By Sinan Sami al-Jader | Researcher in Mandaean history and religion – MSc in Engineering Sciences, University of Denmark and former Assistant Lecturer, Al-Mustansiriya University, Baghdad
Anyone who examines the Mandaic language and compares its vocabulary with that of Classical Arabic will clearly observe a strong correspondence between the two. Many Mandaic words have remained in use within Iraqi colloquial terminology, retaining their original Mandaic pronunciation, and there exists an entire lexicon documenting these terms (Al-Saadi, 2019).
Nevertheless, the numerous occupations of Mesopotamia — particularly after the end of the Abbasid state — introduced words from outside the Arabic and Aramaic linguistic spheres. Many researchers have drawn attention to these borrowed terms (Mazloum, 2024: 122–123). However, such words should not be conflated with Mandaic vocabulary, which is indigenous to Mesopotamia, as Mandaic was the original language of the population prior to the Islamic conquest.
Language represents the imprint of human communities and their civilizational interaction with other peoples. As the enduring memory of ancient times, language carries the pulse of philosophy, historical events, and the processes of influence and interaction with surrounding environments. It provides evidence of how peoples thought and the degree of their proximity to or distance from other groups. From this perspective, the close relationship between the Mandaic language and the greater Arabic language becomes evident, as the vast majority of Mandaic vocabulary is found within Arabic itself.
The historical sequence and relationship between the Akkadian, Mandaic, and Arabic languages have been deliberately obscured. This was achieved through the distortion of research on the Akkadian language and its development into Mandaic and subsequently into more recent Arabic. Orientalists driven by religious ideology were responsible for this misrepresentation.
In the late 18th century, the German scholar Schlözer — drawing on his biblical background and the presence of Shem, son of Noah, in the Torah — coined the term Semitic languages to describe Arabic, Babylonian, Assyrian, Akkadian, Hebrew Aramaic, Mandaic Aramaic, Syriac Aramaic, and others, as well as South Arabian dialects such as Minaean and Sabaean. However, this classification is inaccurate, because Akkadian, for example, is far older than Hebrew and should not be placed on the same level, as if both languages had mutually influenced one another on the basis of equal antiquity.
On the other hand, it appears that many of the aforementioned languages and dialects eventually merged and contributed to the formation of Classical Arabic, which today contains approximately eight million lexical entries in use. For more than 1,400 years, Arabic has been the language of science and culture. Although its scientific vocabulary has declined in the modern era, this is largely because scientific discovery and innovation have shifted to today’s technologically advanced Western countries, which have adopted English as the primary language of scientific expression.
Accordingly, the correct designation for these languages should be Ancient Arabic languages, rather than Semitic, as the latter is a term rooted in religious discourse and has been employed in a manner that places Zionists above others.
Moreover, numerous studies demonstrate that all the peoples who spoke these languages migrated, at certain stages of their history, through the Arabian Peninsula and left tangible traces there (Helmy, 1973).
Arabic today remains a living and robust language, with roots firmly embedded in these earlier languages. The separation of Arabic from this linguistic continuum was merely an attempt to obscure the shared roots of these languages, whose earliest forms emerged and existed in Mesopotamia. The aim of this approach was to attach them to a religious philosophy that reassigns elements of civilization — including languages — to Hebrew, and to present the ancient center of civilization as having existed outside Mesopotamia and beyond the Arabian Peninsula.
According to the testimony of most Western scholars themselves, the Mandaic language is Eastern Aramaic and remains pure, free from contamination by other languages (Al-Saadi, article: The Mandaic Language — Its History and Present). The linguist Theodor Nöldeke likewise demonstrated that Mandaic represents the Babylonian dialect (Drower, 1969: 43).
The orientalist E. S. Drower also states in her book The Mandaeans — citing Professor and biblical scholar F. C. Burkitt — that Mandaic is the closest language to that in which the Jewish Talmud was written. She notes that Mandaic and Talmudic Jewish Aramaic were geographically adjacent, yet Mandaic was purer, as it does not contain borrowed terms or foreign vocabulary.
Consequently, the Mandaic language itself contradicts the theory that its speakers originated in northern Mesopotamia (ibid.).
Burkitt explains that, “Mandaic is a later form compared to Talmudic Aramaic in its emergence, but not entirely, because Mandaic texts are linguistically purer and not mixed with foreign elements, and they represent Aramaic speech in Babylon better than the Talmud does.” In other words, he acknowledges the linguistic purity of Mandaic over Hebrew and confirms that it is the language of Babylon. Yet he still claims that Hebrew is partially older than Mandaic, because the opposite would contradict his religious ideology. Otherwise, how could Hebrew — which resembles Mandaic but contains numerous impurities and terms borrowed from multiple languages — be older than the pure Mandaic language, which contains only Mesopotamian vocabulary with Akkadian roots, as Burkitt himself acknowledges, and which was used in Lower Babylon? This clearly illustrates the lack of scholarly impartiality among Western researchers with religious biases.
In contrast, Hebrew was learned by the Jews when they came to Babylon and the Arabian Peninsula, as they were nomadic Bedouins, as well as traders, migrants, and captives. Nevertheless, Hebrew retained Western and foreign vocabulary, because the Jews preserved their own words. Even after they mastered Eastern Aramaic — the Mandaic language — they used it to write some of their religious texts, including parts of the Talmud.
It becomes clear from studying Western sources that the credibility of research conducted by Orientalists was influenced far more by their religious agendas, particularly during the twentieth century and the period following British colonial expansion. Earlier sources, written before that era, tended to be more reliable. Currently, however, there is little scholarly integrity in Western universities regarding theology and religious studies, especially research addressing Mesopotamia and its religions. I personally responded to two American researchers who were publishing translations of Mandaic texts, which cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, in an attempt to distort them and insert Zionist concepts (Jader, 2023).
Orientalists influenced by religious ideology, three centuries ago, classified the Eastern and Mesopotamian languages as Semitic, defining Semitic according to concepts closely aligned with Jewish philosophy. However, this classification is neither precise nor accurate. These scholars even categorized Mesopotamian civilizations based on their linguistic proximity to Hebrew, meaning that their “enemy” — Hebrew — was the basis for these divisions.
Professor Jastrow Morris, a 19th-century specialist in the philosophy and religions of Mesopotamia, notes that Orientalists considered the Babylonians Semitic, while their ancestors, the Sumerians, were labeled non-Semitic. This division arose because Babylonian was closer to Hebrew than Sumerian. Yet, Jastrow emphasizes that Sumerian contains a substantial number of terms similar to Akkadian, which itself formed the basis for Akkadian words and its Babylonian dialect in southern Mesopotamia and the Assyrian dialect in the north. Both the Sumerians and Babylonians coexisted in the same historical periods, meaning they were contemporaries.
Thus, the issue is that the same peoples in Mesopotamia developed their languages over thousands of years — a natural process, since no living language remains unchanged over millennia (Jastrow, 1898: 20–22, 32–34).
Taha Baqir also demonstrates in his book that there was no conflict between the Sumerians and the Akkadians; rather, the conflicts occurred between Sumerian kingdoms themselves, not between two separate groups. This provides evidence that the Sumerians and Akkadians share the same origins; otherwise, the conflicts would have arisen between two distinct ethnic groups rather than within the same population (Baqir, 2009: 104).
Building on this, one can propose a theory that requires supporting evidence and research: that Akkadian, in its Babylonian dialect, is a natural development of the older Sumerian language. Furthermore, Mandaic is an extension of Akkadian. This is not merely a theoretical claim, because the origins of Mandaic vocabulary can be traced back to Akkadian. Mandaic shares a significant portion of its lexicon with Akkadian, particularly religious and philosophical terms, and follows the same grammatical rules as Akkadian regarding verb conjugation and case.
As evidence of this lexical similarity, Mandaic contains no foreign vocabulary from other languages, preserving its purity as a religious language used by a specific group in southern Mesopotamia, whose religion restricted outsiders from entry. At the same time, this group remained in the same geographic area for thousands of years. Consequently, there are no foreign terms or linguistic impurities in pure Mandaic.
In contrast, Hebrew is a hybrid language, blending Mesopotamian elements — its southern Mandaic and northern Assyrian dialects — with vocabulary from other languages, such as Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Persian, and others. Hebrew reflects expressions from multiple regions because the Jews were historically nomadic, migrating across vast geographic areas, sometimes forcibly due to wars, and often as itinerant Bedouins.
The Mandaic language has been classified by Orientalists as Eastern Aramaic, due to its close connection with Mesopotamia. Most of its vocabulary has roots in Akkadian. It is a pure language, free from terms borrowed from other languages, because it was confined to a religious community — the Sabian Mandaeans — who lived exclusively in Mesopotamia.
Moreover, the vast majority of Mandaic vocabulary is found within the broader Arabic language. This opens many avenues for research into the origins of Mesopotamian languages and their close relationship with Arabic, particularly for Arab scholars and especially for those proficient in the Iraqi dialect, where Mandaic terms remain clearly visible.
More in this series:
The Ancient Mandaic-Arabic Language — Part One: The Shared Mesopotamian–Arab Roots
Keywords
Mandaic language, Arabic language, Akkadian language, Aramaic language, Iraqi dialect, Semitic, alphabet, Sabians, Mandaeans, Nasoraeans, Arabs, Babylon, Iraq, Mesopotamia, Arabian Peninsula, Nabonidus.
Research Tools
This study relied on a strong knowledge of both the Mandaic and Arabic languages and on comparative analysis of their vocabularies. It also required the ability to read Mandaic texts in their original language, as well as expertise in Mandaic religious philosophy acquired from within the religious community. Copies of Mandaic books housed in the Paris library were also consulted, providing researchers with the ability to trace the original texts directly.
This article was originally written in Arabic and published by the Lark Journal website.
The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.
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