What can people outside the Middle East do to help? Anything that outsiders want to do to help minorities must be founded on a policy of goodwill toward the entire population. Christian schools, for example, have done more good for Christians in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon than just about anything else because they have been open to Muslim children, and so have fulfilled a triple purpose of making Christians better able to earn a living, earning goodwill from Muslims, and providing a humane education to everyone. (Crucially, they have not tried to convert their Muslim pupils.) By contrast, Western military interventions have generally set back the cause of minorities, not advanced them. Members of a minority need protection from their own fellow countrymen and -women, not from foreigners who stay briefly and then leave. Instability usually unsettles minority groups, who feel (and are) particularly vulnerable. Most recently, the invasion of Iraq precipitated a huge emigration of Christians and Mandaeans from the country as it spiraled down into civil war.
At the same time, the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries are involved in the Middle East in many other ways. They give funding for development. They offer military support. They also, by engaging with people and organizations, confer on them implicit support and recognition. In doing so, they can and should take a firm stand against those who incite religious hatred, whatever their religion (recall from Chapter 6 how a Coptic priest criticized anti-Muslim propaganda broadcast from Cyprus by one of his fellow priests). Focusing on extremism only when it turns violent ignores the fact that violence comes at the end of a long process of radicalization, which begins with the encouragement of anger and hatred. Western governments should take religious belief seriously, understanding it well enough to tell the difference between a fervent believer and a preacher of hate.
Lastly, asylum is on offer in countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia to religious minorities, and this in itself tempts them to leave their countries of origin. Asylum saves Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, and Mandaeans from immediate danger, and I found them to be deeply grateful and to have strong feelings of loyalty to their new homes—but it also diminishes their communities back home. There is a partial solution to this problem, which is to help these groups hold on to their traditions and build communities in their new homes. I would like to think that this book, by celebrating their traditions and history, might encourage them to do that.
I want to thank first of all the people who are the subjects of this book. Without the help of Nadia Gattan, Mirza Ismail and Abu Shihab, Shahin Bekhradnia, Sami Makarem, Benny Tsedaka, Fr. Yoannis, and my friends at Sainte Thérèse, Azem Bek and Wazir Ali, my Yazidi friends in Nebraska, and those, including George and Yusif, who saw me in Detroit, it could not have been written.
As well as kindly writing the foreword to this book, Rory Stewart was director of the Carr Center of the Harvard Kennedy School for part of my eighteen-month research fellowship there, which gave me the opportunity (among other things) to begin the research for this book. I would also like to thank the Jerwood Fund for granting me a prize in 2011 that helped meet the costs of some of the traveling this book required: between 2010 and 2014 I visited Egypt, Lebanon and Iraqi Kurdistan twice each, Pakistan, Israel, and the West Bank.
Lara Heimert and Dan Gerstle at Basic Books, Mike Jones at Simon & Schuster, and George Lucas of Inkwell Productions steered me through the editing of this book through their patient and diligent comments. Jack Fairweather, Dr. Lana Asfour, Sir John Jenkins, Dr. Brigid Russell, Professor Philip Kreyenbroek, Dr. Jorunn Buckley, Wynne Maggi, Felicity Devonshire, Dr. Nadim Shehadi, Alice Bragg, Dr. Barbara Jefferis, Gur Hirshberg, Dr. Cornelis Hulsman, and Dr. Amin Makram Ebeid helped me by reading drafts of this book or individual chapters; they bear no responsibility for the opinions expressed in the book, nor for any mistakes that remain.
I also benefited from the lectures and advice of Professor Ali Asani, Professor Oktor Skjaervo, and Dr. Charles Stang of Harvard University.
Choosing any book to highlight as an introduction to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, other than their sacred texts, is an invidious business. Hans Kung’s series on these religions, including
Christianity
(Continuum, 1996),
Judaism
(Bloomsbury, 1995), and
Islam
(Oneworld Publications, 2008), told me much that I had not known. So did Albert Hourani’s
A History of the Arab Peoples
(Faber & Faber, 1991) and Eugene Rogan’s
The Arabs: A History
(Basic Books, 2011) on a more secular front. The
Encyclopaedia Iranica
, the
Oxford History of Islam,
edited by John L. Esposito (Oxford University Press, 1999), and the
Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam,
edited by H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers (Brill, 1953), were all useful reference documents throughout.
On the specific issue of conversion to Islam, I read
Conversion to Islam,
by Richard Bulliet (Harvard University Press, 1979);
Rise of Islam on the Bengal Frontier,
by Richard Eaton (University of California Press, 1996);
The Formation of Islam,
by Jonathan Berkey (Cambridge University Press, 2002); and “The Age of Conversions: A Reassessment” by Michael Morony in
Conversion and Continuity,
edited by M. Gervers and J. Bikhazi (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990).
Three other books that are referred to in multiple chapters are Michael Morony’s
Iraq After the Muslim Conquest
(Princeton University Press, 1984), Patricia Crone’s
The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran
(Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Christoph Baumer’s
The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity
(I. B. Tauris, 2006).
Quotations from the Bible are from the Authorized King James version unless noted otherwise below. Quotations from the Koran are from the Saheeh International version. Quotes from Herodotus are taken from Aubrey de Sélincourt’s translation of
The Histories
(Penguin, 1954).
INTRODUCTION
On Identity
by Amin Maalouf is available in English in a translation by Barbara Bray (Harvard Press, 2004).
Al-Ghazali’s polemic against Greek philosophy was called
Tahafut al-Falasifa
.
The kaiser’s remark is taken from Kamal Salibi’s
Bhamdoun: Historical Portrait of a Lebanese Mountain Village
(Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1997).
Ambassador Morgenthau’s assessment of the Armenian genocide can be read on the website of the Armenian National Institute, at
www.armenian-genocide.org/statement_morgenthau.html
.
Suha Rassam’s observation comes in her
Christianity in Iraq
(Gracewing, 2010), page 196.
Arthur Balfour’s memorandum of August 11, 1919, can be seen in Woodward and Butter,
Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939
(HMSO, 1952).
CHAPTER 1: MANDAEANS
I met the High Priest when I was head of the political section of the British embassy in Baghdad between 2005 and 2006. I subsequently met Mandaeans in Erbil, northern Iraq, in 2010 and 2013, in the United States, and in Britain. To read more about them, as well as the books listed here, I recommend the Mandaean Associations Union, whose website is
www.mandaeanunion.org
.
Those who helped me with this chapter included Nadia Hamdan Gattan and her aunt, Sheikh Sattar, and Wasim Breegi, who all generously gave me their time and confidence. Professor Jorunn Buckley of the University of Maine, author of a learned and humane study called
The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People
(Oxford University Press, 2000), patiently answered my numerous questions. The staff of the Bodleian Library allowed me to see the Drower collection; likewise the Bibliothèque Nationale in respect to its collection of Syriac and Mandaic manuscripts and books.
For a general introduction to the Mandaeans, there can be nothing better than E. S. Drower’s books, especially
The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran
(Gorgias Press, 2002)—labeled hereafter as
MII
—but also
The Secret Adam
(Oxford University Press, 1960).
Mandaeans: The Last Gnostics,
by Edmondo Lupieri (Eerdmans, 2001) was the source for my stories of Western missionaries’ encounters with the Mandaeans, including the Isa-Iahia quote, and also for the Mandaean magical potions that appear later in the chapter. Another major scholar on the Mandaeans is Edwin Yamauchi, who wrote
Gnostic Ethics and Mandaean Origins
(Harvard University Press, 1970).
Excavations at Ur,
by Leonard Woolley (E. Benn, 1954), is the source of Woolley’s remark on the Flood. I used Andrew George’s excellent
The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation
(Penguin, 2003) for the excerpts from the epic in this chapter, including the prostitute’s curse. “Therefore is the name of it Babel . . . ” comes from Genesis 11:9.
For background on Babylon I read
The Sumerians,
by Samuel Noah Kramer (University of Chicago Press, 1964), and
Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria,
by Georges Contenau (W. W. Norton, 1966).
Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization,
by Paul Kriwaczek (Atlantic, 2012), is a description of the legacy of Babylon in the present day. My account of Saddam’s reconstruction of Babylon was informed by the September 1997 documentary
The New Babylon
by Journeyman Pictures.
The Patriarchs’ salutation “From my cell . . . ” is quoted in Baumer’s
Church of the East.
Insights into the sectarian bloodshed that ravaged Iraq after 2003 can be found in
Sectarianism in Iraq,
by Fanar Haddad (Hurst, 2011), and
Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile and Upheaval in the Middle East,
by Deborah Amos (PublicAffairs, 2010). The guidebook to Baghdad alluded to in this chapter was the Bradt travel guide by Karen Dabrowska, published in 2002.
Jaakko Hameen-Anttila’s
The Last Pagans of Iraq
(Brill, 2006) was my source on the
Nabatean Agriculture,
of which it is a translation with an added commentary (I am grateful to Philip Wood for the tip).
Al-Mas’udi can be read in
Islamic Historiography: The Histories of Al Masudi,
by Tarif Khalidi (State University of New York Press, 1975).
Caliph Omar weeping at the conversion of Arameans is reported in Crone,
Nativist Prophets,
page 10.
Biruni’s comments on the Mandaeans are in his
Chronology of Ancient Nations
, which he wrote in
AD
1000 at the age of twenty-seven. It was his eighth book. For more on Biruni, see the
Encyclopaedia Iranica
(e.g., at
www.iranicaonline.org
). Sarton’s remark comes in his book
Introduction to the History of Science
(Williams & Wilkins, 1927). Ibn Qutaybah’s quote is taken from Dimitri Gutas’s
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture
(Routledge, 1998).
I used my Arabic edition of the
Ginza Rabba;
an English translation is now available. I read Wilfrid Thesiger’s
The Marsh Arabs
in the Longmans 1964 edition. The
Drasa di Yehia
is translated in part in G. R. S. Mead’s
Gnostic John the Baptizer,
republished by Jürgen Beck (Altenmunster, 2012).
The religious environment in the late Roman Empire is described in
A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire,
by Keith Hopkins (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999). Statistics for the Jewish population of Iraq before the coming of Islam come from Morony’s
Iraq After the Muslim Conquest
, page 308; this book was also a source on the survival of paganism in Iraq. My interest in the Marcionites and like movements was originally kindled by Henry Chadwick’s
The Early Church
(Penguin, 1993).
Information on Manichaeism came from Ibn Nadim’s
Fihrist,
trans. Bayard Dodge (Columbia University Press, 1970); Samuel N. C. Lieu’s
Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China
(Manchester University Press, 1985); and Peter Brown’s paper “Diffusion of Manicheism in the Roman Empire,”
Journal of Roman Studies,
1967. The quotations from Augustine’s
Confessions
are from Pine-Coffin’s translation (Penguin, 1961). The Mandaean funeral prayer can be read in full at
http://gnosis.org/library/tsod.htm
.
The Sumerian poem “Schooldays” was originally translated by Kramer in 1949; I here used the translation of A. R. George, 2005. The “umannu” prayer is taken from
Astrology: A History,
by Peter Whitfield (British Library, 2001). The Aristokrates horoscope is quoted in
A History of Astrology
by Derek and Julia Parker (London, Deutsch, 1983). Herodotus’s remark on Babylonian washing habits is in his
Histories,
I:198. Drower’s quote from Hermez on the
melki
comes on page 282 of
MII
.