead’s Gnostic John the Baptizer, republished by Jürgen Beck (Altenmunster, 2012).

  The religious environment in the late Roman Empire is described in A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire, by Keith Hopkins (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999). Statistics for the Jewish population of Iraq before the coming of Islam come from Morony’s Iraq After the Muslim Conquest, page 308; this book was also a source on the survival of paganism in Iraq. My interest in the Marcionites and like movements was originally kindled by Henry Chadwick’s The Early Church (Penguin, 1993).

  Information on Manichaeism came from Ibn Nadim’s Fihrist, trans. Bayard Dodge (Columbia University Press, 1970); Samuel N. C. Lieu’s Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China (Manchester University Press, 1985); and Peter Brown’s paper “Diffusion of Manicheism in the Roman Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies, 1967. The quotations from Augustine’s Confessions are from Pine-Coffin’s translation (Penguin, 1961). The Mandaean funeral prayer can be read in full at http://gnosis.org/library/tsod.htm.

  The Sumerian poem “Schooldays” was originally translated by Kramer in 1949; I here used the translation of A. R. George, 2005. The “umannu” prayer is taken from Astrology: A History, by Peter Whitfield (British Library, 2001). The Aristokrates horoscope is quoted in A History of Astrology by Derek and Julia Parker (London, Deutsch, 1983). Herodotus’s remark on Babylonian washing habits is in his Histories, I:198. Drower’s quote from Hermez o
n the melki comes on page 282 of MII.

  Drower told of the priests’ anger on page x of The Secret Adam, and described Krun on page 270 of MII. The description of Dinanukht is a translation from the Ginza Rabba, reworded by Eliot Weinberger for An Elemental Thing (New Directions, 2007). Drower relates the cure to the Baghdad boil in By Tigris and Euphrates (Hurst & Blackett, 1923), page 228. The Libat spell is in MII, page 26. The Bel and Nebu amulet is mentioned in Drower’s article “A Mandaean Book of Black Magic,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 75 (October 1943). The scorpion amulet and the reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon can be seen at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum.

  The Mandaean Human Rights Group’s 2011 report can be seen at www.mandaeanunion.com/images/MAU/MHRG/MHRG_Docs/MHRG%20%20Report%202011.pdf.

  Chapter 2: Yazidis

  I visited Lalish in July 2011, visited Yazidi refugees in Kurdistan in August 2014, and met Yazidis in the United States in 2012 and then again in 2013. I am grateful to those who talked to me, who are named in the book; most of all I want to single out Mirza Ismail, who was very generous with his time, and Abu Shihab, whose family kindly looked after me in Buffalo, New York. In Nebraska Basim gave me a wonderful introduction to his community. The Spiritual Council of the Yazidis were generous in giving me their time, as were Khairi Buzani, Ayad, and Dakheel. Professor Philip Kreyenbroek very kindly corrected some of my early mistakes, while of course not being responsible for any that may remain.

  For more information on the Yazidis, there is some useful material at www.lalish.de. For general books on the Yazidis, I suggest Yazidis: A Study in Survival, by John S. Guest (Routledge, 1987), E. S. Drower’s Peacock Angel (John Murray, 1941), and Philip Kreyenbroek’s Yazidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition (Edwin Mullen Press, 1995).

  For details on Sinjar I am indebted to Nelida Fuccaro’s 1994 Durham University e-thesis, “Aspects of the Social and Political History of the Yazidi Enclave of Jabal Sinjar (Iraq) Under the British Mandate, 1919–1932.” Details on the history of Edessa and Harran are mostly taken from Edessa: “The Blessed City,” by J. B. Segal (Clarendon Press,1970). Egeria’s Travels can be read in a translation by John Wilkinson (Aris and Phillips, 1999).

  “God help the Romans” comes from Walter Emil Kaegi’s book Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Surat al-Rum is the thirtieth sura of the Koran. I used Paul-Alain Beaulieu’s translation of Nabonidus’s inscription, found online at www.livius.org. Shahristani’s remark on the Sabians comes from his Al-Milal wa al-Nihal. The Harranians’ story is told by Ibn Nadim in his Fihrist, ii:14–17. The quotation from Thabit ibn Qurra is taken from Berkey’s Formation of Islam.

  Yaron Friedman’s The Nusayri-Alawis (Brill, 2009) is a thorough study of what is known of the Alawites from medieval sources. The Reverend Samuel Lyde’s experiences are described in his book The Asian Mystery Illustrated in the History, Religion and Present State of the Ansaireeh or Nusairis of Syria (Longmans, Green,1860). After the Moon is cited online as a publication of Dar al-Shimal publishers in Beirut, but I could find no copy of it. I have drawn on a review of it published at the online magazine Al-Maaber in November 2003 by Nadra al-Yaziji (in Arabic at http://maaber.50megs.com/issue_november03/books4.htm). Jacob de Vitriaco is quoted in Lyde, Asian Mystery.

  Marco Polo’s reference to the Kurds comes in Ronald Latham’s translation of The Travels (Penguin, 1958). Nestorians and Their Rituals, by G. P. Badger (Joseph Masters, 1852), describes Badger’s experiences in northern Iraq, including Yazidi rituals, the sanjak, and Sheikh Adi’s prayer quoted in this chapter. Matti Moosa’s Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat Sects (Syracuse University Press, 1987) was my source on the Shabak. Nineveh and Its Remains, by the archaeologist A. H. Layard (John Murray, 1849), was the source of remarks attributed here to Layard.

  Al-Hallaj’s life was examined with depth and sympathy by Louis Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallaj, available in an English translation by Herbert Mason (Princeton University Press, 1982). Herbert Mason wrote his own shorter and useful biography, Al Hallaj (Carson, 1995).

  Montanus’s quotation is taken from Crone, Nativist Prophets. The quotations from Yusuf Busnaya and Isaac of Nineveh are taken from Christoph Baumer’s The Church of the East, pages 134-5. I also drew on Rabi’a the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam, by Margaret Smith (Cambridge University Press, 1928).

  Plutarch’s description of haoma-offerings in caves is in his Isis and Osiris, chapter 46. Yohannan bar Penkaye’s words are quoted from Berkey’s Formation of Islam.

  Chapter 3: Zoroastrians

  My visit to Iran was in the summer of 2006. I saw Balkh in the spring of 2008. I am very grateful to the World Zoroastrian Organisation and its former president, Shahin Bekhradnia, as well as to the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, for their very kind cooperation. I several times was given hospitality and an open-hearted welcome at the Zoroastrian fire temple in Rayners Lane, London.

  Mary Boyce is so well regarded as an outside expert on the Zoroastrians that I saw her picture hanging in the London fire temple. In particular, her Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979) and her A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (Clarendon Press, 1977) were very useful to me in writing this chapter. An older but important and thought-provoking book on the religion is R. C. Zaehner, Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961). Paul Kriwaczek’s In Search of Zarathustra (Knopf, 2003) traces the broader influence of the religion as far as the modern day.

  Zoroastrians’ conception of their own religion differs somewhat from one individual believer to another, so there is no single book to read that will explain it. Zoroastrian explanations of their own faith include The Religion of Zarathushtra, by I. J. S. Taporewala (Sazman-e-Fravahar, 1980) as well as “The Parsee Religion,” a talk given by Dadabhai Naoroji in 1861 to the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society.

  For a broader understanding of Iran there is a wealth of choice. I particularly enjoyed Roy Mottahedeh’s Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (Oneworld, 2008). I also recommend The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran, by Said Amir Arjomand (Oxford University Press, 2009).

  Shapur’s criticism of Christianity is quoted by Richard Foltz in Religions of the Silk Road (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Herodotus’s observation on Persian education is in his Histories, I:136. Excerpts from the Avesta were taken from the translation provided by D. J. Irani at www.zarathushtra.com. The quote from the Book of Daniel (12:2) is taken from the NET Bible, available online at netbible.com. Nietzsche’s remarks on morality are taken from the introduction to his book Thus Spake Zarathustra, translated by Thomas Common, released as a Project Gutenberg e-book in 2008. Edward Browne’s encounters with the Zoroastrians and Baha’i of late nineteenth-century Iran are described in his A Year Amongst the Persians (Adam and Charles Black, 1893), which was the source also for the poem inscribed at Persepolis. Diodorus Siculus’s words are from the translation of his Histories by Peter Green (University of Texas Press, 2006).

  Details of the Shah’s feast come from an article by Spencer Burke for the Harvard Advocate, Winter 2012 issue. My copy of My Uncle Napoleon, by Iraj Peshehkzad, was published by Random House in 2006. The shah’s remark is quoted by his then minister of education, Manouchehr Ganji, in Defying the Iranian Revolution (Praeger, 2002). The ayatollah’s declaration that the commandments of the ruling jurist are like those of God was made in 1988 and is recorded by Arjomand in Turban for the Crown, page 34.

  Herodotus writes on Persian sacrifices in his Histories, page 96. The quotes from the Shahnamah were taken from Dick Davis’s translation (Viking, 2006). Crone, Nativist Prophets, gave me the lines that I have quoted from the Arab poet Al Ja’di. “This is their religion—to kill Arabs” comes from a poem by the Umayyad general Nasr Ibn as-Sayyar, referring to the Iranian followers of Abu Muslim. Boyce’s Zoroastrians
provided me with the reference to the writer Narshakhi, who is the source of the account of Arab conquerors’ actions in Bukhara.

  Kasravi’s experience is described by Mottahedeh in Mantle of the Prophet. Khomeini’s judgment that Plato was “grave and solid” comes in his Kashf ul Asrar, where he also described Aristotle as a “great man”; see www.irdc.ir/en/content/19569/print.aspx.

  Browne’s Year Amongst the Persians described his encounters with the Zoroastrians and Babis. Poems from the Divan of Hafiz are taken from Gertrude Bell’s translation (W. Heinemann, 1897).

  Hataria’s words are quoted from his 1854 report to the Society for the Amelioration of the Conditions of the Zoroastrians of Persia (which can be read, for instance, in Dr. Daryoush Jahanian’s lecture “The History of Zoroastrians After Arab Invasion” on the website of the Circle of Iranian Studies at www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/History/Post-Sasanian/zoroastrians_after_arab _invasion.htm). The quote “the last mass forcible conversion of Zoroastians,” the statistic on priests’ decline in Yazd, and the address of the bier carriers are all taken from Boyce, Persian Stronghold. Herodotus writes on funerary customs in his Histories, page 99. Khamenei’s words on Charshanbeh-e-Suri were reported by CNN on March 16, 2010: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD /meast/03/15/iran.new.year.crackdown.

  The History of Parliament (www.historyofparliamentonline.org) helped me with some details on the life of Dadabhai Naoroji, which I also partly pieced together from newspaper reports and from Dadabhai Naoroji: The Grand Old Man of India, by Sir Rustom Pestonji Masani (Allen & Unwin, 1939).

  I took some statistics, and the quoted remark of the Zoroastrian Cricket Club, from John Hinnells, The Zoroastrian Diaspora: Religion and Migration (Oxford University Press, 2005).

  Chapter 4: Druze

  I have been to Lebanon many times between 2000 and the present day, but most of the encounters in this chapter were during a trip dedicated to meeting the Druze in 2011. Without the support and help of the British ambassador, Frances Guy, and our mutual friend Rabieh Kays, this would have been a much less fruitful visit. Nadim Shehadi at London’s Royal Institute for International Affairs corrected me on modern Lebanese history and joined me in the search for After the Moon.