Mandaic language in the context of "Khorramshahr"

Mandaeans (Mandaic: ࡌࡀࡍࡃࡀࡉࡉࡀ) (Arabic: المندائيون al-Mandāʾiyyūn), also known as Mandaean Sabians (الصابئة المندائيون al-Ṣābiʾa al-Mandāʾiyyūn) or simply as Sabians (الصابئة al-Ṣābiʾa), are an ethnoreligious group who are followers of Mandaeism. They believe that John the Baptist was the final and most important prophet.

They may have been among the earliest religious groups to practise baptism, as well as among the earliest adherents of Gnosticism, a belief system of which they are the last surviving representatives. The Mandaeans were originally native speakers of Mandaic, an Eastern Aramaic language, before they nearly all switched to Mesopotamian Arabic or Persian as their main language.

Mandaeism (Classical Mandaic: ࡌࡀࡍࡃࡀࡉࡅࡕࡀ‎ mandaiuta), sometimes also known as Nasoraeanism or Sabianism, is a Gnostic, monotheistic and ethnic religion with Greek, Iranian, and Jewish influences. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. Mandaeans consider Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem, and John the Baptist prophets, with Adam being the founder of the religion and John being the greatest and final prophet.

The Mandaeans speak an Eastern Aramaic language known as Mandaic. The name 'Mandaean' comes from the Aramaic manda, meaning knowledge. Within the Middle East, but outside their community, the Mandaeans are more commonly known as the صُبَّة Ṣubba (singular: Ṣubbī), or as Sabians (الصابئة, al-Ṣābiʾa). The term Ṣubba is derived from an Aramaic root related to baptism. The term Sabians derives from the mysterious religious group mentioned three times in the Quran. The name of this unidentified group, which is implied in the Quran to belong to the "People of the Book" (ahl al-kitāb), was historically claimed by the Mandaeans as well as by several other religious groups in order to gain legal protection (dhimma) as offered by Islamic law. Occasionally, Mandaeans are also called "Christians of Saint John", in the belief that they were a direct survival of the Baptist's disciples. Further research, however, indicates this to be a misnomer, as Mandaeans consider Jesus to be a false prophet.

Shin-Lamedh-Mem is a triconsonantal root of many Semitic words (many of which are used as names). The root meaning translates to "whole, safe, intact, unharmed, to go free, without blemish". Its earliest known form is in the name of Shalim, the ancient god of dusk of Ugarit. Derived from this are meanings of "to be safe, secure, at peace", hence "well-being, health" and passively "to be secured, pacified, submitted".

• Central Semitic Š-L-M
  • Arabic: س-ل-م, S-L-M
    • Maltese: S-L-M
  • Imperial Aramaic: ܫ-ܠ-ܡ, Š-L-M
  • Canaanite: Š-L-M (cf. Shalem)
    • Hebrew: ש-ל-ם‎, Š-L-M (Paleo-Hebrew 𐤔-𐤋-𐤌; Samaritan Hebrew ࠔ-ࠋ-ࠌ)
• East Semitic S-L-M
• South Semitic "S-L-M"
  • Ge'ez: ሰ-ላ-ም, S-L-M

Arabic salām (سَلاَم), Maltese sliem, Hebrew šālōm (שָׁלוֹם‎), Ge'ez sälam (ሰላም), Syriac šlama (pronounced Shlama, or Shlomo in the Western Syriac dialect) (ܫܠܡܐ), Mandaic šlama (ࡔࡋࡀࡌࡀ) are cognate Semitic terms for 'peace', deriving from a Proto-Semitic *šalām-.

Incantation bowls are a form of protective magic found in what is now Iraq and Iran. Produced in the Middle East during late antiquity from the sixth to eighth centuries, particularly in Upper Mesopotamia and Syria, the bowls were usually inscribed in a spiral, beginning from the rim and moving toward the center. Most are inscribed in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic.

Scholar John Charles Arnold states the bowls were used as such: "When placed upside down under each corner of a house, demons would follow the inscribed charms that spiraled from the outer rim inward, only to be caught in the center." They were commonly placed under the threshold, courtyards, in the corner of the homes of the recently deceased and in cemeteries.

Neo-Mandaic, also known as Modern Mandaic, sometimes called the "ratna" (Arabic: رطنة raṭna "jargon"), is the modern reflex of the Mandaic language, the liturgical language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. Although severely endangered, it survives as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans (possibly as few as 100–200 speakers) in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are multilingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon and the morphology of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic languages.

Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a grouping of related dialects of Neo-Aramaic spoken before World War I as a vernacular language by Jews and Assyrian Christians between the Tigris and Lake Urmia, stretching north to Lake Van and southwards to Mosul and Kirkuk. As a result of the Assyrian genocide, Christian speakers were forced out of the area that is now Turkey and in the early 1950s most Jewish speakers moved to Israel. The Kurdish-Turkish conflict resulted in further dislocations of speaker populations. As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated number of fluent speakers among the Assyrians just below 500,000, spread throughout the Middle East and the Assyrian diaspora. In 2007, linguist Geoffrey Khan wrote that many dialects were nearing extinction with fluent speakers difficult to find.

The other branches of Neo-Aramaic are Western Neo-Aramaic, Central Neo-Aramaic (Turoyo and Mlahso), and Mandaic. Some linguists classify NENA, as well as Turoyo and Mlahso, as a single dialect continuum.

Central Neo-Aramaic, or Northwestern Neo-Aramaic (NWNA), languages represent a specific group of Neo-Aramaic languages, that is designated as Central in reference to its geographical position between Western Neo-Aramaic and other Eastern Aramaic groups. Its linguistic homeland is located in northern parts of the historical region of Syria (modern southeastern Turkey and northeastern Syria). The group includes the Turoyo language as a spoken language of the Tur Abdin region and various groups in diaspora, and Mlahsô language that is recently extinct as a spoken language.

Within Aramaic studies, several alternative groupings of Neo-Aramaic languages had been proposed by different researchers, and some of those groupings have used the term Central Neo-Aramaic in a wider meaning, including the widest scope, referring to all Neo-Aramaic languages except for Western Neo-Aramaic and Neo-Mandaic.