2002/10/01 by Jonathan Elukin · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Medieval and Classical Philosophy #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Biblical Studies and Interpretation #Persecution #Religious studies #Elite #Islam #Identity (music) #Scholarship #Judaism #History #Nothing #Ancient history #Paganism #Law #Philosophy #Christianity #Political science #Archaeology #Politics
paper · doi:10.2307/3654163
openalex publication_date 2002/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Koran mentions the Sabi'un three times (II 6-2, V 69, XXII 17). "Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabi'un—whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does what is right—shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing to fear or to regret." This language is repeated in the second citation. The third appearance is slightly different: "As for true believers, the Jews, the Sabi'un, the Christians, the Magians, and the pagans, Allah will judge them on the Day of Resurrection. He bears witness to all things." 1 Early Islamic commentators often disagreed on the identity of the Sabi'un, and the confusion continued throughout the medieval Islamic period. 2 The term Sabi'un was applied by some early Koranic commentators to the survivors of an ancient Jewish-Christian sect, the Elchasites in southern Iraq. 3 One minority group of ethnic Arab "pagans" with a hellenized elite in Harran, in Arabia, also took the Koranic name Sabian in the third/ninth century to claim the status of a "people of the book" and therefore avoid persecution. It is this group that some later Muslims identified as Sabi'. 4 The scholarly consensus now suggests that [End Page 619] the term Sabian refers to some kind of Gnostic identity that can encompass "the disciples of Judeo-Christian baptizing sects ... and, on the other, Harranian astrolators, the last representatives of decadent Greco-Roman paganism." 5