Abdullah ibn Saba

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This page is work in progress to identify who was Abdullah ibn Saba, what was his role during the formative years of Islam, and why he took the name "ibn Saba"

Who was Abdullah ibn Saba?

What was his role?

Why he took the name "ibn Saba"?

Who are the Sabians?

This word has been used to refer to a variety of people

monotheistic

  • Sebomenoi/Sebeoi a monotheistic community God Fearers referred to by Greek manuscripts from the Hellenistic-Roman period, generally considered the same as Ger Toshav, and also the same as the TSabians of the Qur'an.

gnostic (angel worshiping)

    • Mandaeans a gnostic community that seceeded c.60CE from the Sabians who eventually came to be mentioned in the Quran. Mandaean is the term used for the laypeople of the community, and Nasorean is the term used for the priesthood directly descendedfrom the 1st C. BC Notzrim. They are in Lower Babylonia, in the territory of Wasiṭ and Bassora, near Khuzistan. ca. 1st c. CE to the present day;

polytheistic

  • TSabians of Harran (Harranians), a the exonym (ca. 9th and 10th c. CE) for the Yazdâeans gnostic people who incorporated astrology and "worship of the heavenly host," who have lived in northern Mesopotamia from ancient times. A gnostic religious belief of the Kurds, usually assumed to be derived from the Mandaeans. Yazidism, Alevism and Yarsanism are sects within Yazdânism.
  • Sabians of Maimonides usually understood to be the TSabians of Harran, although may be a composite of Sabaeans, Harranians, Mandaeans and Zoroastrians.
  • SHabians of Sheba, an ancient polytheistic people living in what is now Yemen. ca. 10th to 6th c. BCE

nationalistic

  • SHabaian refer to the monotheistic followers of Abdullah ibn SHaba. A derogatory term for the Shiah, reflecting the claim that Shi'ite Islam was invented by Abdullah ibn Saba, a Yemenite or Persian Muslim-Jew who lived in the time of Caliph Uthman. He may have been a true Quranic Sabian opposing reforms to islam made by the Caliphate. Even so modern Shiah islam shares more in common with Sunni islam than with Seboghatullah.

Sabian Nation

Biblical Saba

Saba is rendered three times in Genesis' Table of Nations:

  • Genesis 10:6 renders Kush's descendants as סבא Seva, שבא Sheva.
  • Genesis 10:21 renders Yoqtan's descendant as שבא Sheva

The latter is generally identified with the Yemenite nation of Sheba associated with the Queen of Sheba (named Makeda in Ethiopian tradition and Bilqis in Islamic tradition) referred to in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles, the New Testament and the Qur'an.

Modern Scholarship

Ethiopia

The location of Sheba has become closely linked with national prestige, as various royal houses have claimed descent from the Queen of Sheba and Solomon. The most vigorous claimant has been Ethiopia and Eritrea, where Sheba was traditionally linked with the ancient Axumite Kingdom. As Ethiopia has remained a Christian state, the connection to Sheba has been an important one, especially to the former ruling family, the Solomonic dynasty. Ethiopist Donald Levine argued in favor of one Ethiopian tradition that "Sheba is Shewa!"

Eritrea

Alternatively there is evidence of a region in northern Tigray and Eritrea which called itself Saba. But most scholars would call it Ethiopian Saba, and indicate that it supports the assumption that Sabean culture existed both in Ethiopia and Yemen, without one colonizing the other.

Both sides of the Red Sea

Recent archaeological evidence has not supported the Ethiopian claim strongly. Most scholars today believe that, at most, the kingdom of Sheba controlled some coastal regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea but was centered on the southwestern tip of the Arabian peninsula, modern Yemen. Linguistic evidence also points to a close historical relationship between the two sides of the Red Sea, as South Semitic languages are found only in two places: southern Arabia (modern Yemen and Oman), and the Horn of Africa (modern Eritrea and Ethiopia). Additionally, the modern Ge'ez alphabet developed from the old South Arabian alphabet.

Yemen

Modern scholars tend to think a link to the Sabaeans of southern Arabia, who inhabited the same region, is the most probable.

Other places

Ruins in many other countries, including Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, and Iran, have been credited as being Sheba, but with only minimal evidence. There has even been a suggestion of a link between the name "Sheba" and that of Zanzibar.

M. C. de Perceval

M. C. de Perceval proposed a theory, that in South Arabia there were two distinct races, Cushite and Joktanide, the former Sabeans (Seba), the latter Shabeans (Sheba). The first he identifies with the Adites; and the extinction of the Adites in Arabia (as held by Mahometan tradition) he attributes to the emigration of the entire Cushite race, and their transplantation from Arabia into Abyssinia (Ethiopia). The theory is ingenious, but devoid of proof; and in itself improbable. As for the Adites, it has been shown by Sprenger that they lived near the Thamudites, north of Mecca: they were therefore entirely distinct from the Sabeans of Yemen.

Maimonides

Maimonides in his Guide to the Perplexed discusses the Sabians as the typical pagans of the world before Abraham. The customs he describe have some similarity to Harranians, Mandaeans and Zoastrians. In other places he implies Sabians are the descendants of the ancient kingdom of Sheba. During the reign of the Queen of Sheba, monotheism was adopted, but rapidly fell into polytheism.

Sabian Religion

Russian Orientalist Daniel Chwolson

Chwolson argues as follows: since Muhammad could not include a pagan community in the People of the Book, to which Jews and Christians surely belonged, the Harranians are fabricating history when professing themselves Sabians (and in this sense the famous story of the meeting/dispute between Caliph al-Ma’mùn and the Harranians contained in al- Nadìm’s Fihrist chapter X plays a decisive role; on the other hand, if the Harranian people are not the Sabi’ùn mentioned in Suras II, V and XXII laconic verses, there is no doubt that the Prophet had somebody else in mind: but who are the members of this unknown monotheistic community? The phonetic likeness Subbi-Sàbi’ùn provides Chwolson with the answer he wishes. The small baptismal group of Mandaeans who lived in Muhammad’s times (as they do now) in the marshy South- Mesopotamian region, and who were called sometimes by the nickname Subbi or Subba by their neighbours. In fact, the Mandaeans grew out of a sesession from the Petrine Sebomenoi around 60CE.

Alberto Fratini and Carl Prato

Alberto Fratini and Carl Prato present an opinion that the Sabians of the Qur'an are exactly equivelent to the Ger Toshav of rabbinic tradition, and in this sense an Arabic translation of the word Theosebeia or God Fearers. The distinction between monotheistic or polytheistic is arbitrary and relates to the level of adoption of monotheistic Theosebeia by a pagan community. This allows for the possibility of calling Harranians sabians at the pagan end of the spectrum.