The Mandaean proselyte Meryay, best known from her representations in the Canonical Prayerbook, the Great Treasure (Genzā Rabbā), and the Book of John (Drāši d-Yaḥyā), serves as an illuminating example of the sort of figure who partially and ambiguously bridges the interests and concerns of differently constituted religious communities, allowi…[Read more]

Recording of a brief anecdote in Neo-Mandaic. “We heard yesterday, four or five days ago a Mandaean in Baghdad, whose name is Laith Anis Ḥamur, he was a jeweler who has gold. They came in upon him, he also had a weapon, they didn’t give him an opportunity to give up his weapon. They killed him, they took his gold jeweler, they took his mon…[Read more]

In his 1875 description of the language, Theodor Nöldeke describes Mandaic as among the purest of the Aramaic languages and the furthest from Western Aramaic, particularly with respect to its lexicon. As Mandæans identify their faith with that of John the Baptist and his community of followers, this observation is not without relevance for a…[Read more]

Versions of the folktale Zêrka Zêra (in Kurdish)/Stērka Zerá (in Ṭuroyo) circulate throughout southeastern Anatolia. The story belongs to a widely-disseminated tale type, the ‘Bear’s Wife’, which concerns a young woman who is abducted by a bear (or other wilderness creature) and is forced to spawn and rear his children before escaping or being res…[Read more]

Description of a stone tablet from the site of Arslan Taş (near the town of ʻAyn al-ʻArab in the Aleppo Governorate of Syria). This description was originally intended to be a chapter for a textbook on North West Semitic epigraphy that was never realized.

English translation of Midhat Sertoğlu, İlk Milletlerarası Dili Bir Türk İcat Etmişti, originally published in Hayat Tarih Mecmuası 1 (1966): 66–68

Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic…[Read more]

Iraqi Neo-Mandaic folktale glossed with interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme glosses according to the Leipzig system.

Mandaic (in the form generally described as ‘Neo-Mandaic’ or ‘Modern Mandaic’; ISO/DIS 639–3: mid) is the language of the Mandæan community, which was formerly based in Iraq and Iran (Map 26.1) but is today distributed throughout the world, principally in Europe, Australia and North America, as the result of ethnic cleansing in its homeland.…[Read more]