The Sabians of Harran and the Sabians of the Quran Book by author Michel Tardieu Translated by Dahman Beroba
All rights reserved by the Algerian National Office for Copyright
ONDA 2026

Introduction

Harran is a city in the Jazira region of Syria. It entered history with the founding of the Mitanni kingdom and left it thirty-two centuries later, when the Mongols razed it to the ground and displaced all its inhabitants to Mosul and Mardin.

It holds a cherished place in the eyes of Orientalists. First, because its walls housed the temple of the Babylonian Moon God “Sin,” the same temple visited by a famous visitor in the 4th century AD — Emperor Julian performed his last prayers there before he was killed in his war with Shapur II. Second, because Arab writers elaborated extensively on the beliefs and rituals of its inhabitants, so it took precedence and remained, over time, the city of the Sabians.

For a century, efforts have been devoted to defining the Harranians’ ideological stance more precisely than the ancient sources could, but these efforts have not reached a clear conclusion. This is because Western scholars have stumbled over the obstacle that the Harranian-Sabian enigma conceals a second enigma: that of the Sabians mentioned in the Qur’an in three verses.

The comparative hypothesis failed and could not establish itself — a hypothesis based on replacing the generic name “Sabians” with the name “Gnostics” in the broad sense of Gnosticism.

Contemporary research is more competent and capable than past research in re-examining this file, after it has been rid of the strange confusion spread in this regard by Islamic writings on sects and creeds. On the one hand, the treatment of the Gnostic issue has been renewed by the discovery and publication of the Coptic manuscripts known as the “Nag Hammadi manuscripts,” which are a collection of texts to which the term “Gnosticism” applies with complete precision. On the other hand, the abundance of publications and research related to Late Platonism is likely to shed light on the history of the influences of Platonic writings — both authentic and spurious — and on the history of the definitions that circulated with them.

Caution must be exercised in two matters. The first is to avoid any confusion that might explain one enigma with another, or illuminate all areas of obscurity with hypotheses that cannot be verified.

The second is to be skeptical of any correspondence based on comparing conceptions that have no specific literary or doctrinal context, or that have not been subjected to sufficient critique when they emanate from adversaries.

With such double caution, it becomes permissible to extract the Sabian doctrine from the dead-end phenomenological path into which it has been forced, thereby returning it to the ground of history.

In order to achieve this goal, what is required first and foremost is to conduct a critical examination of the positions reached by contemporary research and the corrections introduced by Jean Hjarpe’s study fifteen years ago — that is the first chapter of our current research. Then, we must undertake an intensive analysis of what al-Mas‘udi briefly reported on this subject, which will in turn enable us to determine the historical position of the Harranian Sabian doctrine, to which the author of Muruj al-Dhahab was the only direct witness in the Jazira — this is the second chapter. In the third chapter, it is appropriate that we clarify the historical sources preceding the inscription that al-Mas‘udi transmitted to us; and after excluding all pitfalls of confusion with the alleged Harranian Sabian doctrine, we must in the fourth and final chapter identify precisely and qualitatively the Sabians of the Qur’an, with whom we conclude our research.

Chapter One: Examining Contemporary Research and the Corrections of Jean Hjarpe

The research conducted by Jean Hjarpe is essentially a critical re-examination of the main theses in the voluminous work written by Chwolsohn on the Sabians:

1. The Sabians mentioned in the Qur’an are the Mandaeans

2. The summaries given about the Harranian Sabians in Islamic writings on sects and creeds have historical value

3. They provide a description of the beliefs actually widespread and of the rituals actually practiced among the followers of star-worship dwelling in the land of Mudar

4. The Harranian Sabian doctrine took on a scientific character with the introduction of Platonic practices in the 4th century AH (theurgy / “summoning the gods”) and with the adoption of esoteric sciences (occult sciences, magic, and alchemy)

Hjarpe re-examined the materials collected by Chwolsohn, enriched by new writings that were unknown in Chwolsohn’s time, from sources: al-Tabari, al-Maqdisi, al-Biruni, and especially Ibn al-Jawzi. As a result, he reached four conclusions that I will present both in parallel with and in opposition to my previous summary of Chwolsohn’s theses:

First, the Sabians of the Qur’an can in no way be the Mandaeans; moreover, the Qur’an’s use of the word “Sabian” is always accompanied by the word “hanif,” and both mean “Gnostic” in the broad sense of the word.

Second, the large number of vivid details of the religious customs of the Sabians of Harran as reported by Muslim historians of sects are pure literary fabrications inherited from Christian heresiography hostile to Gnosticism, and were transmitted to Muslims by Christian informants.

Third, star worship does not constitute the essential characteristic of the Harranian Sabian doctrine in the strict, specific sense.

Fourth, the Neoplatonism that Islamic heresiography attributed to the Sabians of Harran is a completely false description, and it should properly be applied to another group of Sabians who cannot be conflated with the Harranians: namely, the Sabians of Baghdad.

The contribution made by Hjarpe cannot be underestimated, as he knew how to extract from the tangled “skein” of Arabic traditions concerning the Sabians the threads that lead back to the early Christian polemicists. For Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Dimashqi, Ibn al-Nadim, and the book Ghāyat al-Hakīm — 5th century AH — known in the West as Picatrix thanks to the Latin translation in the 13th century, all report — and indeed, with the most sensational and lurid details — that the Harranian Sabians practiced, during their secret sacred rites, the sacramental consumption of human flesh involving the killing of a child and collective sexual acts, and that they had adopted the bloody ritual known as the “Talking Head” rite as a divination practice.

They said that this rite consists of immersing a man or a young boy, preferably a leper, in oil up to the neck and leaving him in it until the flesh separates from the nerves and begins to decompose due to the effect of the drugs added to the oil.
When the decomposition is complete, the head is taken intact with the entire nervous system and then used as a medium for divination.

Two of the aforementioned Muslim informants cite their sources regarding the rite of consuming human flesh and the Talking Head. Ibn al-Nadim says he derived his information from two Christians: Abu Yusuf Yashuʿ al-Qatiʿi and Saʿid Wahb ibn Ibrahim. Ibn al-Jawzi likewise derives his from a Christian, named Yahya ibn Bishr al-Nahawandi. In this case, all Hjarpe had to do was trace the chain of Syriac-speaking Christian polemicists back to the first link, which was the starting point. As for the accusation of consuming human flesh in secret sacrifices, its source is: the 26th heresy in the book Panarion by its author Epiphanius. As for the tale of the Talking Head, its source is: the Syriac chronicles of the 6th century, which are polemics refuting the Manichaeans that accepted without the slightest skepticism — that is, literally — what in the Greek sources was nothing more than a type of harmless sorcery at the hands of a charlatan alchemist.

Hjarpe undoubtedly conducted a critical examination of these traditions, and his examination is rightly considered, in this field, a turning point. However, his conclusions regarding the identification of the Sabians of the Qur’an, and the determination of the specific ideological character of the two Sabian doctrines — the Harranian and the Baghdadi — do not, on the whole, acquire a decisive quality. Regarding the first point, Hjarpe demonstrated, contrary to Chwolsohn’s opinion which after him became an established fact in all lexicons (including Arabic dictionaries) and even with K. Rudolph himself, that the Sabians spoken of in the Qur’an are not the Mandaeans.

Chwolsohn had supported his thesis: “Sabians of the Qur’an = Mandaeans” with two arguments. The first was that he derived the Qur’anic word “Sabi’” from the Syriac verb “sba,” meaning “to dip,” “to baptize”: hence the designation “Baptists” which was applied to the Mandaeans and others — the Elchasaites — without any distinction. The second rested on a report found in the Fihrist stating that the designation “Sabians” had been borrowed from the “true” Sabians — the Mandaeans — in southern Babylonia by the northern pagans at the beginning of the 3rd century AH, a spurious borrowing that acquired official legitimacy during Caliph al-Ma’mun’s visit to Harran in 215 AH, corresponding to 830 CE.

Hjarpe replied to Chwolsohn’s first argument by showing that the early scholars of Hadith and Tafsir, who were neighbors of the Mandaeans since they lived like them in the region of Basra, Kufa, and Wasit, were not concerned with recording the religious history prior to Islam. Rather, their concern was confined to applying the Shari‘a in an immediate and tangible manner. They lived in contact with a religious community that was neither Jewish nor Christian nor Mazdakite, but they did not define it precisely — for had they done so, they would have taken a historically oriented step, which is what later jurists and encyclopedists did, culminating in Chwolsohn — rather, they applied a Qur’anic epithet, which mistakenly became a generic name, to a specific human group they knew very well: the group of the Mandaeans of the Iraqi marshes, who had just recorded their “holy books” in the wake of the Islamic conquest, but who, for their part, were not called “Sabians,” nor “Saba.” As a result, interpreting “Sabi’” by the Syriac word “sba” remains merely a hypothesis advanced by Orientalists and has no historical value. It is a hypothesis that never appeared at all among Muslim writers. Moreover, phonetically, Arabic has the root “sbgha” corresponding to the Syriac root “sba.”

Thus “Sabi’” does not mean “Baptist,” and the Sabians of the Qur’an are not Mandaeans. So what does the word “Sabi’” mean, and who are the Sabians of the Qur’an? Here, Hjarpe attempts to explain what is obscure by something even more obscure, with his ruling that identifying the “Sabians” of the Qur’an can in no way be separated from identifying the “Hanifs” mentioned in the Qur’an. Yet Hjarpe did not, for all that, simply assume complete identity between the two groups, as Sprenger had suggested. For Hjarpe states:

“These two words, that is, (Sabi’) and (Hanif), have nearly the same meaning, the same content: except that Sabi’ was a designation carrying a pejorative sense, denoting a Gnostic, and thus not belonging to the Islamic community, whereas (Hanif) is a word meant to denote the true Gnostic, the Muslim who adhered to the pure, natural religion.” Then Hjarpe adds after this:

“Sabians is a name they applied to every religion, and to all religious and philosophical speculations, just as it was used to label any person with Gnostic inclinations.”

Based on biographical and prosopographical material that Wellhausen was able to extract, to which Hjarpe added some brief writings, Muhammad’s early companions, and the Messenger himself with them, Alayhim Alsalatu Wa Alsalam, were called “Sabians” by their opponents, who were the polytheists of Mecca. But they for their part rejected that label for themselves and wanted to be called “Hanifs,” and from that time on the word “Hanif” became synonymous with “Muslim,” that is, “believer,” according to the Qur’an. Thus, in the same way that the Harranians attributed to themselves that they were “Sabians,” they likewise declared that they were “Hanifs.” Chwolsohn sees in the concealment behind the two designations a kind of deception. Hjarpe, however, claims that there is no deception in this at all, but he adduces no argument in support of his view.

This whole issue rests on ambiguity and the mixing of terms. On the one hand, the designation “Hanifs,” which the Arabic- and Syriac-speaking Harranians claimed for themselves, meant to them “pagans,” since the hanpē — in Syriac — are the heirs of ancient paganism, hanputa, and that is exactly what they truly were. Yet the deception, on their part, lay in using the word in the sense that prevailed in Islamic society, where Hanifism, since its mention in the Qur’an, had come to mean the pure monotheistic religion, the primordial faith followed by those before Abraham and by Abraham himself, and which then reappeared with Muhammad. It therefore seems appropriate to me to distinguish clearly between two problems:

1- The sociological and doctrinal identification of the “Sabians” and “Hanifs” mentioned in the Qur’an, and the mutual relationship between the two groups — something for which we possess no direct source, and about which Islamic tradition has transmitted no precise historical report;

2- The re-appropriation of these two designations in the 3rd century AH for purely political reasons by a religious group living in northern Mesopotamia, the group of the Harranians, for whom it was easy to maneuver and present themselves to the Muslims as the successors of Abraham, the pure Hanif, given that he was from among their fellow countrymen.

On the other hand, there is confusion in Hyarb’s use of the adjective “Gnostic.” You see him speaking of “Gnostic tendencies,” and of Gnosticism “in its broad sense,” and of Sabianism and Hanifism, with the former distinguished from the latter by a disembodied conception of revelation and prophecy. On this subject Hjarpe adopts, without any critical discussion, the thesis of Pedersen, who spoke of Gnosticism where there was nothing but the idea of the deification of Christ, and who was a product of an era dominated by the ideas of Reitzenstein. But in our days, when we have greater access to documentation relating to Gnosticism and when this documentation has been partially renewed by direct sources, it is difficult, in my conviction, to accept that Sabianism and Hanifism could be the purely rational expression of Gnostic doctrine, taking Gnosticism as the unifying, comprehensive principle of religious knowledge. Even if we accepted that the Sabians of the Qur’an were Gnostics, it could certainly not be in the vague, haphazard sense found in Hjarpe’s defense of his ideas. As for the third and fourth conclusions Hjarpe reached in his treatment of those whom Arab writers called the Harranian Sabians, our author shows clearly that Islamic writings on sects and doctrines lumped together two distinct groups: the Harranians proper, those residing in the capital of Diyar Mudar, and the dissident, “heretical” Harranians who founded a school in Baghdad from the 3rd to the 6th century AH, historically established by Thābit ibn Qurra — it is to these that the Harranians cited by Arab writers belonged.

The reason for the Baghdadi schism remains unknown. Chwolsohn advanced a hypothesis that the Baghdadi heresy was doctrinal in nature and was linked to the adoption of Neoplatonism. Hjarpe, however, sees it as ritual in nature, connected to opposition to the worship practiced in the temples of Harran. Neither hypothesis can be supported by any document. In any case, there are, according to Hjarpe, two opposing trends: on one side, the Harranians in the strict sense — these are presumably the “conservatives” adhering to the traditional religion in Harran — and on the other side the Baghdadi “scholars,” physicians, philosophers, theurgists, astronomers, alchemists, etc., heirs of the Harranian Sabian doctrine but in a position of dialogue with Muslims.

Hjarpe proved, on the one hand, that the writings of Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Shahrastani, and al-Dimashqi — who elaborated most on Harranian astrology — were drawn from heretical, Baghdadi and Christian sources (Such as al-Nahawandi), and were arranged and crafted to demonstrate that the entire Harranian religion was summed up in the worship of planetary gods; and he showed, on the other hand, that the philosophical ideas attributed to these Harranians regarding negative theology, the eternity of the world, the concept of matter, the mediation of the stars, and the world-soul, had been transmitted to them under the banner of Aristotle — that is., they were under the sway of the ideas of the Theology of Aristotle — or Aristotle’s Metaphysics — and under the influence of two Neoplatonists: Iamblichus and Proclus. Ultimately, an analysis of what Ibn al-Nadim wrote about those doctrines, specifically a statement by al-Kindi transmitted by his student al-Sarakhsi, may contain what proves that the doctrines in question cannot go back further than the Harranian scholar who founded the Baghdad school, namely Thābit ibn Qurra.

While it is difficult to dispute Hjarpe’s analyses regarding the first two points, his view concerning the antagonism between the conservative Harranian trend and Baghdadi Neoplatonism remains, by contrast, more open to debate and discussion. Neoplatonism, or, if we prefer, Neoplatonic philosophy, did not arise in Baghdad out of nothing at the hands of Thābit ibn Qurra. He himself was under the influence of the teaching he had received in Harran. Moreover, Hjarpe’s loose and undefined use of the word “Gnostic” in his attempt to define the Sabians of the Qur’an recurs annoyingly with regard to the Harranians. For here he speaks of the esoteric Gnosticism of these scholars and of their “Neoplatonic Gnostic” theology. The same persons are labeled as belonging to an “esoteric theology.” Such terminological labels in which everything is mixed with everything cannot be accepted under any circumstances. But despite the criticisms we must direct at Hjarpe’s systematic critical re-examination of Chwolsohn’s theses, we can only acknowledge that it constitutes an extremely important contribution to the history of ideas. And before we return again to the case of the Sabians of the Qur’an, let us present, on the subject of the discussion about the so-called Sabians of Harran, some new historical elements that will allow us to determine their identity.

Chapter Two: Al-Masʿudi: The Only Direct Witness to the Historical Position of the Harranian Sabian Doctrine

There is no dispensing with clarifying transmitted traditions when the point of departure is some historical fact. The last pagan temple in Harran was destroyed in the 5th century AH when the city came under the authority of the Numayrid dynasty of nomadic Bedouins. There exists, in fact, no witness at all from that date onward attesting to the existence of pagan activity in Harran. Yet nearly all Arabic writings concerning the Harranian Sabians were recorded later: ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Bīrūnī, Ibn Ḥazm, Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Shahrastānī, Maimonides, Ibn al-Qifṭī, al-Dimashqī. None of these writers visited Harran or its region. Their information comes from opponents of the Harranians, Christians and Muslims, who project doctrinal elaborations onto the present reality. As a result, it is possible to set aside all of these writings.

We are left with the earlier authors: al-Ṭabarī, al-Masʿūdī, al-Maqdisī, Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Khwārizmī, who belong to the 4th century AH. They were living at a time when Harranian paganism was still at its most vital. We know in fact that at the end of that century Caliph ʿAbd al-Karīm (al-Ṭāʾiʿ) affirms in a written letter addressed to the “Sabians” of Harran, al-Raqqa, and Diyar Mudar their right to worship and to teach. It was therefore possible for any observer at that time to examine the state of Harran’s “Sabianism” on the ground. So what about the five writers we mentioned? Three of them — al-Ṭabarī, al-Maqdisī, and al-Khwārizmī — confine themselves to transmitting what was related to them. Ibn al-Nadīm provides copious but uneven reports: there are two long passages he cites drawn from Christian polemicists, and they are a piled-up mass of fabrications; as for the passage with which Ibn al-Nadīm opens this inquiry, it deserves greater attention, since it is a citation of al-Kindī transmitted from him by al-Sarakhsī, who corresponded with Thābit ibn Qurra. Although this transmitted saying does not take the form of an idealized reformulation of the doctrine and its rites, it offers us no precise chronological determination. So we are left only with al-Masʿūdī, the sole one among these writers who personally went to Harran. His investigation there was not deep-probing, yet it nonetheless contains a principal item that old and modern criticism has failed to notice.

This eyewitness testimony deserves special merit and must allow for a historically significant assessment of what exactly the phrase “Harranian Sabian doctrine” comprises. Al-Masʿūdī speaks of his visit to Harran in his book Murūj al-Dhahab wa-Maʿādin al-Jawhar, which he completed in 335 AH / 946 CE, ten years before his death. Here is the text reported by al-Masʿūdī, as recorded in the edition of Barbier de Meynard, translated by Charles Pellat:

“I saw on the gate of the Sabians’ assembly house in the city of Harran, inscribed on the door knocker, a saying of Plato, whose interpretation was explained to me by Mālik ibn ʿUqbūn and others than him, namely: ‘He who knows himself becomes divine.’ And Plato said: ‘Man is a celestial plant.’ This indicates that man is an inverted tree whose root is toward the sky and whose branches are toward the earth.”

None of the three — Chwolsohn, Barbier, and Pellat — traced the origin of these two sayings in Plato. As for the second saying, its source is the book Timaeus — Timée — (90A7–B2); in its context with al-Masʿūdī it appears as if it were a recollection of high-level readings on the author’s part and was not transmitted to him by his Harranian informants. As for the first saying, it is clearly a reminder of what appears in the Alcibiades — (133 C).

And Barbier de Meynard, following what Chwolsohn had put forward, had translated that saying as follows: “Only he who knows Him fears God,” until Pellat, knowingly and deliberately, corrected his predecessor’s translation.

Chwolsohn, in his notes in the appendix to the second volume of his book, mentions the correction that had been conveyed to him by Fleischer regarding this very point, which is:
“He who recognizes his own essence (himself) becomes divine, god-like”

Yet neither Barbier de Meynard nor Pellat read the correction!

Before we re-examine this passage from Muruj al-Dhahab to further clarify its terms and understand its full scope, it is important to note that al-Mas‘udi explicitly returned to this wisdom that they translated and explained for him in Harran, and he did so in another of his works. Here he is with his book “al-Tanbih wa al-Ishraf,” which he wrote shortly before his death (345 AH / 956 CE) and which serves as “reviews and emendations,” referring to that principle with the following expression:
“And what they hold regarding Plato’s saying that ‘He who knows himself becomes divine,’ and the statement of the master of logic that ‘He who knows himself has known everything.’”

These lines in Arabic do not begin with an essential introductory sentence. Rather, they are part of a long enumeration, introduced by the phrase: “And we mentioned...” In this enumeration, the author reviews various subjects he had treated in two of his earlier works, one titled al-Maqalat fi Usul al-Diyanat and the other titled Khaza’in al-Din wa Sirr al-‘Alamin.

Accordingly, and taking into account the citation in Muruj al-Dhahab, al-Mas‘udi would have spoken about the Platonic principle of Alcibiades in at least four of his works. His repeated return to it is only because he understood perfectly well that this principle was fundamental to his Harranian interlocutors and that it contained in itself a summary of all their philosophy.

Based on the summary given in al-Tanbih regarding al-Maqalat and al-Khaza’in, it becomes clear that the context for citing Plato’s saying in both books was in the course of reviewing the truth of the “Roman Sabians.” The ideas that the author attributes to them indicate that this designation, including the designation “Harranian Sabians,” must be taken here in its narrow philosophical sense, referring to the “Platonists.” The author does not merely mention the name of Porphyry in this context, but goes further and mentions the name of his correspondent, “the Egyptian priest, Anebo.” The doctrinal disputes between Porphyry and Anebo, as al-Mas‘udi mentions, were “recorded in letters known to everyone who is concerned with the sciences of the ancients.”

The question, then: what was the channel that conveyed the content of the Letter to Anebo not to al-Mas‘udi himself but to his source? The contrast between this Porphyry — who had been a Christian (sic!) but secretly defended the beliefs of the Roman Sabians, that is., the Platonists — and Anebo, the pure and rigid pagan who remained attached to the doctrines of the ancient philosophers, could lead us to infer that Porphyry, as a person related to the Letter to Anebo was known to al-Mas‘udi’s source through pro-Christian writings.

In the immediate context in which the Platonic saying appears in the book al-Tanbih, we find a second citation that al-Mas‘udi attributes to the “master of logic.” This phrase is, as is often the case among Arab authors, a metonymy not for Aristotle himself, but for one of his Alexandrian commentators. In fact, the statement that “He who knows himself has known everything” — which is how al-Mas‘udi presented it in his Arabic text — belongs to Neoplatonism. We find it verbatim in the works of two Alexandrians: Hermias and Olympiodorus.

As for Hermias, he says in In Phaedrum:
“He who knows himself knows all things”

And Olympiodorus says in Alcibiadem:
“He who knows himself knows all beings/things”

Both sayings are synonymous with the Delphic maxim. Thus, their inclusion in al-Tanbih leads us in a straight line back to the traditional interpretations of the:“know thyself” at the hands of the Neoplatonists in their commentary on Plato’s book Alcibiades. And the “Sabians of Harran” who explained to al-Mas‘udi the Syriac writing inscribed on the knocker of the outer door — and who considered themselves among the “Roman Sabians” — are therefore nothing but “Platonists” in the strict sense of the word.

According to the direct testimony found in Muruj al-Dhahab, the place whose entrance knocker bore the Syriac inscription of the pivotal saying from the first part of Alcibiades was called in Arabic: “majma‘”, which Pellat translated as “place of assembly,” and this is the literal meaning of the word. Barbier de Meynard, however, had translated it as “temple,” no doubt influenced by Chwolsohn, who had said of it that it was a “Pithos.” Chwolsohn was driven to this translation and no other because Ibn al-Nadim, in his discussion of the Sabian festivals, also mentioned what he called a “majma‘,” in which a religious meal was served on September 3rd after the conclusion of the festival: “On that day, they would sacrifice eight male lambs, seven for the gods and one for the Lord [Shamal], then they would eat in their majma‘, and each of them would drink seven cups of wine.”

For the Russian scholar, the majma‘ in which they ate the meat of the sacred sacrifices, and whose outer door bore an inscription reminiscent of the inscription of the temple of Delphi, could only be:
“An assembly place for religious purposes.”

Consequently, majma‘ is synonymous with haykal, that is., “temple.”

But nothing is further from reliable than this interpretation. On one hand, Chwolsohn confused two different sources in this matter: the source of Ibn al-Nadim from the Christian polemicists hostile to the Sabians, Abu Sa‘id Wahb ibn Ibrahim, and the source of al-Mas‘udi who reports what he witnessed and heard. On the other hand, there is nothing that allows us to say that the majma‘ where a sacred banquet was held for the holy Sabian festival of September is the same majma‘ that had that inscription on its door. We are most likely dealing with two different places frequented by different people. It is a hasty conclusion, without any deliberation, to assume — on the pretext that the Syriac inscription can be considered doctrinally as an echo of the Delphic maxim, which it indeed is according to Platonic convention — that the place on whose door it was inscribed is a place of worship.

Al-Mas‘udi’s majma‘, whose outer door knocker bore a traditional Platonic saying, is nothing but the place where the philosophers of Harran used to gather. The testimony of Muruj al-Dhahab is decisive on this point. Al-Mas‘udi classifies the Harranians into two groups: the group of the commoner philosophers, that is., “of the lower class and the common folk,” and these are the followers of the pagan religion of Harran; and the group of the “sages” in the strict sense, and these are the heirs of the philosophers of Rome. The author clarifies: “And when we call them sages, we do not mean by that wisdom alone, but rather the origin from which they came, because they are Romans.” And in order to give an example of the high level of the “Roman sages” in Harran, al-Mas‘udi then cites what he read on the door of “their majma‘,” and proceeds directly, by way of drawing the final conclusion, to a specialized exposition of Greek philosophy. Within such a context, the word majma‘ can only denote a place designated for the gathering of men of thought.

Al-Mas‘udi makes a complete distinction between the places of worship or “temples” of the popular religion and the majma‘ where the “Roman sages” gather.

As for the temples, he admits that when he revised Murūj al-Dhahab, that is in 336 AH / 947 CE, there was only a single temple, “and it is a temple they call ‘Mīlaṭīya,’ located inside the city of Harran, near Bāb al-Raqqa.” As for the second center of Harranian paganism that was still active, it was the seat of the “Roman Sābians,” that is. the Platonists, and the meaning of majma‘ “assembly” in this context is “academy.” The place where al-Mas‘ūdī asked them to explain to him the Syriac inscription that adorned the knocker of its door was none other than the Platonic Academy of Harran. Those who accompanied al-Mas‘ūdī during his visit were members of that Academy, while Mālik ibn ‘Uqbūn, mentioned as the translator of that inscription, is by all appearances the head of the Academy. Al-Mas‘ūdī mentions, among other things, that he questioned him about some technical and historical matters concerning Greek philosophy. During this inquiry, he learned from Mālik ibn ‘Uqbūn and from others than him, that is. from the rest of the philosophers of the “School,” that they categorically rejected the sacrificial and divinatory rites of the Harranians, as well as the “esoteric and secret” ceremonies. Al-Mas‘ūdī, in this case, draws a complete distinction between the ordinary pagans in Harran and the Harranian philosophers. He was concerned to present his meeting with Mālik ibn ‘Uqbūn only because this figure held his position and authority in the “School.”

On the model of Plato’s ancient Academy, or rather, what they used to recount about it, the “School” of Harran bore, not on its pediment but on the door knocker of its entrance, a maxim calling everyone who crossed the threshold to the bios philosophikos. At the time of al-Mas‘ūdī’s visit in 332 AH / 943 CE, Harranian paganism had two active centers: the temple called “Mīlaṭīya” and the Platonic School. The critical comments he heard from those who frequented the “School” indicate that these two pillars of Harranian paganism were expressions of different aims, and for this reason were in rivalry with one another.

It has been accepted since Chwolsohn that all intellectual activity ceased in Harran after Thābit ibn Qurra settled in Baghdad (d. 288 AH / 901 CE) with his pupils. Both Chwolsohn and Hjarpe saw this move as a “schism”: the former explained it by doctrinal reasons, while the latter attributed it to practical, formal causes. But it is more likely that Thābit, drawn by the caliph’s patronage, had chosen Baghdad for social and political reasons “since the Abbasid capital offered at that time greater possibilities of influence than did the capital of Diyār Muḍar.” Note that this departure to Baghdad does not mean the closing of the “School” of Harran, nor its end. It continued for a long time, and the proof is that at the time of al-Mas‘ūdī’s visit in 332 AH / 943 CE, that is. more than seventy years after Thābit ibn Qurra’s move to Baghdad, there were still members there, headed by Mālik ibn ‘Uqbūn, maintaining a flourishing institution with a venerable history extending back hundreds of years.

In the book al-Tanbīh there is a passage that summarizes the explanation of the book Funūn al-Ma‘ārif wa-mā Jarā fī al-Duhūr al-Sawālif, a book lost today, which Max Meyerhof, without sufficient verification, had relied upon in his book Von Alexandrien nach Bagdad. This informative passage demonstrates the importance of the role played by Harran as the link that made possible the transmission of Greek science and philosophy to the Arab world.

It is stated by al-Mas‘ūdī that the “council of instruction,” that is. the academic institution, moved for the first time “from Athens to Alexandria.” The following lines in Goeje’s edition up to the middle of the second line of page 122 are an explanatory clarification referring back to the past concerning the move to Alexandria, which, according to al-Mas‘ūdī, supposedly took place during the reign of Theodosius, and we must understand that the one meant is Theodosius II (408–450). If this report is taken as it stands, it proves to be erroneous, since the “School of Athens” at that date was at the height of its activity under the direction of Plutarch then Proclus. The event to which al-Mas‘ūdī refers must be dated at the very least to a quarter century after the death of Theodosius. This corresponds with the beginning of Ammonius’s teaching as head of the “School of Alexandria.”

Later, still according to al-Mas‘ūdī, the “council of instruction moved from Alexandria to Antioch” during the reign of ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz (99–101 AH / 717–720 CE), then “from there to Harran” during the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil (232–247 AH / 847–861 CE).

Despite the authority that these two dates have gained since Meyerhof endorsed them with his blessing, we must acknowledge that they are no more credible than the first date concerning the transfer from Athens to Alexandria. That is because dating the transfer from Alexandria to Antioch during the caliphate of Umar II erroneously extends the duration of the activities of the Alexandrian "school" by a century and a half. Conversely, delaying the transfer from Antioch to Harran until the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil reduces the Harran "school" to its minimum limits and confines it to the most diminished form of the activity it knew before Thabit ibn Qurra’s departure for Baghdad.

Moreover, Ibn Abi Usaybi'a affirms in his book 'Uyun al-Anba' fi Tabaqat al-Atibba', written in 640 AH / 1242 CE, that the Alexandrian "school" transferred during Umar II’s accession to the caliphate in 99 AH / 717 CE. But the transfer in question for him is, of course, regarding the school of medicine. On the other hand, he says that this transfer took place "toward Antioch and Harran" in parallel. So how can we reconcile this information, on the one hand, with the information provided by al-Mas'udi on the other?

Attributing the transfer of Alexandrian teaching to Syria during the caliphate of Umar II clearly appears to be a form of argumentation favoring the Umayyad Caliphate. We must understand these two reports not as a history of the transfer of institutions, but as evidence of the continuous intellectual activity in both Antioch (city and frontier) and Harran (city and frontier) by the end of the first century AH, where each of the two centers claimed the title and honor of possessing the Alexandrian legacy. As for Ibn Abi Usaybi'a’s reference only to the "transfer" of the medical school, it is not difficult to understand, because medical activity and the teaching of medicine are, in reality, an integral part of philosophical activity and the teaching of philosophy. Medicine did not "change location" without philosophy "changing location."

When Justinian issued his orders in 529 to close the Athenian "school," John Philoponus wrote in Alexandria De aeternitate Contra Proclum. The official termination of the Academy coincided with the Christians’ religious dominance over the Alexandrian school. Three years later came the peace agreement signed between Khosrow Anushirvan and Justinian, which allowed the exiles of the Athenian "school"—Damascius, Simplicius, and their colleagues—to leave Iran. But dense doubts still hover around determining the new destination toward which they headed. The inscription on the tombstone of "Zosime" in Homs, dated to 538 CE and written by Damascius, leads us to infer that he was living in Syria at that time. In which city, then? Antioch, the fortified site of Christianity, seems unlikely. Edessa as well, because its Nestorian-dominated school had been closed since 489. The same applies even more so to Nisibis, which was in Iranian territory and where the exiles of the Edessa "school" had gathered their scattered ranks. The only Byzantine city with Greek-Aramaic language, where "Hellenism" was strong and active, is Harran, 38 km south-southeast of Edessa.

Procopius relates a report that Khosrow Anushirvan actually exempted the inhabitants of Harran in 544 from paying the tax because they had remained faithful to the old religion. Given that the Harran "school" did not descend from the heavens by divine power in the first century AH, we cannot rule out the hypothesis that the Athenian exiles—the city that was the last site of Hellenic resistance against Christianity—found refuge and settled in that Byzantine region at the farthest frontier with Iran, alongside Platonists who had previously attended the "school" of Ammonius.

This would explain why Christian authors repeatedly and relentlessly mocked the "school of the Hellenes" in Harran, which in some way rivaled the neighboring "Persian school" established in Nisibis. The former was pagan, rationalist, and philosophical; the latter was Nestorian, clerical, and theological. Yet both were under the protection of the "King of Kings." It was to him that Priscian, friend of Simplicius, dedicated his work entitled Solutiones.

During Umayyad rule—here the testimonies of al-Mas'udi and Ibn Abi Usaybi'a acquire their exceptional value—the two intellectual sources for the transmission of Greek sciences to the Arab world were Syrian: Christian Antioch, which was Greek-Syriac, and pagan Harran, which was Greek-Arabic-Syriac. Harran was destined to become the capital of the Empire with the rise of Marwan ibn Muhammad to the caliphate (127 AH / 744 CE). Naturally, the Christians who had graduated from the Alexandrian "school" had centered themselves in Antioch and in the monasteries of the frontier, and from there they set out to dominate Harran intellectually.

We have a passage from al-Farabi, preserved for us by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, indicating that with the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate, there remained in Antioch only a single teacher with two students under his charge—one from Harran and the other from Merv. The Harranian student, whose name has not been transmitted to us, could only have been a Christian. The two students whom he in turn taught then left Antioch and headed for Baghdad, where the first became a bishop while the second remained a monk. This testimony from al-Farabi proves the existence of a definite intellectual movement between Harran and Antioch, but this movement was carried out by Christians alone, out of their desire to bring into the Jacobite orbit of Antioch the city of Harran, which had come under Nestorian influence and which, moreover, was still predominantly pagan. At the beginning of the ninth century, the bishop of the Christian quarter in the city was then a "Melkite," Theodore Abu Qurra, the first to translate Aristotle into Arabic.

Under these conditions we must treat al-Mas'udi’s testimony about the transfer of Greek sciences from Antioch to Harran with great reservation, because it came to him from a source of Christian affiliation, exceedingly keen to "appropriate" for itself, against the rival school—the school of the "Roman Sabians," that is., the pure Platonists—the credibility of the Alexandrian stamp on its intellectual heritage.

Thus, there was no transfer, in the strict sense of the word, of the old institution of Ammonius—that in which Simplicius had received lectures at the beginning of the sixth century—and this transfer did not occur to Antioch or to Harran, during the caliphate of Umar II, nor before or after that caliphate. The matter is simply that two parties were contending for claim to the same heritage: on one side, Antioch and the role it played for the Christians of Harran as an intermediary; and on the other side, in a direct and older line, those whom the Arabs called the "Roman Sabians."

And this is what can explain how those “Sabians” placed above the threshold of their “school” an inscription of philosophical content, as was the case with Plato’s Academy, and as was believed in by a Hellenic tradition that the Alexandrian Platonists specifically referred back to — and this was not by coincidence —.

Nor was it a coincidence that the text of the inscription was quoted from the Alcibiades, Part One, which the Alexandrian Platonists, from the second to the sixth century, regarded as the gateway to the study of Plato and philosophy. And that wisdom which reflects the Delphic maxim reappears in al-Tanbih, explained and expanded with the help of a principle whose two Greek witnesses are cited in a similar context by two Alexandrian Platonists: Hermias and Olympiodorus. And this too is not by coincidence.

Olympiodorus likens the Alcibiades to a grand gateway whose secret guardian is the Parmenides. And such was the case in Harran. The Alcibiades was at the entrance, while the Parmenides was in the center. And in fact, according to the testimony of al-Kindi — a testimony which Ibn al-Nadim borrowed from al-Sarakhsi — the core of metaphysical thought among the “Sabians of Harran” was represented in their saying: “The world has a cause that has always existed, one that does not multiply, and to which no attribute of the caused things applies.”

As for Chwolsohn, he did not offer a comment on this saying, but in the chapter he devoted to discussing the supreme essence of the Sabians, he included among several citations from ancient Platonism a statement from Asclepius regarding “All things are one, and the One is all things,” and this statement is what led Scott to include al-Kindi’s phrase within the Hermetica. Hjarpe, however, was more precise when he compared this phrase to the “Theology” of Aristotle, that is, Plotinus. In my view, this extremely condensed sentence is linked to the purest of what has come down from the later Plotinians regarding the spontaneous formation of negative theology. If we examine closely the structure and thought of that phrase, there emerges in the background of the inquiry a name that does not disappoint — namely, the name of Proclus: in the concept of the One as the causer, the transcendence of the causer above attribute, and the attachment of attribute to the caused in accordance with the dialectic of the One and the Many (does not multiply), and the definition of the One as a singular one. Moreover, there is the description of the causer as “has always existed,” the implied reading being “has always existed,” and this recalls a phrase from the Phaedrus that Proclus used in his two books The Elements and Theology.

And al-Kindi’s report does not merely testify that the philosophy of those alleged “Sabians” in Harran derives from Neoplatonism, and specifically from the best conceptions it had arrived at, but it also reveals to us the second aspect of that philosophy. For these Harranian thinkers had their public festivals, their prayers, their fasts, and their dietary regimen. And such rites — difficult in the Athens of Proclus and Damascius, and in the Alexandria of Ammonius and Olympiodorus — were just as difficult in Abbasid Baghdad, where Thābit ibn Qurra later settled. Yet they could be freely practiced in Harran, in a social milieu whose paganism was still alive, in the vicinity of a specific temple, the temple of the Moon God, a temple whose activity had never ceased since the Hurrian era.

And these Platonists, who lived a communal life within their “school,” could devote themselves at leisure to their practices of invoking the gods, as their philosophy required. And the error in the perspective of Arab authors — and, following in their footsteps, Western Orientalism — was to conflate under the title “Sabian” the rites of these philosophers with the rites of the inhabitants of their city who used to frequent the temples, so that the creed of the former became mixed with the religion of the latter. The only two writers who avoided this conflation were one a philosopher and the other a traveler: al-Kindi and al-Masʿūdī, both of whom were from Mesopotamia. The philosopher’s information was drawn from a trustworthy source, because the one who provided it, and who was at the same time his student, al-Sarakhsi, used to correspond with Thābit ibn Qurra. As for the traveler’s information, nothing rivals its value, for it is the direct echo of what the Platonic “school” of Harran was still like in the mid-fourth century AH.

Chapter Three: The Historical Sources Predating the Inscriptions Transmitted by al-Masʿūdī, and the Exclusion of Confusion with the Harranian Sabian Doctrine

Eight centuries before al-Masʿūdī’s inquiry into the meaning of the Syriac inscription engraved on the threshold of the entrance to the “Roman Sabians” in Harran, the essential wisdom in the Alcibiades was widely diffused among the Gnostics of Egypt, the magicians, and the alchemists. And the anthropology of the Alcibiades was applied in a remarkable way in the book Allogenes. For we find in the two texts characters who occupy perfectly identical positions. There, “the child accompanying his tutor” is Alcibiades, and Socrates calls him — or rather, let us say: Socrates himself, called by his daimon — to discover “the self itself,” what is in truth and in fact his own good, that is, the divine nature of his intellect. And here, we find “Youel,” the male virgin, tutor of “Allogenes,” who is the image of the absolute Gnostic child and who will in turn become the tutor of his son “Messos.” In order to show him the course of the modes of intellectual perception, she explains the necessity of her procession toward the intelligibles, and declares to him that he will be a witness within himself to her passage, before her return upward toward the primordial Triad — even if he must wait “a hundred years” for that. As is the case in Eugnostos, which nevertheless belongs to a different context, the idea of progress is used to describe the condition necessary for any inquiry into the knowledge of essences, including that which pertains to the one who knows that what perceives the essences within him is divine in nature and origin.

And Youel says to Allogenes this phrase, whose text can be reconstructed as follows:
"If you seek with a perfect seeking, then you shall know the God who is within you; then you will know yourself as well, (as) one who derives from the God who truly pre-exists"

And we are justified in reconstituting line 19, which is the climax of the phrase. If we take as our support the pivotal word of the Marcosians:
"I am a son from the Father – the Father who had a pre-existence, and a son in Him who is pre-existent.”
which is a ritual formula deriving from the Valentinian period, we might fill the lacuna of line /19/ as follows: “the one who [exists in God]” to the end of line /20/. And this would mean: “then you will know yourself (as) one who exists in God …” to the end of the saying.

But the idea contained in that pivotal word, despite the closeness of vocabulary, does not correspond entirely with the idea of the text in Allogenes, and thus it cannot help us much or little in this inquiry of ours.

As for the reconstitution as presupposed by the American translation — « as one who exists with » — although it may appear acceptable, it still remains evidence of superfluous redundancy, which in any case is without any justification. Consequently, the reconstitution proposed above is the only one that can be adopted. And we have two witnesses that justify accepting this conclusion: the text of “the Bruce Codex” and Plotinus. In a hymn formulated in alternating synonymous sentences, we see the heavenly Jesus in “the Bruce Codex,” whose name is “Lord of all,” address the essences of his divine court, who are the angelic forms of the Gnostic intellects, and say to them:
“You will become gods, and you will know that you are from God, and you will see God in yourselves.”

Just as is the case in Allogenes, the vision of the personal self as God is the testimony to the divine origin of the intuitive function of knowledge. And this is what is equally found in Saying /394/ of Sextus, whose Coptic translation we find specifically in the manuscripts called the “Nag Hammadi manuscripts,” according to a formulation far removed from the unified text arrived at by Chadwick, but in which he nevertheless carried out the same revision found in the Latin and Syriac witnesses. Accordingly, the correct formulation of the “Saying,” that is, the formulation not Christianized and consistent with the generations subsequent to the Alcibiades, is that which we find in [Patmiensis 263 X° S.]:
"Intellect is something divine within you. Know what you are."

And the answer to the inquiry into the nature of God is the person’s recognition of what is in himself the thinking entity.

The human being’s vision of himself as something similar to god is a testimony whose outcome, according to Allogenes, is the perception of the intellectual forms of divine power: beatitude and eternity, and being: “I know who is thus in myself just as I know the triadic power and the manifestation of its infinity.” And such a perception of the personal self is the direct vision of Him, the Exalted: “I saw [Him],” and it is a truth whose denial follows immediately upon its affirmation: “If anyone knows Him with complete knowledge, he must appear as if he did not know Him.” And we can link to the vision of the self as a god, according to the affirmation of Allogenes and Sextus, the principle stated by Proclus in De Providentia: “when you see yourself, be in awe — because what you’re seeing is divine.”

And Westerink points to a Greek witness to this formula in a passage that had remained corrupt until now, and which is found in Proclus’s book In Alcibiadem. And the passage says: “Enter your inner temple in reverence.” The command directed toward entering the inner temple does not add much to the Delphic maxim. But the lesson offered by the Latin of William of Moerbeke, in my opinion, takes on a meaning far stronger than if the command were merely an invitation for the person to enter into himself, and this is doubtless connected to an easy phonetic similarity (Go within, in awe).

The saying as transmitted by the medieval Dominican has a clear meaning connected in a straight line with Allogenes, Sextus, and the “God is exalted” in the Harranian inscription: when you see yourself by yourself, be in awe, be in religious reverence — meaning: because you are seeing God Himself.

In the chapter that Plotinus devoted to the moral consequences arising from the Gnostic doctrine, he rebukes the Gnostics with a vehemence uncharacteristic of him, because they destroy all moral life: “Without true virtue, God is nothing but a word uttered. Their doctrine is thus more pernicious than that of the Epicureans.” To demonstrate this, Plotinus presents a formula which contains the complete programmatic discourse of his opponents:

"those who have already known themselves are from a divine nature."

And this is actually the formula of the Allogenes and the Bruce Codex (Zostrianos), linked to the meaning embedded in the Alcibiades. Plotinus, however, takes it upon himself to show the direct consequence of such a formula among those he combats—namely, the negation of virtues, including the two virtues that define the human good: temperance and justice. In Plotinus’s view, everything proceeds as if the Gnostics, by relying on the ultimate principle in the Alcibiades, were treating that principle as an absolute point of departure, and thus they neglect the initial discourse which is at the very heart of defining the good through justice and temperance. Thus Plotinus, in his explanation, sets matters straight again, calling on his opponents to reread the Alcibiades correctly—that is, to read it from the beginning: the definition of man is first and foremost the definition of his good, that is, the establishment of the virtues which culminate in temperance. In his view, it is not possible to arrive at the discovery of the divine origin within the self for thought and knowledge if one has not first recognized the moral categories that lead to self-knowledge. The Gnostics, if one may say so, were walking upside down, with their heads downward. And Plotinus was extremely pleased because, once again, he demonstrates their infidelity to Plato.

The Cairo manuscripts contained the "Sayings of Sextus", the "Teachings of Silvanus" and a fragment from Plato’s Republic. This is proof that the conclusions Plotinus drew from the formula — the program of the Gnostics — were in fact addressing a premeditated intent. And when Plotinus accuses the Gnostics of having no written ethical principles, and of “fabricating” a theology with no moral foundation, he is engaging in verbal polemics.

Why should the Gnostics have to formulate a written ethical document when they already possessed the moral epistles that the Platonists of their era were using?

Thus Silvanus forcefully affirms the absolute primacy of the rational part of the soul, which is the divine element latent within us; it is in us the element of God Himself and the One. Yet the document itself likewise stresses, with equal force, the necessity of paideia and ethical discourse, which seek to ensure the supervision and gradual elimination of the “animal” aspect in us — that is, the passions that conflict with recognizing what is divine within us.

The allegory of the multiform beast, and of the lion and the human — an allegory taken from the Republic, for which we find a Coptic reworking in Codex VI — goes in the same direction. This text is a call to a way of life in accordance with philosophy, a way whose essence is to recognize, beyond the animal parts in man, the truth of his nature: internal, not external, no longer dominated by pleasure and anger but unified according to the proper good of reason, that is, God.

The transmission of such a text unchanged within a collection of Gnostic writings demonstrates that they understood its sayings as authentically Gnostic — not only because of the classification of natures it contains, but also because, through the robust literary form of the Old Testament, it strengthens the propositions of the Alcibiades.

And we have a third document, this time known to us thanks to indirect tradition, which confirms that the Gnostics were reading the Alcibiades correctly and, contrary to Plotinus’s claim, had not set aside from their perspective all ethical discourse. We are dealing here with a passage from:

The Letter to Theophrastus written by Monoimus the Arab, quoted by the author of the Elenchos:

“After you cease searching for God, for creation, and for other similar matters, search for yourself — you yourself, starting from yourself — and learn from that which within you possesses absolutely all things, and which says:
‘My God, my Intellect, my Thought, my Soul, my Body.’ And learn from where it comes that a person fluctuates between sorrow and joy, that he loves and hates, stays awake without willing it, sleeps without willing it, is carried away by anger without willing it, and by friendship without willing it. If you seek to observe these things with complete precision, you will find yourself by your own self in your own self — one and yet multiple — in the likeness of this written letter, and you will find the way out starting from your own self.”

And if Monoimus wrote what he wrote, he said nothing other than what Silvanus says. And this series — “My God, my Intellect, my Thought, my Soul, my Body” — followed immediately by an enumeration of the various things that fall under the last term of the series, is nothing but a summary restatement of the entire content of the Alcibiades, though in reverse order: going back from the end of the text to its beginning — that is, from “the self itself,” which defines man in himself, to “that which belongs to the self,” which is limited to describing what belongs to him.

We can therefore rightfully and truly consider the Alcibiades the most important text the Gnostic movement relied upon. Indeed, there exists testimony to the Gnostics’ use of the concluding metaphor concerning the eye and the mirror. In the introduction, and in response to the question posed — namely, why does Socrates love Alcibiades and declare that he occupies an incomparable place in his soul? — the Platonic dialogue begins by setting forth a comparison between the eye and the soul. Just as the eye of the other is a mirror of my body, the soul of the other is a mirror of my soul; and self-knowledge comes about through the mediation of the other’s self.

Now, the pupil is the part of the eye in which the function of sight resides, and likewise in the soul the seat of the function of knowing is the intellect — the mirror of God in us. As a result, and because of this divine character of the thinking part of the soul, a person’s knowledge of himself amounts to a complete knowledge of the divine element latent within his own self.

And in the Letter of Eugnostos — which we have shown to be a Gnostic text addressed to philosophers — the author proceeds to apply the Platonic metaphor to theology, and describes the conceptual activity of the First Father who has no beginning as “that which sees itself by itself as if in a mirror.” This last expression we find again in the Alcibiades: “just as in a mirror.”

According to the author of Eugnostos, if God is the mirror of the soul, that is only because He is first and foremost the mirror of His own self. In Him, the object and the subject of vision are one and the same.

Moreover, the Gnostics made indirect use of two other Platonic texts: Parmenides and Theory of Forms. Pierre Hadot had long ago noted the connection between the negative argument found in the Apocryphon of John and the commentaries on the first hypothesis in Parmenides. As for us, we have examined in sufficient detail and clarity the validity of his observations concerning the Apocryphon of John, Allogenes, and Zostrianos, so there is no need to return to this in our current study. In those three texts, the argument appears so similar that it confirms it comes from a single source, or from one unchanging fabric — a kind of compendium of Greek philosophy that was transmitted either in its independent form or after being skillfully integrated into an apocryphal text.

The second case that caught my attention and which I examined closely arose when I grasped the thread in In Somnium Scipionis by Macrobius, during the review of the first statement in the Apocryphon of John — that is, the reflections related to the World Soul. I noticed that the list of demonic passions that concludes that same first statement was a list with a firm Stoic orientation. From that point on, it became possible to trace the link between Platonism, the philosophical elements in the Apocryphon of John, and Allogenes on the one hand, and the Zoroastrian apocryphal texts and the Greek philosophical tradition on the other.

From one of these latter elements — explicitly named in the Apocryphon of John as a direct source for the whole set of statements, as it circulated in Egypt and Syria during the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and as it was placed under the authority of the Magi of ancient Iran according to the Greek tradition that Plutarch attributes to the dissident Platonists of the 4th century BC — the Gnostics, who used Hellenism in opposition to Judaism, had drawn the material for their own compendium. We, for our part, have come to know through scholarly practice the ideological unity of these elements and can reconstruct them according to their original origin. As for those who used these elements, they were unaware of their affiliation, and their ancient sources remained undefined in outline. According to the testimony of Zosimos, the play on the words phos/phos — linked to reflections on the name of Adam, which we find again in a passage from the Apocryphon of John — specifically, the passage that precedes the statement taken from the Book of Zoroaster, goes back in its origin to Nicothea, that is, to a written document sealed with his name. Given that Porphyry indicates that the Gnostics who frequented the “school” of Plotinus had in their possession such a document, and that, on the other hand, a book on “Zoroaster” was also on the list of documents they read, there is nothing to prevent linking these two apocryphal texts, as together forming a single revelation that the Gnostics used as a comprehensive philosophical “reservoir.”

The Gnostics were not the only ones who drew from the wellspring of that “reservoir”: including what we nowadays attribute to the Alcibiades, The Republic, and Parmenides. Here are alchemists and magicians dipping their buckets and drawing from that Platonism which was transmitted among the “Chaldeans.” In a passage from the text Letter to Theosebeia cited by the philosopher Olympiodorus, Zosimos — previously mentioned — advises his correspondent to “rest her body and calm her passions.” Then he presents to her the principle dear to the hearts of the Gnostics: When you come to know yourself by yourself, then you will also come to know the One, God truly and indeed. A corresponding passage in The First Book on the Final Reckoning shows us that the Platonic principle, in the same way as among the Gnostics, had no meaning except when realized through asceticism — through restraining passions and desire, pleasure, anger, and grief.

And if Zosimos had called them the “fates of death,” and if their number was equal to the number of the planets, as is the case in the Apocryphon of John, this is additional confirmation that we are dealing with reliance on the same Zoroastrian apocryphal source known to the Gnostics.

Chapter Four: The Qualitative and Precise Identification of the Sabians of the Quran

We have spoken about Harran and then about Nag Hammadi in connection with Plato’s Alcibiades, but we do not intend thereby to show any relation — historical or even ideological — between the Sabians of Harran and the Gnostics. These two groups are entirely foreign to one another. To speak of the “Gnosticism of the Harranians,” as Hjarpe did, is a purely deceptive use of terminology, and that is obvious. The only thing the two groups have in common is their use of Plato, specifically his books Alcibiades and Parmenides.
But even regarding this matter, it is difficult for us to accept that the two shared a unified viewpoint.

The Harranians — and by this designation we mean the scholars of Harran — were Platonists in the academic sense of the word. Plato was the subject of their study and the focus of research activity in their school, which functioned like all philosophical schools. It had its rituals and its methods.
Its work was based on interpretation and reading — that is, on translations and accompanying commentaries. It played an enormous role in this field, since it remained pagan to the end, and this, together with its connection to three major languages with a civilizational legacy, qualified it to be a link in the chain of transmitting the sciences of the ancients to medieval Islam.

By contrast, the Gnostics whose direct sources have reached us were not professional philosophers; rather, they made use of philosophers, and of Plato in particular. Nevertheless, their use of Plato was not direct. The Platonism they had at their disposal came from a limited number of texts presented in the form of maxims and aphorisms. Truthfully, it was a Platonism of compendiums — a set of formulaic opinions. They became acquainted with it through the Chaldeans, that is, it consisted of astronomical-philosophical-theosophical writings attributed to Zoroaster and other Magi. The Gnostics were at the forefront of intellectual activity within Christianity, and hence the great historical importance of the role they played. That important role was not limited to Christianity itself — which is the subject of a different study — but was, first and foremost, directed toward the opposing camp: those philosophers who remained in the camp of Hellenism. The rational reaction to the Gnostic proposition may appear to have been a Roman affair that lasted for a short period and was linked to the person of Plotinus, yet Eastern Platonism — Syrian in essence at first, and heir to Iamblichus thereafter — was fascinated by Gnosticism, even if only for the purpose of enriching philosophical discourse, seeking to increase its appeal and credibility by the stamp of illumination and theophany in the Chaldean Oracles, and by auxiliary rituals: the invocation of the gods. This was the path by which Gnosticism came to be at the very heart of Neoplatonism.

It played the same role in Islam as well, and here we must return to the attempt to identify the Sabians of the Qur’an. Among the four religious sects that the Prophet knew and whose names he mentioned, the Sabians remain the only sect about which we know nothing. Every trace of them has vanished, or been erased.
At the time of the Hijra, they were not known by their Sabian identity outside the Arabian Peninsula, and even within it their presence in “al-Madina” was subject to great doubt. For their name appears immediately after the Jews in Surat al-Hajj, while it is mentioned only in third and last place in Surat al-Baqara after the Christians — as if the migration from Mecca to Medina caused their specters to disappear, so that they no longer existed on the religious map of the Arabian Peninsula. The scholars of Hadith and Tafsir did not know more about them than we do. But their name was mentioned in the Qur’an, and there is firm certainty in the truth of the “Qur’anic Text” which falsehood cannot approach; thus, this name could not have been mentioned without there being people to whom it applied. Therefore it was applied “to,” and then claimed by, groups that had no historical or social relation to the Arab Jahiliyya: such as the Mandaeans of the marshes, the pagans of Harran, etc.

Consequently, there remains nothing in our hands to identify the Sabians of the Qur’an except what the Qur’an itself says. And what it says includes two things: the Sabians possess “sacred writings” and they have a name by which they are known. Surat al-Ma’idah explicitly classifies them among the People of the Book. This requires that, at that time, like the Jews and Christians, they had their own books to which they belonged, and they were the custodians and users of them. Those “books” were completely distinct from those of “those who were Jews” — the followers of Moses — and from those of the Nasara — the followers of the Nazarene. Given the intermediate position that the Sabians occupy between Jews and Christians in both Surat al-Baqara and Surat al-Ma’idah, those “books” must have had elements in common with these and those. The holders of such “books” at that time could only be Gnostics in the narrow sense of the word — an Arab Meccan branch of the scriptural current that recorded, in Greek, Syriac, and Coptic, the collections of texts attested to by ancient Christian heresiographies, or discovered in recent, modern history.

The Qur’an called this group Ahl al-Kitab. Does this allow us to go a step further in identifying them? Certainly, we must remain cautious after the failure of all attempts at identification based on the derivation of the name. Here is Hjarpe, who, after dozens of hypotheses previously advanced, was tempted to add a new hypothesis — no more successful than all that preceded it. As for the hypothesis I shall now present, it is based on a derivation long known, but it remained without correct interpretation, so criticism neglected it.

In 1649, the great English orientalist Edward Pocock presented the hypothesis that sabi’ is derived from the Hebrew saba meaning “army” or “host,” and that the Arabic plural sabi’a and sabi’un does not denote “soldiers” or “troops,” but rather worshippers of saba ha-shamayim, that is., the “host of the heavens.” Of course, Pocock and those who later shared his view — notably Golius, Hyde, Wahl, Hirsch, and Sommer — could not understand such a derivation, which makes the Sabians “worshippers of the heavenly army,” except through what was found in the Arab traditions collected by Maimonides, the only source of information available at the time — traditions that described the Sabians as pagans who worshipped the stars. The biblical expression from which their name derived strengthened Pocock’s conviction in the correctness of what Maimonides reported about them, and in the reality of their worship of the stars, both personified and spiritual.

It was difficult for Pocock to avoid such an error of interpretation at a time when it was impossible to access the sources from which Maimonides drew his information. Indeed, it remained difficult even afterward, given the absence of any critical history of the traditions speaking of the Sabians. Such a critical history, in fact, only began with Hjarpe, about fifteen years ago!

The derivation proposed by Pocock is unassailable; it is correct. But what Pocock deduced from it is mistaken. The Hebrew biblical source, of which the word al-sabi’a is the Arabic counterpart, does not indicate that this group were worshippers of the stars, but rather that they were followers of the heavenly hosts — that is, the “powers” or angels: stratia, dynameis, angeloi, as in the LXX texts. Indeed, Epiphanius — who knew the historical Gnostics directly, without intermediary or transmission — indicated that they were called, among other names, stratiotikoi. This name does not mean that they were “soldiers”; rather, they are the host — that is, those who, between God and this lower world, ensure the entry of the celestial militias of angels or hidden powers, as an ever-stronger affirmation of God’s absolute transcendence.

Thus, the Hebraism of the LXX texts that transmitted the name reported by Epiphanius, and the Hebrew biblicism that transmitted the name reported by the Qur’an, are firmly connected and form a single whole. And the Qur’anic Sabians — the Arabic counterpart of the Greek designation Stratiōtikoi — are therefore nothing but the Gnostics in the strict sense.

Here, three essential matters become clear that explain the emergence of the Qur’an as book and doctrine. The divine character of the revealed text in a state of manifestation, the idea of God’s absolute transcendence, and the idea of the integration of Jesus with the Holy Spirit — these are the three theses of the struggle of historical Gnosticism, and they constitute the direct Gnostic legacy in the Qur’an. By all apparent indications, the Messenger knew those Gnostics before the Prophetic Call and knew that they had “books,” and he came to know this in the Meccan milieu and in his relations with the family of Khadija bint Khuwaylid. For this reason they were rightly classified, within the milieu in which they had always lived, between the Jews and the Christians, as being among the Ahl al-Kitab [People of the Book] — and they were so in fact, as indicated by the traditions concerning sects and schools, and by the discovered writings.

We have in our hands another testimony from Epiphanius himself concerning the existence of Gnostic activity, at the end of the fourth century, around the Judeo-Christian sect in the region of the Ka‘ba. This testimony indicates the likelihood of the historical continuity of Syrian historical Gnosticism all the way to the Arabian Peninsula, where Islam was later destined to be born. For those whom Epiphanius called the “Archontics” — a new form of the name Stratiōtikoi “Soldiers” which he himself coined to serve the needs of his program of diverse religious studies — had the same features with respect to sacred writings and doctrines, exactly like the Gnostics whom he knew when he was in Egypt, or those whose texts were discovered in Egypt. Accordingly, these Gnostics whom he named “Archontics,” and who are linked to the Gnostics of Egypt by ties he himself noted, were active in the Arabian Peninsula around the year 370. He mentions the places where they were found, their books, their leaders, the milieu in which they lived, and their comings and goings. The milieu in which they lived was the same one of which Muhammad later became the echo. Their movement from the northern edges of the Arabian Peninsula to the commercial cities of the South must have been confirmed during the fifth century, when the zeal of monks and priests made their life impossible in eastern Jordan. As for the name the Qur’an applied to them — namely, “the Sabians” — it was nothing but the epithet by which their former co-religionists among the Jews of Palestine designated them. It was natural among Greek-speaking Christians that their name should be transformed and become Stratiōtikoi, “Soldiers,” and, so that Epiphanius would not be remiss in this regard, he transformed the name and made it Archontics, “Rulers.” Like the name of the Christians — al-Nasara — the word was Arabized in the language of the Qur’an. “And as I say, so it is.”

Conclusion

The critical positions of each of Margoliouth, Bardesanes, and Hjarpe regarding Chwolsohn’s theses cannot lead to an insightful clarification of the Sabian enigma, neither in the Qur’anic text nor in Harran. On the other hand, Meyerhof, in his treatment of the end of Greek philosophy, inserted that enigma into the series of philosophical institutions that passed from the Greeks to the Arabs. But these questions require a new focus for critical research based on historical precision and on a fresh examination of the established evident facts.

As for the major results of the investigations of Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa and al-Kindi, and then especially al-Masʿudi — the only one of the writers who visited Harran and transmitted to us an Aramaic inscription taken from the first part of the book “Alcibiades” as the traditions handed it down — they are as follows: The house that al-Masʿudi visited, with the aforementioned inscription engraved on its doorpost, was a “Platonic Academy.” From its beginning to its end, this academy was Hellenic, that is., pagan (Sabian in the broad sense of the word). Thanks to its linguistic bilingualism and its socio-cultural position, this academy was the only one that embraced the exiles of Athens after the agreement between Khosrow Anushirvan and Justinian, and in it Simplicius wrote his commentary on the book: “Enchiridion.”

Al-Masʿudi and al-Kindi were the only two Arab writers who dispelled with complete clarity the confusion between the Harranian religion and the “Wisdom” in the scholastic readings of Plato, which functioned in its turn just as the Greek schools did — that is, based first on the “Alcibiades,” and then on “Parmenides.”

As for the new Coptic texts found at “Nag Hammadi,” they most likely attest to the existence of the same system among the Gnostics, but this time it is limited to a general scriptural tradition presented in a compendium of maxims taken from the “Alcibiades,” the “Theory of Forms,” and “Parmenides.”

And the name “the Sabians” remained in the Qur’an, which is the Arabized writing of the epithet that the Jews of Palestine applied to the Gnostics in the strict sense of the word, and which the Greeks knew explicitly through Epiphanius Constantiensis who died in 403.