Studies in a Mosque - The Search For Mecca

SABIANS AND CHRISTIANS OP ST. JOHN. 253
financial penalties of heathendom, and could not
persuade their Muslim lords that they were Jews
or Christians, they would boldly style themselves
" Sabians," in the full conviction that the Moham-
madans knew no more about that religion than that
the Prophet of the Arabs had specially excluded it
from the general outlawry of idolatry. The problem
is one of comparatively modern growth. The ancients
knew no such sect as the Sabian ; Grreek and Latin
historians, the early Armenian annalists, the Syrian
Fathers, make no mention of such a creed. The
Sahceans of Arabia Felix are the only people of
similar name referred to by the classical writers
but these, though their name has given rise to fre-
quent confusions among scholars of all ages, have
absolutely nothing in common with the genuine
Sabians. The Sabseans are simply the people of
Saba in the Yemen, the traditional descendants of
Sheba, the rulers of that wonderful but little known
Cushite kingdom in Southern Arabia which is now
known by the name of Himyerite : as Philostorgius
puts it, Tovs TToXai [xr]V 2a/3atotis vvv Se 'OyLieptVas KakovjXivovs* in
language, religion, race, and history, these Sabaeans
are totally distinct from the Sabians of the Koran
and of the mediaeval antiquaries.
The Mohammadan writers are the first to mention
the Sabians, and it is not till the study of Arabic and
the Jewish redactors of Arabic works became the
fashion in Europe that we have any discussion of this
mysterious people. Maimonides' " Moreli han Nebu-
* Hist. Eccl. iii. 4.
;