Magic In Islam by Michael Muhammad Knight

Author:Michael Muhammad Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-05-06T11:11:20+00:00

The Sābians of Harrān

The historian al-Mas’ūdī (896–956), who considered Idrīs, Enoch, and Hermes to have been the same prophetic personage, credits a community in Harrān with first identifying Idrīs as Hermes. By representing Hermeticism as guidance from a prophet who was named in the Qur’ān, the Harrānians were able to present their doctrines and practices—described in contemporary scholarship as a creative assemblage of elements from Mesopotamian, Indian, Iranian, Syrian, and Greek religious, philosophical, and astrological/astronomical schools39—as qualifying for legal recognition by the caliphate. Claiming Hermes as Idrīs and their own local prophet supported a larger Harrānian project of self-identifying with a mysterious group that the Qur’ān named as prophetically guided.

In its typology of religious difference, the Qur’ān mentions “Sābians” along with Christians, Jews, and Magians as communities between whom God will offer the final judgment (2:62, 5:69, 22:17). As opposed to polytheists, Jews and Christians were to be granted the rights of legally protected minorities under Muslim rulers (this “People of the Book” privilege was also extended to Zoroastrians, despite their more ambiguous status). Unlike Jews and Christians, who are frequently mentioned in the Qur’ān and chronicles of Muhammad’s life as participants in the early Muslim community, however, it does not appear that Muhammad or his Companions ever encountered Sābians in person. Nor does the Qur’ān give any description of where Sābians could be found or what exactly they believed; nor were Sābians referenced in any source contemporary to the Qur’ān.40 The Qur’ān tells us that there are people called Sābians, and that Allāh approves of them; beyond that, Muslim thinkers were left with no concrete information on the community.

In its pre-Islamic life, Harrān had been a city dedicated to the moon god Sin. As Sin delivered the gods’ oracles and functioned as the lord of knowledge, the flat disc of the moon was imagined as a tablet on which divine decrees were written. The gods’ scribe who wrote on the moon, Nabu (or Nebo), also happened to be the inventor of writing, patron of science, and the knower of human destinies, and was associated in Mesopotamian astral/planetary religion with Mercury; he would naturally be associated with Hermes, Thoth, Enoch/Idrīs, and other regional equivalents.41 Harrān was religiously heterogeneous, home to numerous communities and their traditions; it might have been a refuge for polytheist intellectuals amid the previous centuries’ rise of imperial Christianity.

The city was subjected to theologically driven violence in the decades prior to Islam, as Stephen, Bishop of Harrān, received orders in 590 CE from the Byzantine emperor to massacre polytheists who would not accept Christ. However, when Harrān first came under Muslim rule by peaceful surrender in 639 or 640 CE, polytheists were still present and apparently the ones who negotiated with the Muslim conquerors.42 Peace was interrupted by intra-Muslim strife, during which Harrān was taken and retaken by rival factions. The Harrānians sided with Mu’āwiya against ’Alī in the Battle of Siffin, for which ’Alī reportedly punished the city with mass slaughter.43

In addition to polytheists, Christians,

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