Harranians

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The Harranians, also known as the Sabians of Harran and Harranian Sabians, were adherents of a polytheistic astral religion native to the city of Harran in Upper Mesopotamia. This religion survived through the Assyrian, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, long after Christianity had spread through the surrounding region, and Harran became notorious among Christian writers for its persistent paganism. After the Muslim conquest of the city in 639, its pagans lacked a recognized scripture and so could not claim the protected legal dhimmi status granted to Jews and Christians. According to a later account in Ibn al-Nadim's Fihrist, the community resolved this during the reign of the caliph al-Ma'mun by adopting the name of the Qur'anically sanctioned Sabians and naming Hermes Trismegistus as their prophet. Harranian doctrine held that a single transcendent power had delegated the governance of the world to the seven planets, who were worshipped through dedicated temples and rites....

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