One of the earliest attested texts in Neo-Mandaic, and one of the few witnesses to the now extinct Iraqi dialect of Neo-Mandaic, was a letter first published among the texts in the fifth volume of Jacques de Morgan’s Mission scientifique en Perse. Unfortunately, de Morgan offered no translation of this text or of any of the other Mandaic texts he claimed to have collected in Persia between 1889 and 1891. Nearly a century after de Morgan’s mission, Rudolf Macuch transcribed this text with the help of his informant Nasser Saburi of Ahvāz, Iran, and supplied a translation in his Neumandäische Chrestomathie. With the help of my informant, Nasser Sobbi of Flushing, New York, USA, I have prepared a new transcription, using the system I developed for the Neo-Mandaic dialect of Khorramshahr, and a new translation, filling some of the gaps in Macuch’s earlier attempt and offering a few variant readings in the process.

No comments have been posted yet.

Sign in to leave your comment