Sabier

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The Sabians were one in the 12./13. Religious community that disappeared in the 19th century and was particularly widespread in the region around Harran and Sumatar in the southeast of today's Turkey and in the neighboring areas of today's Syria and Lebanon . The cult was evidently based on the worship of the stars . The most important god was probably the Babylonian moon god Sin .

Little really verifiable news has come down about the cult . Sin was worshiped in the form of a holy stone in the main temple in Harran . A relationship to the Babylonian- Chaldean star cults can be assumed. When the cult community came into being is not clear. The Sin cult in Harran already existed in the 6th century BC. Chr. , When the Babylonian king Nabonidus known to him. In the 2nd century AD, the moon deity was apparently called Marilaha (king of the gods) and was supposed to rule over the planetary gods, who act as mediators between Sin and humans. At the latest now it seems to have taken up elements of Greco-Roman polytheism within the framework of a syncretism . Until the 4th century the Roman emperors worshiped the moon goddess Selene in Harran . The religion was able to assert itself in the core area around Harran even after the presumed destruction of the main temple in 382 AD under Emperor Theodosius I and the declaration of Christianity as the only permitted religion in the Roman Empire . It is possible that there was now a connection with Neo-Platonism , since, according to some researchers, the two pagan philosophers Simplikios and Damascius settled in Harran around 533 and founded a school there. But this is not guaranteed either.

The believers only adopted the name "Sabier" when they were faced with the alternative of either professing Islam (or a book religion tolerated by the Koran ) or treating and fighting as pagans by the caliph al-Ma'mun in the 9th century to become. Like the Mandaeans , from now on they referred to themselves as "Sabians" or " Sabeans " - which probably meant in the Koran the followers of Anabaptist communities or the followers of a Sabaean- Yemeni star cult - since these according to the Koran sura 2.62 and sura 5.69 to be tolerated. From this time u. a. Narrated that the Sabians said prayers three times a day, lived monogamous , knew no circumcision , performed ritual ablutions and wore long hair.

Christian and Muslim authors have made various claims that the Sabians worshiped the devil . As a result, the religious community came under increasing pressure. The remains of the Sabians are in the 12./13. In the 19th century it was finally absorbed by the Shamsi Alawites .

literature

  • Al-Biruni : In the gardens of science. Leipzig 1988 (2nd, combined edition 1991). ISBN 3379002623 . Source texts from the early 11th century, pp. 125–127.
  • Daniel Chwolson: The Ssabians and the Ssabism , 2 volumes. Petersburg 1856.
  • T. Fahd: Ṣābiʾa. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. 8, Brill, Leiden, pp. 675-678.
  • Tamara Green: The City of the Moon God. The Religious Traditions of Harran . Leiden 1992. ISBN 9004095136 .