Gerard Russell is a former United Nations and British diplomat fluent in Arabic and Farsi whose postings in the Middle East and Afghanistan and subsequent travels have given him the opportunity to explore some of the almost unknown religions still surviving there, often by the skin of their teeth.
At the beginning of the book Russell contrasts the almost total obliteration of pre-Christian religions in Europe with the survival of ancient religions which are still being practised in the Middle East. He suggests that one reason may have been the more sophisticated character of the religions themselves. All but one, the Kalashas, have sacred books. The Muslim invaders who took over the area were too few to enforce the practice of Islam throughout their new domain. The countryside was extremely inhospitable in places – the marshes of southern Iraq, where the Mandaeans survived; the north eastern mountains of Iraq, which were the home of the Yazidis until last year; the remote valleys in the Lebanon, which are the stronghold of the Druze; and the Chitral valley of north western Pakistan, where the Kalasha still celebrate their pagan festivals.
The Koran enjoins respect for the people of the book – Jews, Christians and Sabians. The Mandaeans did claim to be ‘the Sabians’ but it seems more likely that the Prophet meant the Zoroastrians. Another more mundane factor that may have discouraged Muslim rulers from promoting too much conversion was the higher taxes paid by non-Muslims. Conversion reduced revenue.
There are separate chapters on the Mandaeans, the Yazidis, the Zoroastrians, the Druze, the Samaritans, the Copts and the Kalasha but Russell also includes some fascinating information about other local religious groups, past and present. I did not know that our universal greeting, the handshake, is a survival of the ceremonial bonding gesture of the devotees of Mithras. I was ignorant of the Church of the East, sometimes called the Assyrian or Chaldean Church, sometimes also called the Nestorians, whose missionaries reached Beijing in AD635. Based in Baghdad it had churches and monasteries all the way to Beijing and the written forms of Tibetan and Mongolian use its Syriac script. Nowadays it has a major centre in the outskirts of Detroit!
The Mandaeans certainly preserve some of the beliefs and practices of ancient Babylon and the Copts have continued to use a form of chanting from the time of the Pharaohs. The Yazidis continue some Mithraic practices. There are some, to me, surprising influences at work. Pythagoras is a major influence on the Druze and students at the theological seminaries in Qom in Iran study the works of Plato and Aristotle as well as the Koran. The obligations placed on believers in these religions vary considerably: the Copts take on a burden of prayer and fasting greater than that of most monastic orders, but the only obligation placed on Druze lay people is to marry within the Druze community. When Amal Alamuddin, descendant of a famous Druze family, married George Clooney, the match received a grudging toleration from her native community.
The most obvious threat facing all of these communities, except the Samaritans, is the advance of various forms of militant Islam. Their own restrictive marriage customs also present a difficulty, particularly in overseas communities. The Samaritans, who have recently relaxed their rules sufficiently to welcome convert brides, are the only one of these communities that is expanding. Emigration is a major threat to these communities in their homelands. Russell got a lot of his information about the Mandaeans from a young woman living in London. He pursued his researches with Yazidis in Canada and Lincoln Nebraska. The Mandaean High Priest now lives in Australia.
The Mandaeans, the Yazidis and the Druze are very secretive about their sacred writings. E S Drower, who spent a great deal of her life studying the Mandaean religion, enough to be greeted by a priest as ‘a dear sister in faith’, had to wait nine years to see them. A declining priesthood could make this secrecy a serious threat to a community’s survival. The Mandaeans and the Kalashas are vulnerable to advances that make their homeland more accessible.
Does their survival matter? Yes, because if they disappear they will take with them an important part of the religious history of their countries and of the world. This fascinating and illuminating book opened to me a world of religious and secular history of which I was largely unaware. Russell offers suggestions for further reading which I shall certainly be pursuing.
Barbara Burfoot is Chair of SOF Trustees.
Gerald Russell. Simon and Schuster (New York and London 2014). Hbk. 352 pages. £13.60.