Mandaeans' voice from Sidney, Australia

This article tells us the problems that the mandaean people have in their refuegee countries.

Life finally deals Mandaean refugees a good hand / By Russell Skelton. Sydney

September 20, 2004

Najieh Ascher Sobbi is free after four years in detention.

Picture:Neil Eliot

During her four years in immigration detention, Najieh would undertake a simple daily ritual. From a pack of tattered playing cards she would deal herself a hand, looking for a sign, an omen, that she and her son, Jafar, would be released.

According to Jafar, 27, the cards never turned up anything positive. No matter how much she shuffled them, the portents were always gloomy. And what they indicated seemed to be true as their bid for asylum was systematically rejected, first by Immigration officials and later by the Refugee Review Tribunal.

Najieh lost hope of a new life in Australia, of joining her sister, Jila, and 13 nephews and nieces in Sydney. Deportation seemed unavoidable. Like so many detainees, she became depressed, her blood pressure rose, and she became increasingly disoriented and had difficulty remembering.

Last month Najieh and Jafar Ascher Sobbi were released from the Baxter detention centre following a high level review ordered by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone into the plight of Sabian Mandaeans. They are the last of 160 Mandaean men, women and children to be released from detention after their claims of religious persecution in Iran were finally recognised.

"Even now she is afraid, she still thinks that someone from Immigration will knock on the door and take her back to Baxter," says Jafar. "She loves her freedom, but she cannot quite get used to the fact that she is free. She has been conditioned by years of living in total despair." Speaking through an interpreter, Najieh said: "I spent years trying to keep my spirits up, today I can walk down the street and talk to people. I still cannot believe I am free. I ate fresh fish today for the first time."

Their release represents a remarkable turnaround in refugee policy. When Mandaeans first started arriving in Australia six years ago, their applications for asylum were systemically rejected by the then immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, who insisted that they were discriminated against by the Iranian Islamic Republic but never persecuted. He moved to have them deported along with other Iranians whose applications for asylum had been rejected.

But those moves came to an abrupt halt last year when Justice Cooper of the Federal Court ruled that Mandaeans were persecuted in Iran and that the Refugee Review Tribunal had failed to properly investigate their claims. He found that Mandaeans could not attend university, were refused work in the public service, were denied free access to hospitals and that Mandaean women were sexually abused and not properly protected by police.

For Najieh, it has been a long, painful and distressing journey from the dusty Iranian town of Ahwaz, where followers of the Sabian Mandaean faith - who follow the teachings of John the Baptist - have worked for centuries as goldsmiths, boat builders and carpenters. She fled Ahwaz soon after her husband died, realising that she could no longer make a future for her son.

While she is still adjusting to her freedom and is no longer afraid of persecution by Muslims, she admits to finding her new life confusing. "I cannot get used to talking to people without being afraid of who might be listening," she says.

About mandaean people

Hardly are about 2,000 of the 50,000 who lived in Iraq. Those who could flee the war have taken refuge in countries like Australia, England or the U.S., who have not accepted without much hesitation. Although they have been persecuted throughout their history, are now about to disappear due to religious intolerance.

The Mandaeans are the last group Gnostic before Christianity was born and still continues to practice their rituals as they did formerly.

For them, their alphabet is magical and sacred, hence, even communicate with each other with the Mandaean, the priests use one language much earlier, the Mandaean known as classic, which only they can understand. It is the alphabet they are written in their holy books, among which is the Ginza, which means treasure.

They also use the letters of their alphabet to write spells and incantations in small bowls, that are like bowls of soup, do in order to ward off the demons of the houses to stop peaceful families living inside. One of these bowls is the demon-traps used in the novel as a theme throughout the plot.

The Mandaeans are rooted in antiquity dating back to Egyptian times and lived in Jerusalem during the first century AD, when John the Baptist preaching in the Jordan River. They claim they knew him and that part of their liturgy is infused with his spirit. In fact, he became in his fourth and final prophet, and say to him who came to earth to heal the sick and raise the dead. Almost all of the Christian tradition attributes to Jesus, except for the divinity, the Mandaeans are those granted to their prophet John.

The Sacred Alphabet uses their rites and customs to take the reader by the hand in a work of thrilling action can not stop reading. However, quite unlike other works of this type, Gemma Nieto's novel is well grounded in a solid documentation that led him to gather more than two years. All the scenarios mentioned in the book are true and it is very difficult to separate fiction from reality because sometimes the novel becomes more credible that the same reality.

This is a work that absorbs the reader from the outset and not allowed to leave the reading to the end, a novel in which the action is perfectly dosed and the plots are intertwined with such mastery that the only thing that the reader can make is ... read.

Mandaeans' videos

These Internet resources I presented to you are very affordable because of an immediate way you can get the documentation you consider more attractive.
It constitutes the first step to approach the Mandaean culture.

-Mandaeans

Beautiful photographic history with old images made over a century ago by pioneering studies Mandaeism, Lady Drower.

-Ancient religion under threat - Sabian Mandaeans

While a Mandaean priest reading a sacred text, the announcer tells the BBC in English some of the highlights of this forgotten faith and speaks of the persecution they are subjected in Iraq. It also introduces us to some supporters who tell of their experiences.

-Mandaeans on BBC

This video begins with images on a wedding and a baptism typically Mandaeans. Then, introduces the audience to the realities of the community of Baghdad showing the funeral of a murdered police Mandaean and a child who had been kidnapped and tortured and whose family was forced to flee to Syria. It has a good technical quality.

-BBC Worl: An ancient Mandaean faith forced into exile

The BBC has been one that has done most to make known the real situation of panic and terror with which the Mandaeans have to live today.

-BBC Sabians Mandaeans Sabians

Report by completing a series of articles published in youtube by the BBC about the situation of the Mandaean community.

-Mandaean refugees

This six-minute and a half trailer proclaims the situation who daily suffer the Mandaeans in Iraq, especially following the U.S. invasion. Asked to help out a greater number of Mandaeans have allowed political asylum by the U.S.

-Mandaean and Iraqi cities

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.

This series consists of 4 videos tell us in clear and concise form the way of life and problems of the Mandaean population.

Mandaeans' links

There are many websites dedicate to show us how are the lives and the rites of the Mandaeans. Some of them are created by de own mandaean people but another belongs to historians a teachers.

If you are interested in them, don't hesitate to visit the following sites.

-April of DeConick.

This site belongs to April D. DeConick, professor and historian of early Christian and Jewish thought at the University of Houston (Texas), has its own space dedicated to the Mandaeans with interesting links.

The following links have a special consideration in order to know best to the Mandaean people:
-Wikipedia: Mandaeism.
-Wikipedia: Mandaic alphabet.
-Wikipedia: Mandaic Language.
-Wikipedia: Incantation bowls.

-Mandaean Association Union.

The Mandaean Association of America is an international federation of associations and groups command of the entire world dedicated to representing their rights. Its head office is in Toronto (Canada) and has other subsidiaries in London, Manchester and Stockholm.

-The Gnostic Society Library.

For those wishing to enter the reading of Mandaeans, this is the best site.

-Mandaean Refugee Resources Project. 

American site specially dedicated to preserving and protecting the rights of the Mandaean population and to help all refugees.

-Mandaic.

It is the first attempt to explain in the web the mandaean language and their texts.

Mandaeans' bibliography

The English language has very good study manuals, solvents and clarifiers, on the Gnostic sect of the Mandaeans. From the writings of Lady Drower the middle of last century, to the most innovative professor Jorunn Jacobsen, they all have a great seriousness. Then, I suggest some volumes that could help you learn more about this distinctive religious group that still trying to survive in Iraq and Iran.

-The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran. Their Cults, Customs, Magic Legends, and Folklore, Ethel Stefana Drower, 2002 (reprinted from the Oxford edition, 1937), Gorgias Press, 540 pages.

Contains a study of all aspects of the life of the Mandaeans of Iran and Iraq. Lady Drower was the first European interest in a scientific manner by the Mandaeans and make them known to the Western world.

-Baptists of Iran, Abbas Tahvildar, out of print, 2000, Tehran-Iran, 174 pages. English and French.

Special high quality photographic work with texts in English and French. Although the images of Abbas Tahvildar about Mandaeans belongs to mandi of Ahwaz (Iran), its rites are virtually identical to those of Iraq.

-Catalog of the Aramaic and Mandaic Incantation Bowls in the British Museum, JB Erica Segal and C.D. Hunter, 2000, British Museum Press, 400 pages.

The collection of Mesopotamian incantation bowls in the British Museum is the second largest in the world (after the Baghdad Museum in Iraq). This catalog provides a transliteration and a translation with commentary of the texts of each of the 142 bowls.

-The Mandaeans Ancient Texts and Modern People, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, 2002, Oxford University Press, 216 pages.

One of the most interesting and comprehensive works on Mandaeism.

-The great steam of souls, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, 2006, Gorgias Press, 408 pages.

One of the classics studies about mandaean people.

-Mandaeans: The Last Gnostics, Edmondo Lupieri, 2001, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub, 296 pages.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to Mandaism telling us their traditional way of life, and introduces readers to the complex world of religious ideas.

-Gnostic Ethics and Mandaean Origins, Edwin M. Yamauchi, 2004, Gorgias Press, 102 pages.

Unlike other researchers (Lady Drower, R. Machuch or K. Rudolph) which match the sources of Mandaeism with the Christian religion, Yamauchi concludes that this Gnostic group arose around the second century AD.

-A Mandaic Dictionary, E.S. Drower and R. Macuch, out of print, 1963, Oxford Clarendon Press (out of print), 491 pages.

To understand the Mandaean language difficult. Explain the meaning of words like Ginza, ganzebra ...

-Gnosis: the Nature and History of Gnosticism, Kurt Rudolph, out of print, 1987, Harper San Francisco, 411 pages.

Examines the Gnostic writings, myths and ideology and debate about the influence of his followers, among them the Mandaeans.

-Mandaeism, Kurt Rudolph, out of print, 1978, Institute of Religious Iconography, State University Groningen, Leiden E. J. Brill, 29 pages.