1. Harut and Marut

Babylon

While it is not proven that Hegel was a member of the Illuminati, as demonstrated by Glenn Alexander Magee in Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, Hegel did often refer cryptically to Illuminati and Masonic symbols. Hegel was an avid reader of Illuminati member Franz von Baader, through whom he was indirectly introduced to the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria (1534 – 1572), where good and evil are considered a false duality, resolved in Tikkun: the cosmic restoration at the end of time, when man becomes God and defines his own truth.[1] The Kabbalah is an ancient Jewish tradition, commonly described as “mystical,” which includes a speculative aspect which involves an elaborate theosophy, and a practical aspect, which incorporates the practice of magic, alchemy and astrology. While Western historians have struggled to trace the origins of the Kabbalah, the ultimate clue is provided in the Quran. After centuries of defiance, according to the Bible, God finally fulfilled his threat to punish the ancient Israelites, who were carried into captivity to the city of Babylon between 598 and 596 BC. What the Quran explains is that some of the Jews apostatized, learning magic:

 

When a messenger was sent to them [the Jews] by God confirming the revelations they had already received some of them turned their backs as if they had no knowledge of it. They followed what the demons attributed to the reign of Solomon. But Solomon did not blaspheme, it was the satanists who blasphemed, teaching men magic and such things as were revealed at Babylon to the angels Harut and Marut. But neither of these taught anyone (such things) without saying; “we are a trial, so do not blaspheme.” They learned from them the means to sow discord between man and wife [love magic]. But they could not harm anyone except by God’ s permission. And they learned what harmed them, not what benefited them. And they knew that the purchasers [of magic] would have no share in the happiness of the hereafter. And vile was the price for which they sold their souls, if they but knew. [2:102]

 

The verses of Harut and Marut refer to the development of the Hebrew Kabbalah. According to Islamic tradition, Jinn left books of magic under Solomon’s throne so that when he died they were falsely attributed to him.[2] Solomon was supposed to have controlled the Jinn through the possession of a ring that featured a magical talisman known as the Seal of Solomon, in the shape of a six-pointed star, which became the symbol of Zionism. The Kabbalah formed the basis of occult tradition, from philosophy in ancient Greece, to Hermeticism in Egypt, and the Ancient Mysteries of Roman times. These were inherited in the Islamic world by the Sabians of Harran, the Brethren of Sincerity, and the Ismaili Assassins, who reportedly passed them on to the Knights Templars during the Crusades. These legends became the basis of Freemasonry, which seeks to rebuild Solomon’s Temple, known as the Third Temple, a key element of Jewish End Times expectations.

It was in Babylon that these heretical Jews were introduced to the occult practices of the ancient Chaldeans, which they incorporated into an esoteric interpretation of the Bible. To the rest of the world, they came to be known as “Magi,” the “Wise Men” who visited the birth of Jesus. From their name is derived the word for “magic.” As Franz Cumont and Joseph Bidez have demonstrated, in Les Mages Hellénisés (“The Hellenized Magi”), these Magi were falsely believed to be priest of the Zoroastrian faith. Mithras, the god worshipped by the Magi, was a species of dying-god as worshipped throughout the Middle East, with equivalents in Baal, Hermes, Osiris, Dionysus and Apollo. As a chthonic deity, he was associated with the Underworld, and therefore with evil and believed to govern the world of spirits. He was one of a trinity, the son of a father god and mother goddess. By marrying his mother and sister, together they become a single androgynous god, representing simultaneously the Sun and the planet Venus, whose Latin name was Lucifer.

When the Persians conquered Babylon in 538 BC, they released the Jews from captivity, and allowed them to return to the Promised Land where they rebuilt their destroyed temple. While many returned, others followed the conquering Armies of the Persians and travelled to Greece where they contributed to the thought of Plato and Pythagoras. Still others who departed from Babylon settled in Egypt, where they developed the cult of Hermeticism, another mystical doctrine, attributed to “Hermes,” whom the Greeks equated with the Egyptian god Thoth, and which influenced the rise of alchemy.[3] Within the Jewish word itself, these traditions were to be found among the Essenes, known as the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, among whom were the first developments of Merkabah, centered on visions on the throne of God as found in Ezekiel. During the Hellenistic Age, following the conquest of Egypt by Alexander in 332 BC, these influenced converged to produce the philosophy of Neoplatonism, and Gnosticism among the Christians.

Greek interest in Oriental teachings during the Alexandrian period resulted in the production of a curious set of pseudepigraphal works, written in Greek, and attributed to Zoroaster, his disciple Osthanes, and to his patron Hystaspes, the protector and first convert of Zoroaster, sometimes identified as the father of Darius. Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher of the sixth century BC, traced the Greek Mysteries of Dionysus to the phallic and “infernal” rites of the Magi.[4] His claim was corroborated by a papyrus discovered in Derveni, near Thessaloniki, belonging to the fourth century BC.[5] The legendary founder of the rites of Dionysus was known to have been Orpheus, who inspired the Orphic movement, which was influenced by the heretical Zoroastrian cult of Zurvanism.[6] Aristobulus, a third century BC Jewish philosopher, claimed that Orpheus was a follower of Moses.[7] Artapanus, third century BC Jewish philosopher, declared of Moses that, “as a grown man he was called Musaeus by the Greeks. This Musaeus was the teacher of Orpheus.”[8]

According to F.M. Cornford, “whether or not we accept the hypothesis of direct influence from Persia on the Ionian Greeks in the sixth century, any student of Orphic and Pythagorean thought cannot fail to see that the similarities between it and Persian religion are so close as to warrant our regarding them as expressions of the same view of life, and using the one system to interpret the other.”[9] As Bertrand Russell outlined, “from Pythagoras, Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato, and from Plato into most later philosophy that was in any degree religious.”[10] According to Aristobulus, Plato also had access to translations of Jewish texts, and therefore, “it is evident that Plato imitated our legislation and that he had investigated thoroughly each of the elements in it… For he was very learned, as was Pythagoras, who transferred many of our doctrines and integrated them into his own beliefs.”[11]

 

Gnosticism

The cult that binds these various trends were the Mysteries of Mithras, which became widespread in the Roman military, and purported to represent the ancient teachings of the Magi. According to the theology of these mysteries, interpreted from the philosophy of Plato’s Timaeus, the soul was thought to have originated among the stars, but to have been subjected to a Fall into corrupt matter, during which it acquired the qualities of the seven planets. To escape the confines of Fate, the mystic was submitted to a ritual of rebirth, followed by a symbolic ascent through the spheres, or planetary gods, to remove the taints of the planets. However, the planets are guarded by fierce opponents, and the mystic must learn the appropriate names of these guardians, or Names of Power, in order to pass from sphere to sphere, and to re-ascend towards ultimate union with the true god. Borrowing from the concept of the transmutation of metals from alchemy, the first planet in the ascent is Saturn, symbolizing lead, in a process ending in union with the Sun, symbolized as gold, which is the true god.

The ascent culminates with a vision of God in his throne or chariot, as described in the Book of Ezekial. The final secret in Mithraism revealed the god referred to as the Leontocephalus, who mirrored the creatures in Ezekial said to pull God’s chariot, composed of four heads, for each of the seasons of the Zodiac, that of a man, a lion, an eagle and a bull, with two sets of wings and standing a wheel inside a wheel, representing the intersection of the celestial and earthly equator. The body represents the celestial pole, or the world’s axis, and the serpent entwined around it symbolizes the constellation Draco which circles the North Pole. In the Kabbalistic book the Sepher Yetzirah, the Serpent is named Teli. Together, this figure represents Saturn, known in the heretical Magian cult of Zurvanism as Zurvan, the god of boundless time, or to the Greeks as Chronos or Phanes, the god of Orphism. Cleitarchus, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch all mention the burning of children as an offering to Cronus or Saturn, that is to Baal Hammon, the chief god of Carthage.

All these sects and traditions held in common the dualistic philosophy of Gnosticism, where the God commonly worshipped by the masses was not the true God.[12] According to the Jewish Encyclopedia:

 

Jewish gnosticism unquestionably antedates Christianity, for Biblical exegesis had already reached an age of five hundred years by the first century C.E. Judaism had been in close contact with Babylonian-Persian ideas for at least that length of time, and for nearly as long a period with Hellenistic ideas. Magic, also, …, was a not unimportant part of the doctrines and manifestations of gnosticism, largely occupied Jewish thinkers. There is, in general, no circle of ideas to which elements of gnosticism have been traced, and with which the Jews were not acquainted. It is a noteworthy fact that heads of gnostic schools and founders of gnostic systems are designated as Jews by the Church Fathers.[13]

 

To the Ophites, also known as Sethians, a Jewish baptismal sect in the tradition of the Essenes, that flourished around the first century BC to the first century AD, the God of the Bible is really the evil god. Although there had been attempts to deny that Gnostic dualism had its origin in Judaism, in his now classic work, Alan Segal demonstrated how among Jews who were regarded as heretics, Enoch’s apotheosis came to justify that “There are indeed two powers in Heaven!”[14] Scholem explained, “in the second century Jewish converts to Christianity apparently conveyed different aspects of Merkabah mysticism to Christian Gnostics. In the Gnostic literature there were many corruptions of such elements, yet the Jewish character of this material is still evident, especially among the Ophites, in the school of Valentinus (c. 100 CE – c. 180), and in several of the Gnostic and Coptic texts discovered within the last fifty years”[15] These opinions were confirmed by several ancient sources. For example, in fragments quoted from Eusebius, we know that Hegesippus argued that the Gnostics were inheritors of various Jewish or baptist sects, such as the Essenes. Filastrius, the fourth century AD bishop of Brescia, numbers the Gnostic sects of the Ophites among the sects that flourished in Judaism before the advent of Christianity.[16]

 

Neoplatonism 

Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. AD 46 – AD 120) maintained that the Jews worshipped Dionysus, and that the day of Sabbath was a festival of Sabazius.[17] The Sabbath, or Shabbat in Hebrew, is the seventh day of the week, which is related to Shabbatai, the Hebrew name for Saturn, the seventh planet. The Romans named Saturday Saturni dies (“Saturn’s Day”) no later than the second century for the planet Saturn. A similarity between the Jewish Passover and the rites of Dionysus was perceived by a number of ancient authors. According to Tacitus, the priests of the Jews, “used to perform their chants to the flute and drums, crowned with ivy, and a golden vine was discovered in the Temple; and this has led some to imagine that the god thus worshipped was Prince Liber (Dionysus).”[18]

In his essay On the E at Delphi, Plutarch explained that, according to his teacher, Ammonius Saccas (fl. 3rd century AD), who had been in charge of the Platonic Academy at Athens, the sublunary realm was ruled over by a “god, or rather daemon, whose office is concerned with Nature in dissolution and generation,” who is known as Hades or Pluto, in contrast to the god who rules over the heavenly realm, who is Apollo. According to Plutarch, the supreme god responsible for creating the world, and commonly worshipped by the ignorant masses, is actually the evil god, while the true god is that one mistakenly accused of evil. This god, or demon, should be called Hades or Pluto, god of the Underworld, or the sublunary realm.[19] As mediator, the Logos is the messenger of the gods, which Plutarch equated with Mithras, the “mediator god” of the Zoroastrians.[20]

Ammonius had been brought up as a Christian but abandoned his religion for the study of Plato, developing his own variation of Platonic philosophy. Born in Egypt, Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 270), like Plutarch, had also been the pupil at Alexandria of Ammonius Saccas, who may have been the intermediary for the ideas of Numenius of Apamea, of the late second century AD. According to the Church Father Origen, Numenius offered allegorical interpretations of the writings of Moses and the Prophets.[21] He had remarked, “what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.”[22] To explore the nature of God, Numenius insisted, one had to look back beyond the wisdom of Plato, or even of Pythagoras, to “everything that the Brahmins, the Jews, the Magi and the Egyptians have established.”[23] In the Life of Plotinus, his pupil Porphyry (c. 234 – c. 305 AD) reported that through Ammonius, Plotinus “became eager to investigate the Persian methods and the system adopted among the Indians.”[24] Moshe Idel, a leading scholar of the Jewish Kabbalah, has indicated that the quest for mystical union in the thought of Plotinus may have been derived from Jewish sources, possibly from Philo of Alexandria and Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph, the principal founder of Rabbinical Judaism, who lived from 40 to 135 AD.[25]

 

Hermeticism 

In an early alchemical manuscript, a priestess who calls herself Isis, and who addresses her writings to her son Horus, declares that she owed her knowledge to the first of the angels and prophets, Amnael, and explains that she acquired her wisdom as a reward for intercourse with him. There was also Mary the Jewess. None of her writings have survived in complete form, but she is mentioned by her colleagues as if she might be identified with Moses’ sister Miriam. The alchemist Olympiodorus from the fourth century AD, quotes the famous passage on the strength of which she has always been called a Jewess. Her teachings were reserved for Jews, for speaking of the “holiness” of her book, she said: “Do not touch the Stone of the Sages, for you are not of the seed of Abraham.”[26] Other important alchemists were Theosebia, and a woman who called herself Cleopatra. The most notable fragment left behind by Cleopatra was a single page of symbolic diagrams. One of its images showed the famous symbol of the Ouroboros, a serpent swallowing its tail, with the phrase “The One is the All” inscribed within the circle.[27]

Zosimus of Panopolis, of the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century AD, was probably the most important of the Alexandrian alchemists. Zosimus compiled the teachings of many earlier adepts to form what amounted to an encyclopedia of alchemy. He elaborated on the subject and gives the name of a very early master of the art, the mysterious Chemes. It was thought that Chemes had written a book which he called Chema, with which the Sons of God had given lessons to the daughters of men. From “Chemes” and “Chema” was derived Chemia, a name which was given to the art itself. The Greek work Chemia was the designation for alchemy until the Arabs added to it the article al.[28] To Zosimus, the Primordial Man is the Son of God, or the First Man, whose name is Thoth:

 

The Chaldeans and Parthians and Medes and Hebrews call Him Adam, which is by interpretation virgin Earth, and blood-red Earth, and fiery Earth, and fleshy Earth. And these indications were found in the book-collections of the Ptolemies, which they stored away in every temple, and especially in the Serapeum, when they invited Asenas, the chief priest of Jerusalem, to send a “Hermes”, who translated the whole of the Hebrew into Greek and Egyptian.[29]

 

The alchemical process, to Zosimus “is the Mithraic Mystery, the incommunicable Mystery.”[30] Essentially, the alchemists employed the language of chemical procedures as allegory. Converting lead into gold, implied the purification of the soul by removing successive levels of impurity, beginning with lead, which, according to the Mithraic system described by Celsus, is the first gate, the planet Saturn, then ascending through the six other planets, culminating in the Sun, symbolized by gold. Thus, as Lindsay maintained, explaining alchemy according to the system popularized by Numenius, “the soul in its ascent was thought to give back the qualities it had absorbed at each stage of its descent. Thus each halt was a sort of transmutation in terms of the relevant metal; after the seventh change came the absorption into the luminous bliss of the eighth sphere. Having come down from Ahura Mazda’s presence by the low gate of the Crab, the soul went up by the lofty gate of Capricorn.”[31]

 

Sabians

Some have said that, following the closing of their Platonic Academy in Athens in 529 AD by the emperor Justinian, the last of the Neoplatonists moved east, and eventually settled in Harran, now in southeastern Turkey where they joined the cult of the Sabians.[32] The religion of Manichaeism, founded by Persian prophet Mani (216 – 274 AD), was also a source of influence for the sect of the Mandeans, often equated with the Sabians.[33] According to the Cologne Mani-Codex, Mani’s parents were members of the Jewish-Christian Gnostic sect known as the Elcesaites.[34] His teachings were a fusion of Gnostic Christianity with aspects of earlier Zoroastrian and Mithraic traditions, purporting that the creator god was evil, and offered salvation through gnosis. Manichaeism thrived between the third and seventh centuries AD, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was briefly the main rival to Christianity before the spread of Islam.

The Mandaeans are often considered to be the same as, or related to, the Sabians of Harran, in Turkey.[35] According to the Muslim scholar al-Biruni (973 – after 1050), the Sabians were originally the remnant of Jews exiled at Babylon, where they had adopted the teachings of the Magi. These, he believes, were the real Sabians. However, he indicates, the same name was applied to the so-called Sabians of Harran who derived their system from Agathodaemon, Hermes, Walis, Maba, Sawar.[36] The Sabians identified themselves deceptively to the Muslim authorities with the “Sabeans” of the Quran, to gain the protection of the Islamic state as “People of the Book.” In reality, the Sabians inherited the traditions of similar Jewish-Gnostic sects, and transmitted the traditions of Neoplatonism and Hermeticism to the Islamic world. They worshipped the planets, and were reputed to sacrifice a child, whose flesh was boiled and made into cakes, which were then eaten by a certain class of worshippers.[37]

Ibn al-Nadim (d. 990), an Arab Muslim scholar and bibliographer, listed under alchemy the “scientific” texts the Sabians composed to convey the revelations of their prophets Agathodaemon and Hermes, whom the Sabians identified with Seth and Enoch.[38] According to Jean Seznec, “thanks to the Crusades, and to the penetration of Arab philosophy and science into Sicily and Spain, Europe came to know the Greek texts with their Arab commentaries, in Latin translations for the most part made by Jews. The result was an extraordinary increase in the prestige of astrology, which between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries enjoyed greater favor than ever before.”[39] The name “alchemy” affirms the Arabic origin of chemistry, being derived from the Arabic term al-kimiya. The Arabs’ fascination with alchemy was founded on a work called the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, not known during the Hellenistic era. The Arabs identified Hermes with a prophet mentioned in the Quran, named Idris, equated with the prophet Enoch of the Bible. Just as Hermes came to be identified with Enoch, Seth, the son of Adam, was identified with Agathodaemon, who engraved on stone the names of the months, years and constellations, with the assistance of an angel of God.[40] But during the ninth to fourteenth centuries, alchemical theories faced criticism from a variety of practical Muslim chemists, including al-Kindi, al-Biruni, Avicenna and Ibn Khaldun, who wrote refutations against the idea of transmuting metals.

 

Brethren of Sincerityf

An important consequence of the influence of the Sabians and Sufism in the Islamic world were the Epistles of the Ikhwan al Saffa wa Khullan al Wafa, or “The Brethren of Sincerity and Loyal Friends,” a brotherhood that flourished in the city of Basra in Iraq, in the ninth and tenth century, and who were an important source of inspiration for much of Sufi tradition, such as Ibn Arabi, as well as Jewish scholars of Kabbalah. Though the Epistles drew on multiple traditions, they attributed to them a common origin, echoing the ancient Jewish philosopher Aristobulus (fl. c. 181–124 BC) in tracing Greek philosophy to Jewish roots.18 Pythagoras, according to the Epistles, was a “monotheistic sage who hailed from Harran.”[41] The Epistles were a philosophical and religious encyclopedia, which scholars regard as reflecting elements of Pythagorean, Neoplatonic and Magian traditions drawn up in the tenth century AD. The Neoplatonic theory of creation by emanation from a single creator, together with the notion that all creation was organized according to a hierarchical pattern was a dominant theme in the Epistles. Their stated purpose, following Gnostic tradition, was to teach initiates how to purify their souls of bodily and worldly attachments and ascend back to the divine source.

The Brethren of Sincerity followed the Sabians in revering Idris, the Muslims’ name for the prophet Enoch, whom they equated with Hermes, identified in the Kabbalah with Metatron. The Brethren regularly met on a fixed schedule, on three evenings of each month, in which speeches were given, apparently concerning astronomy and astrology, and the recitation of a hymn, which was a “prayer of Plato,” “supplication of Idris,” or “the secret psalm of Aristotle.” During their meetings and possibly also during the three feasts they held, on the dates of the sun’s entry into the Zodiac signs of Ram, Cancer, and Balance, they engaged in a liturgy reminiscent of the Sabians.[42] The Epistles also boasted that, along with representatives of all walks of society, their order also consisted of “philosophers, sages, geometers, astronomers, naturalists, physicians, diviners, soothsayers, casters of spells and enchantments, interpreters of dreams, alchemists, astrologers, and many other sorts, too many to mention”[43]

 


[1] Sanford L. Drob. Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought (Jason Aronson, 2000), pp. 185-240.

[2] Al-Ṭabarī, Muhammad b. Jarir. Tafsīr Al-Ṭabarī: Jāmi ʻAl-Bayān ʻan Taʾwīl āy Al-Qurān, Vol. 1. (Riyad, Saudi Arabia: Dār ʻĀlam Al-Kutub, 2003); Al-Qurtubi, Muhammad b. Ahmad. Al-Jami ‘an Ahkam al-Qur’an (Amman, Jordan: Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 2018); cited in Hana Jaber. “Harut and Marut in The Book of Watchers and Jubilees.” REL 432: History of Early Judaism (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, November 18, 2018).

[3] David Livingstone. The Dying God, 2nd ed. (Sabilillah Publications, 2024).

[4] Clement. Protreptic, 34.5, quoted fr. Patricia Curd, ed. & Richard D. McKirahan Jr., trans. A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1995), p. 39.

[5] Fritz Graf. Magic and the Ancient World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1999), p. 23.

[6] Mary Boyce. A History of Zoroastrianism: Volume II: Under the Achaemenians (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982), p. 232.

[7] Orphica, cited in James H. Charlesworth (ed.). The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature & Testaments, Vol. I & II (New York: Doubleday, 1983), p. 799).

[8] Eusebius. Praeparatio Evangelica, 9.27 .1-37

[9] F. M. Cornford. From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western Speculation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p.176.

[10] Russell. A History of Western Philosophy, p. 49.

[11] Eusebius. 13.12.1f..

[12] Plutarch. On the E at Delphi; John Dillon. The Middle Platonists (Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 191.

[13] Joseph Jacobs & Ludwig Blau. “Gnosticism.” Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906). Retrieved from https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6723-gnosticism

[14] Two Powers in Heaven (Brill, 1977/2002), p. 91.

[15] Kabbalah, p. 376.

[16] Pearson, Judaism and Egyptian Christianity, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990) p. 14.

[17] Plutarch. Symposiacs, iv, 6.

[18] The Histories, 5.5

[19] Ibid., p. 191.

[20] Isis and Osiris, chapter 46.

[21] Contra Celsus. iv 51 = Fr. 1c, quoted from Dillon, The Middle Platonists, p. 365.

[22] Eusebius. Preparation for the Gospel, IX: VI, p. 411a.

[23] Boyce and Grenet. “Zoroastrian Pseudepigrapha.” A History of Zoroastrianism, Vol. 3., p. 504.

[24] Ch. 3, cited in John Dillon. The Middle Platonists (Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 381

[25] Moshe Idel. Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 39.

[26] Kurt Seligman. The History of Magic and the Occult (New York: Gramercy Books, 1997), p. 80

[27] Seligman. The History of Magic and the Occult, p. 66

[28] Seligman. A History of Magic and the Occult, p. 79

[29] Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, V: II.

[30] Jack Lindsay. The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970), p 324.

[31] Lindsay, The Origins of Alchemy, p 35.

 

[32] Richard Sorabji. The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: Psychology (with Ethics and Religion). (Cornell University Press, 2005) page 11.

[33] Ethel Stefana Drower. The Haran Gawaita and the Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa (Biblioteca Apostolica Vatican, 1953).

[34] Werner Sundermann. “Mani.” Encyclopædia Iranica (Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation, 2009).

[35] Charles Häberl. The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr (Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009). p. 18. , p. 1

[36] The Chronology of Ancient Nations, translated and edited by Dr. C. Edward Sachau (London: William H. Allen and Co., 1879.)

[37] David Margoliouth. “Harranians,” Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.

[38] David Pringree. “The Sabians of Harran and the Classical Tradition.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Summer, 2002), p. 30.

[39] Jean Seznec. The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 52.

[40] Tamara M. Green. The City of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran (Brill, 1992), p. 171.

[41] Epistles III: 200, quoted from Fakhry. A History of Islamic Philosophy, p. 190.

[42] Seyyed Hossein Nasr. An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines: Conceptions of Nature and Methods Used for Its Study by the Ikhwan Al-Ṣafa’, Al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina (SUNY Press, 1993), pp 34–35.

[43] Rasail 21st., p. 166.

Divide & Conquer