[custom_adv] Sabian Mandaean religious minority held the ceremony to publicly declare arrival of their new Mandaea year. [custom_adv] Sabian Mandaean are true followers of Yahya prophet who lives near Karun river of Iran and Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq. [custom_adv] Sabian Mandaean and their followers have been mentioned in the holy Quran and they have been recognized as religious minorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran. [custom_adv] Their population stands between 7 to 20 thousand who live in Khuzestan province. Their total population in the world stands about 75,000 but most of them are now living in Iran and Iraq. [custom_adv] According to the UN High Commission for Refugees Background Paper on Iran, the Mandaeans are regarded as Christians, and are included among the country’s three recognized religious minorities. [custom_adv] However, Mandaeans regard themselves not as Christians, but as adherents of a religion that predates Christianity in both belief and practice. [custom_adv] Many scholars have identified the Sabians to be the Mandaeans, a group of individuals adhering to a form of ancient Gnosticism. [custom_adv] The central rite of the Mandaeans is immersion in water, which is regarded not only as a symbol of life, but to a certain degree as life itself. [custom_adv] On the anniversary of the Mandaean New Year, the Sabians in southwestern Iran performed their baptism rite by immersing themselves in Karun River. [custom_adv] Mandaeism or Mandaeanism ; is a gnostic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and especially John the Baptist. The Aramaic manda means "knowledge," as does Greek gnosis. [custom_adv] According to most scholars, Mandaeaism originated sometime in the first three centuries AD, with the Mandaen people migrating from the Southern Levant to Mesopotamia in the first centuries CE. They are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. There is a theory that they may be related to the Nabateans who were pre-Islamic pagan Arabs[5] whose territory extended into southern Iraq.
