1For almost two millennia, the Mandaeans have been living in the marshy regions of Mesopotamia along the banks of rivers in modern-day Iraq and along the Karun River in Khuzestan province in southwest Iran. As an ethnoreligious group with ancestral ties, their ethnic identity matches the religious one. Nonetheless, the Mandaeans are almost invisible in Iran, not only excluded from the constitutional recognition but also little known even to their neighbors. A book by Salim Berenji entitled The Forgotten People (Qum-I az yād raftih, 1988) aroused my curiosity and led me to carry out a close study among these people. Thus, in 2002 I visited the people in Ahvaz city (Khuzestan province), which has the largest concentration of Mandaeans in Iran. A large multi-ethnic city with about 1,300,000 inhabitants, Ahvaz has a subtropical desert climate with scorching summers that are almost unbearable for the non-locals. The main ethnic groups are Arabs, Persian-speakers, and Bakhtiari people. Amongst them, the Mandaeans form a small minority. No reliable statistics are available about the numbers of Mandaeans in Iran and Iraq. Kurt Rudolph (1978) estimated that no more than 15,000 Mandaeans were living in Iraq in 1978. According to a fieldwork study in Iran (Arabestani, 2004), they themselves estimated that their community is comprised of 20,000 members in the country, whereas the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (2004) reported there were about 5,000 to 10,000 Iranian Mandaeans. In recent decades, their homeland has endured dramatic social and political instability. Khuzestan was the main war zone of Iran-Iraq’s war (1980-1988), which affected all people of the region. Emigration due to the Iran-Iraq war, the Persian Gulf Wars (1990-1991, and 2003), and the subsequent prolonged unrest in Iraq have made it even more challenging to estimate the number of those still residing in their homeland.

2This article is based on an ethnographic study conducted mostly in Ahvaz for four months in 2002. Since then, I have visited the community occasionally and have followed the community’s changes and concerns. The data also include information gathered from the diaspora communities, whether through direct observation or correspondence. As a stranger, the easiest way to see Mandaean people in public was, and still is, their goldsmith and silversmith shops in the Ahvaz bazaar. One can distinguish these shops by the designs of their enamel jewelry in the shop showcases, which include specific motifs of palms, boats, and camels. If the Mandaean shopkeeper is devout, his long beard and mustache with his long hair tucked under a turban or beanie, and his entirely white clothes also provide easy ways to recognize him.

4Their religion is a living Gnostic religion with modern practitioners in Iraq and Iran as well as the diaspora communities in Europe, North America, and Australia. Therefore, following Clifford Geertz’s model in the study of religion (1973), understanding this religion as it is practiced by the people requires studying the meaning encoded in the ritual symbols and relating this to broader social and psychological processes. The ritual practice contributes to the establishment and re-establishment of the religious world that, in turn, serves to strengthen the boundaries of group identity. The theme of purity in Mandaean rituals and its relationship to cosmology and socio-political background has been discussed in detail elsewhere (Arabestani, 2012). This article takes a closer look at a less explored aspect of Mandaean religious practice, the social implications of food in ritual practice.

5Mandaean religious laws define the aspects of daily life such as food choice, food preparation, and the proper forms of commensality, whether inter-group or intra-group. They are not only based on a cosmology that renders them meaningful but also have broader implications for group identity. Therefore, this article aims at identifying the symbolism of foods, their preparation, and their consumption in the Mandaean religious world, and the way food both practically and symbolically defines the spiritual hierarchy inside the community as well as establishes the boundaries of ethnoreligious identity.

6For several centuries, Mandaean people have been living as a small ethnoreligious minority among their Persian and Arab Muslim neighbors. The long-term historical experience of the threat of cultural extinction in a dominant Muslim society is critical for understanding the social orientation and identity policy of the Mandaean people, which, in turn, from a symbolic viewpoint, can affect the formation of their religious world and the ritual practice. Thus, the first part of this article looks at the ethnoreligious community’s historical experience. The second part presents a conceptual framework that includes the topography of the world as is presented in the cosmology and the essential values that it embodies. A detailed examination of food-related rituals and the way they encode cosmology are the subjects of the third section. The last part endeavors to interpret the specific mode of religiosity of the people through food-related rituals as a socio-political construction and also considers their response to the changing social and political conditions.

The Mandaeans: an ethnoreligious community’s historical experience

7The formation of the Mandaean community in Iran and Iraq is commonly viewed as the consequence of an exodus from Palestine in the first century AD (Rudolph and al., 1969). However, this theory of a western origin of the Mandaeans has been challenged in favor of an origin in Mesopotamia in the second and third centuries (Lupieri, 2002; 2008). Mandaeans are bearers of an ancient written tradition comprised of scriptures and scrolls in Mandaic language and alphabet. Among these scriptures, the most sacred is Ginza Rba (great treasure), which is attributed to Adam, the first man, and Drasha d Yahya (John’s instructions), which is held to be the teachings and sermons of John the Baptist, the last Mandaean prophet. Mandaic, in which all Mandaean scriptures are written, is a dialect of Eastern Aramaic (Beyer, 1986; Gordon and Grimes, 2005; Müller-Kessler, 2009). Nowadays, Arabic and Persian are the common languages among the people, and a vernacular Neo-Mandaic dialect is spoken (Khan, 2007) only among a few families. In practice, Mandaic primarily subsists as a liturgical language.

8As a small minority surrounded by the dominant Muslim society, Mandaeans have always been under the threat of cultural extinction (Arabestani, 2012). Despite a generally peaceful coexistence, there have been occasional violent events; for example, the slaughter of Mandaeans by Arabs in the fourteenth century in Jazīrah (the traditional Arabic name for Upper Mesopotamia) (Drower, 1937) that included the death of all priests. Considering the dependency of the community upon the priests for ritual performances, including wedding rituals, this was a devastating blow. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese in Basrah convinced the Pasha to make the Mandaeans convert to Christianity and conscripted some of their men into Portuguese military service (Drower, 1937; Kraeling, 1929). After the forceful circumcision of Mandaean men in southern Iraq in 1839 (Drower, 1953), another incident that the people still recall is the Shushtar (a city north of Ahvaz) massacre in the 1870s, which is attested in certain postscripts of Mandaic scriptures (Buckley, 2002). The well-known place in Shushtar called band-i subbī kosh (the dam of the Mandaean massacre) is another reminder of the incident. The Mandaeans also suffered from natural disasters, the most important one in the collective memory being the 1831 cholera epidemic that wiped out most of the priests and almost eliminated the community altogether (Buckley, 1999).

9The Persian Gulf wars, the subsequent occupation of Iraq by US and British troops, and the formation of a shaky government resulted in sectarian conflicts in Iraq and the emergence of the “Islamic State.” This insecure situation threatened all Iraqi minorities, including the Mandaeans, with ethnocide and accelerated mass emigration and formation of Mandaean diasporas around the world (Crawford, 2008; Ekman, 2007; Wadlow, 2014; Zurutuza, 2014). The very emigration of the people and their dispersion to various countries added new dimensions to the people’s long-lasting concerns about their cultural identity (Arabestani, 2016). The anxiety over cultural extinction persists both in the homeland and diaspora communities (Arabestani, 2016), and some studies have measured its psychological effects (Nickerson, Bryant, Brooks, Steel, Silove, 2009).

10There are other causes for this fear of extinction. The choice of a non-Mandaean sexual partner or spouse (Marsano, Arabestani, 2018) or the consumption of “dirty” (religiously unpermitted) foods are considered behaviors that weaken religious commitment. The elders and priests disapprove such behaviors and fear they will loosen boundaries and eventually dissolve the community.

12In 1996, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa and officially proclaimed them as People of the Book (Khamenei, 1996). This official statement reduced political and social pressures on the Mandaean people; however, as mentioned, they are not still constitutionally recognized. This puts them in a precarious position. They are free to follow their religion and perform their rituals, but there are still restrictions on their religious education in schools and access to government jobs and higher education. Mandaeans relate Islamic proselytism in schools and discrimination in employment and education. A man told how his son’s teacher challenged and mocked the boy in the classroom for being a subbī, causing the son to want to give up school. They also complain about compulsory Islamic classes in the schools, seeing them as brainwashing and a threat to their culture. A few years ago, unknown persons attacked the Mandaean cemetery in Ahvaz and broke tombstones. While the culprits have never been identified, the Mandaeans consider this event an act of intolerance and contempt. In conversation with the Mandaeans, one can hear many stories of discrimination and abusive behavior circulating among them.

The world’s topography in the Mandaean cosmology

14Master Salim Choheyli, himself a member of a priestly family, is a representative of the “orthodox” interpretation of the scriptures. He welcomed me, and kindly met with me on several occasions, and instructed me about the worldview of the Mandaeans, sacred accounts of creation, angelology, prophetic characters, and eschatology, with extensive references to the scriptures and folk knowledge. I was also granted permission to attend to the scripture readings and interpretation classes available for laymen and to join the master class for the shwalias. As he described the world as is conceived as the “reality” in Mandaism, I compared his descriptions with those of others to obtain a common understanding of their religious world. At the same time, I tried to sketch out the underlying logic that structures of the worldview and check my ideas with my interlocutors.

15The most prominent metaphor in the Mandaean cosmology is the Gnostic opposition of light and darkness that is the basis of the religious worldview. According to this cosmology, the world is comprised of certain strata, from the brightest and the most sacred place in the cosmological north to the darkest and the most defiled place in the cosmological south. The moral position of each being corresponds to its place in the cosmological strata. Three main strata are distinguishable: the light world at the top, the mixed world in the middle, and the dark world at the bottom (see figure 1).

16The supreme world is the world of light (alma d-nhura), which is the upper world in cosmological strata. This world consists of a labyrinth of light worlds. Non-physical beings (uthra) are residents of this world, including angels (malka) who are the brightest and most sacred creatures after God (hiia). The throne of the Mandaean God (hiia), called “place” (shkhinta), is located at the top of the world of light – or more precisely at its center. The place of truth (mshunia kusht̟a) is in the southern part of the light world and is in immediate touch with the lower stratum.

17Downwards, the next stratum is the middle world, which includes seven sub-strata called “mat̟aratha,” literally means “prison” and “purgatory.” This stratum extends from the light world to the earth and is the place of all physical beings, including planets and stars, animals, and human beings. The surface of the earth (arqa d tibil) is the lowest part of this stratum, which is the special cosmological place of humankind. Human beings have dual origins. The human essence (nishimta) originated from the light world; then, it was confined in the physical body, which is made from earth (tibil). Therefore, human beings have a dual nature rooted in its dual origin in the bright and authentic, and the physical, and non-authentic, elements.

18The lowest stratum in the cosmology is the world of darkness or downward world, which is called “siniauis.” This world is in opposition to the light world and is the place of the non-physical, dark beings; however, in contrast to the angels (malka) of the world of light (alma d-nhura), these beings have an evil nature. The dark world also includes seven substrata. Dark chiefs rule different strata of the dark world while the mother of darkness (Ruha) and her son (Ur) dominate the entirety of the dark world. Bright angels defeated and confined the dark beings at the beginning of the world. However, dark beings can still malevolently disturb the world. Indeed, the dark beings are the causes of evil.

19The binary opposition of light/darkness as a metaphor can be traced in a series of equivalent opposition in the religious world that set the fundamental values of the Mandaean ethos (see figure 2). Life value, or the principle of life, is at the core of the cosmology. Life is God’s most precious gift. God (hiia, which literally means “life”) is an impersonal and transcendental God – a characteristic in accord with the Gnostic origins of Mandaism. This transcendental Gnostic God has only one manifestation in the physical world that implies life and the life-giving character of God, namely, running water (iardna).

20According to the myth of the creation, living or running water (mia hiia) originated from the light world and gave life to the earth (Arabestani, 2004; Franzmann, 1989). Therefore, running water as the manifestation of God is a sacred, or the most sacred, natural phenomenon. All purification rites must be carried out in running water, including baptism (mas̟buta or mas̟veta), which is, as we will see below, the central rite of the religion. Running water is the sole purifying phenomenon in the world. Thus, whereas there is not anything like a holy place, a temple or shrine in Mandaism, all banks of rivers and streams are considered sacred places and the most suitable sites for religious rites (Arabestani, 2018).

21To understand the logic of the rituals, the cosmological position of humankind, who live on the surface of the earth (tibil or arqa d tibil), is of crucial significance. The surface of the earth is the outer boundary of the dark world (siniauis). All rituals are done precisely in this place. Because of the proximity to the dark world, people are prone to get polluted by dark beings. This worry about the possibility of pollution of the body and food is symbolically reflected in obsessive purity rituals. As they are familiar with religious laws and values, Mandaeans usually know which foods are permitted or not permitted, how to purify their food and body, and what makes things and body “down” (nazil) or impure.

22Even a member of the community who identified himself as an “unbeliever” told me, “I do not believe in all of these things, but these are part of our culture, our ancestral custom.” Many Mandaeans who do not follow the religious laws in their everyday life, at least participate in certain collective rituals and observe food restrictions during religious events. In these moments, they follow the footsteps of their fathers and repeat what is regarded as the nodal points of their cultural identity. What seems to be significant in these rituals for many participants is an experience of belonging and reaffirming their distinct group identity. Despite this general attitude towards religious law and values among the community, a somewhat consistent connection can be found between the rituals and values on one hand and the worldview on the other, which in turn can be seen as a social construction.

Food Symbolism and Food Rituals

The Mandaean has no theory of divinely inspired scripture; to him the immutable and sacro-sanct elements of his religion are the ancient rituals, baptism and the various forms of the sacramental meal. It does not worry him that there are a number of creation stories, contradictory of one another or that there is confusion in his heterogeneous pantheon of spirits of light and darkness. What does matter is that no rule of ritual purity be broken, and that every gesture and action prescribed for ritual shall be rigidly observed (Drower, 1953: xi).

24The Mandaeans have carefully protected Mandaic scriptures and language over the centuries. Their liturgical scriptures have enabled them to keep practicing their rituals with relative conformity between the two big communities in Iran and Iraq. It is assumed that the obsessive performance of their rituals is a symbolic means for preserving their ethnoreligious identity (Arabestani, 2004).

25Rituals are the locus of the religious world’s disclosure. They serve as an affirmation of the religious worldview and link worldview to the religious duties of believing members. Rituals symbolically represent an underlying worldview; hence, their study illuminates deeply rooted cultural assumptions. The mutual relationship between rituals and worldview makes rituals meaningful and simultaneously provides a symbolic manifestation to the abstract worldview. Following the ideas on religious symbolism of Clifford Geertz and Mary Douglas, such a systematic relationship can be called the “religious world” or the religious perspective. Adopting a structural viewpoint also helps to reveal the fundamental similarities between cosmology and ritual practice.

26Food symbolism is so widespread that it can lay the ground for studies on culture and cognition in general (Parry, 1985). Food symbolism can be explained either as a representation of the underlying worldview or as a counterpart of a group’s social and political condition (Douglas, 1966). In this approach, the strength of symbolism comes from the internal – and often hidden – logic of a worldview (Douglas, 1966). Another approach treats the symbol as a code that encrypts a message about the pattern of social relations (Douglas, 1972). However, these approaches are not mutually exclusive, and indeed, underlying worldviews and social conditions are in a reciprocal relationship. In fact, different social conditions pave the way for the formation of different religious understandings, which in turn affect religious practice and symbolism.

27In some rituals, such as a ritual meal for the dead (lofani) or baptism (maṣbuta), either food is the subject of the ritual or plays an essential role in it. Pervasive taboos in daily activities like food choice and food preparation ritualize the everyday life of people. Furthermore, preparing food requires certain ritual processes, such as slaughtering and specific methods of preparation, in order to be lawful for consumption. Assuming the widespread role that food plays in their rituals, I examine the symbolism of food in the rites as a means of the religious perspective manifestation and as the symbolic embodiment of the social and political experience of the people.

28“The foods that human beings consume directly affect the body,” answered a yalufā when I asked him about their concern about food. The purity of the body is a requirement that admits no compromise: food choice, food preparation, and food consumption are matters of careful ritual concern in order to avoid any polluted item entering the body. Faithful families follow a series of strict rules for providing and consuming animal flesh, as we will see. The extent to which food laws are followed is a function of religious commitment. Indeed, many Mandaeans only partially observe the religious laws regarding food.

29Nevertheless, the priests have to observe all the religious laws strictly. Priestly families usually observe the laws; however, even a priest’s family might not be able to fully comply with the law (Marsano, Arabestani, 2018). A priest’s wife regretfully stated that once she followed the laws shoulder to shoulder with her husband and even used to drink only river water as her husband did, but later she could not continue and consequently her husband prepared the food and used his own utensils to ensure the food's purity. Although a considerable number of people do not ordinarily follow the laws, it does not mean that the laws have no meaning for them. Priests have the duty of strict observance of the religious law; hence, one way or another, the laymen delegate their religious duty to the priests and the faithful. Through respect towards the priests and accepting their authority, they participate vicariously, rather than practically, in the practice of the laws.

Lawful and unlawful foods: what animal flesh can be eaten

30As Mary Douglas has shown (1966), ritual categories are based on an underlying system in which those that fall outside of the system are regarded as polluted. In the case of Mandaean food rituals, the underlying system can be traced to the underlying cosmology. The clue to understanding the underlying worldview is the place of animals in the cosmological topography and the fundamental values of Mandaism. The flesh of almost all land animals is prohibited for consumption, with the exception of that of rams. Predatory birds and predatory fishes are also prohibited, while all remaining birds and fishes are lawfully edible.

31The land animals are earthbound and are in immediate contact with the downward world and consequently at the risk of contagion of pollution from the dark world. As a result, land creatures are subject to ritual avoidance. On the contrary, birds and fowl can fly or leap and are less attached to the earth than the land animals and therefore are purer. However, some rituals require a higher degree of purity, and a bird purer than fowl is used in sacrifices: a dove.

33In the Mandaean cosmology, priests occupy a higher and purer position than laypersons. Indeed, the priest’s soul shares the position of the non-physical beings (uthra) in the light world, while his physical body is on the earth. To acquire this cosmological position, an ascent rite as a part of priest coronation ritual is required to join the soul and spirit of the clergy nominee (shwalia) to the light world.

34The accomplishment of soul ascendance to the light world requires observing a high degree of purity. For this purpose, a dove, but no other animals or fowl, must be sacrificed and consumed during the ritual. In comparison to fowls that only have a partial ability to fly, doves can fly and have even less contact with the earth; therefore, they are potentially purer than other animals.

35In this way, understanding the Mandaeans’ approach to aquatic animals is not difficult. Water – especially running water – is God’s manifestation; thus, the flesh of aquatic animals can be easily categorized as lawful. Since aquatic animals float in the water, even those that do not live in running water are not defiled by direct contact of the earth.

37The inclusion of rams in the category of lawful meats does not – at last, totally – agree with the fundamental congruence between the cosmological place and the food taboos. The Middle East and Zagros region of modern-day Iran and Iraq is the primary center of sheep domestication (Pedrosa et al., 2005; Zeder, 1999). It is not surprising that Mandaeans, like other people of the region, tend to use sheep as a commonly available protein source. However, dealing with the anomaly caused by the incongruity between assumed food classification and eating sheep needs cultural explication. But it can be imaginable if a religious system integrates a potential – and unavoidable – transgression or an anomaly, through ritualization, or a ritual justification to reduce the inconsistency (Douglas, 2001). In this case, emphasizing the sexuality of the sheep instead of its cosmological place can provide this alternative interpretation. Here, the principle of life rather than physical contact with the dark world lays the foundation for ritually lawful meat. Regardless of its cosmological place, the rams’ flesh is ritually permitted because it agrees with the principle of life more than that of the ewe. This interpretation may have reduced the ambiguity and eventually resulted in the acceptance of ram as a lawful source of meat (see figure 3).

38As we have seen, the ruling criteria for distinguishing between lawful and unlawful meat categories emerge from two fundamental principles that apply to all animals:

• The animal’s position in cosmological topography: the higher the position (closer to the light world and farther from the dark world), the purer the animal’s flesh.

• The animal’s relation to the life principle: those that are offensive to the life principle are unlawful.

Sacramental bread

39According to the tradition, baptism was established by John the Baptist (Yahya Yohana in Mandaic) as the core ritual of the religion (Drower, 1937; Arabestani, 2004, 117). Everybody has to receive baptism at least once in a lifetime to be considered a Mandaean. Baptism is a part of every major rite of passage including marriage and childbirth. Furthermore, in religious festivals, the priests conduct mass baptisms where a larger number of people can join the ritual and receive the blessing of the light world through a major purification rite.

40As a part of the ritual, the baptizer offers a piece of sacred bread (pihtha) to the person who receives the baptism. Only a priest has the authority to prepare and consecrate this bread. During every stage of preparation, from making dough to cooking and then chopping the bread, the priest recites holy verses (buta) and follows a ritual formula to consecrate the bread. Baptism is usually performed in the morning. The priests go to the riverbank in the early morning to consecrate the place, install the sacred flag (drabsha), and prepare the sacramental bread. The culinary technique of the preparation is quite simple and involves minimal processing and equipment.

41The priest gets a handful of flour and mixes it with river water to make the dough in his hand. The dough is unleavened and contains no additives. Then, he rolls up and shapes the dough into circles of 6 to 8 centimeters in diameter. The cooking equipment is a small set of raw clay fire-saucer (birihia), which includes a fire bowl containing charcoal as fuel. The priest lights the charcoals by some dry grass and matches and then put the prepared dough directly on burning charcoals. Thus, the cooking style is quite simple (see figure 4).

42In a more elaborate cooking procedure, oil, water, and air or a kind of cookware occupy the space between the food and fire, but in the sacramental bread preparation, there is no intermediate material, not even a grill or griddle, between the fire and food. Drawing on Lévi-Strauss’s culinary triangle (1997 : 28-35), non-elaborate food preparation with the least cultural interventions indicates a structural tendency to “nature“ as opposed to “culture.“ Using unleavened dough and cooking on a raw clay fire-saucer are further proofs of a tendency to reduce the “cultural” intervention in the preparation of sacred bread.

43Thus, the preparation can be seen as the symbolic manifestation of a structural inclination to “nature,“ which equates to “purity“ and “light“ as opposed to “culture,” pollution, and darkness (see figure 2). Moreover, mixing the flour with running water makes it a “bright” food that is suitable for use in the most important Mandaean rite, baptism.

The ritual meal for blessing the dead

47After setting all the foods on the cloth, the participants sit around them. The ritual performer recites some parts of scriptures (buta) while sitting with his back to the north. Then, he tears off a piece of bread with his hand and salts it three times and eats it. Next, he holds a piece of bread in his hand and places a small portion of each food on it and, while keeping the food in his right hand, drinks a mouthful of the river water from a bowl and recites a formula including religious names of the dead to whom the ritual is dedicated. Finally, he eats the foods contained in his right hand, which marks the end of the ritual. After that, the participants, members of the family as well as other non-Mandaeans, share the blessed foods. This blessed food must be consumed by bare hands, using no utensils. The distribution and consumption of the food mark the end of the ritual. At this stage, my hosts would invite me to join them and enjoy the food, with a small, yet important, precaution against pollution transmittance from my hand, since as a non-Mandaean I could not perform a proper Mandaean ablution. Therefore, I would hold my hand with my palm facing up, and they rather drop the pieces of food in my hand to avoid any contact that might cause pollution.

48The cosmology is easily recognizable in this ritual and meal. The ablution of the foods, strict avoidance of the ground by using cotton cloth or branches, “non-elaborate” cooking procedures, and the obligation to eat foods using the bare hands further reveal the tendency toward “nature” in this ritual commemoration of the dead. Through the ritual, the worldview and ethos of the Mandaean are emphasized and reestablished.

Slaughtering as a rite

51After the ablution, the animal must not touch the ground until its consumption. Therefore, in the case of a bird, the slaughterer brings the bird back to land, grasping the wings from the back with his left hand. Then he holds the bird’s neck from behind using his left thumb and forefinger to expose the neck. He then cuts the bird’s throat with the knife in his right hand. The critical consideration in slaughtering is that after ablution the bird must not touch the earth. Thus, during the slaughter the performer holds the bird in the air, cuts its throat, and waits until it is done. After slaughtering, if the bird’s body accidentally touches the ground, it will become polluted, and the flesh cannot be eaten. The essentials of slaughtering a ram are the same. The only difference is that, because of the ram’s size, it must be placed on a wooden table or a mass of branches to prevent contact with the ground.

Socio-cultural implications of Mandaean religious practice

53The Mandaeans have developed ritual practices that revolve around the recurrent theme of purity of the body. This preoccupation with bodily purity manifests itself in a concern for the purity of the food that results in the formation of elaborate food-related rituals that permeate daily activities such as food choice, food preparation, and the application of food in rituals. As we have seen, all these rituals are restatements of the cosmology, with the fundamental binary opposition of “darkness-light” as its structural foundation (see figure 2).

54According to Geertz (1973), religion is a system of symbols with a twofold function; they present both a “model of” and a “model for” something (figure 5). Therefore, “the powerfully coercive ‘ought’ is felt to grow out of a comprehensive factual ‘is,’ and in such a way, religion lays the ground for the most specific requirements of human action in the most general contexts of human existence” (Geertz, 1975). Religious symbols are sites for representing cosmology that at the same time show the guideline of religious “musts,” which in the case of Mandaism involves the avoidance of “darkness” or “the material” and maintenance of purity.

55The binary opposition between “light” and “darkness” represents “good” and “evil” respectively. Through ritual purification of foods and stress on keeping them away from the dark world, the ontological opposition in the macrocosm is rendered as a normative ethos in microcosm. Thus, Mandaean food rituals combine descriptive and normative in a single religious discourse that values the purity of the body through the purity of food. Therefore, food rituals symbolically embody the system of meaning that forms their religious world.

56As Geertz states (1973: 125), however, the anthropological study of religion does not stop at this point and requires another step, that is, to relate the religious systems to contextual social-structural and psychological processes. A religious world is shaped through a cultural selection from the available cultural repertoire. Rather than being random, this selection follows a logic that can conceived through the study of the context of religious practice. According to the theory of Liénard and Boyer (2006), the historically precarious situation that still is the community’s major concern could explain their mode of religiosity. Liénard and Boyer (2006) identify the formation of ritualistic or “doctrinal” mode of religiosity – as defined by Whitehouse (2002) – as a function of a neurocognitive system called the hazard-precaution system. According to this theory, the detection of potential threats leads to the formation and endurance of collective rituals that convey a feeling of insecurity and fosters the integrity of group identity. The Mandaeans’ historical experience as a small ethno-religious group under the dominance of the non-Mandaeans and the threat of cultural extinction appears to have determined their strict adherence to rituals and scriptures, with the central theme of purity. These rituals show excessive anxiety about the purity of food and body, which symbolize a social preoccupation with the protection of the political and cultural unity of an oppressed minority. In Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas (1966) shows how threatened boundaries of an ethnic group would mirror in the people’s ritual care for integrity and purity of the physical body. Therefore, the elaborate food-related rituals represent the anxiety about cultural extinction and simultaneously ensure the survival of the faith and ethnoreligious identity through ritual performances.

57However, the Mandaean community has undergone unprecedented changes in the last decades. The development of Mandaean diasporas in North America, Europe, and Australia, as well as the revolution in information technology, are putting an end to their historical isolation. The community is no longer just a local Mesopotamian ethnoreligious group. Instead, the community consists of a network including homeland communities and small, scattered diasporas living in secular, multicultural societies with various cultural contexts. The absence of threatening forces in the new situation of the diasporas has led to the emergence of policies relating to secular identity and a demand for a more spiritual reading of the religion (Arabestani, 2010) combined with a fear of cultural extinction because of the dissemination of the members all around the world. Some Mandaeans in diaspora communities are no longer satisfied with conservative adherence to rituals; the result is the turning point in their religious world toward a less ritual and more spiritual interpretation (Arabestani, 2016). Nevertheless, despite new demands in the community for a spiritual understanding of the religion, anxiety about the loss of identity persists among both homeland and diaspora communities. As a result, rituals as signifiers of community identity with their encoded concerns for ethnic integrity still play a vital role for the Mandaeans.