2026-05-17T11:54:17+00:00

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Shafaq News-
Baghdad

Dressed in
white and wading into flowing water, Iraq’s Mandaean community joined Mandaeans
around the world Sunday in marking Dihba Idimana (Dehwa Daimana) —the Golden
Baptism feast— under mild spring skies.

Baptism is the
central pillar of the Mandaean faith, obligatory from birth and repeated
throughout a believer’s life. On this occasion, community members gather at the
Mandi, the Mandaean temple, to undergo the baptismal rite and prepare Thwab, a
ritual meal of atonement offered on behalf of the dead. The feast commemorates
the baptism of the Prophet John the Baptist, Yahya ibn Zakariya, who holds the
role of central prophet in the faith. It is observed as a day of spiritual
purification, cleansing the soul of all sin, according to Mandaean religious
belief.

The rite itself
requires the baptized to enter flowing water alongside a clergyman who recites
scripture throughout the ceremony. All participants, men, women, and children,
wear a white garment specific to the occasion called the Rasta.

Mandaeanism is
one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions. Its liturgical language is
Aramaic, the same language used in its holy scripture, the Ginza Rabba, meaning
“the Great Treasure” in Arabic. The text contains the scriptures of
the Prophet Adam: its first section addresses the creation, the teachings of
the Eternal Living God, and the struggle between good and evil; its second
concerns the fate of the soul after death, its journey from the body to the
world of light, and the divine reckoning it faces. The Ginza Rabba was
translated into Arabic under the linguistic supervision of the late poet Abdul
Razzaq Abdul Wahid.

Iraq’s Mandaean
community has faced sustained hardship over recent decades, driving the
majority of its members to emigrate or to relocate from southern Iraqi cities
to the Kurdistan Region. An estimated 10,000 to 20,000 Mandaeans remain in Iraq
today —a fraction of a once-larger presence— with Erbil receiving thousands of
those who stayed, opening a Mandi for their worship and becoming home to
hundreds of Mandaean goldsmiths. Gold-working is the community’s traditional
and predominant trade.

Migration waves
beginning in the late 1990s have dispersed the community across Sweden,
Germany, Australia, and the United States, where members have established
Mandis, obtained official recognition, and secured the legal right to practice
their rituals and meet their religious needs.