Flights of Fancy: Legends of Persecution and Migration from Iraq and Iran

At the Academy, Häberl worked on the history of the most widespread Mandaean folktale, the Bridge of Shushtar. The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran are at once a people and the only modern gnostic community whose presence can be traced back uninterrupted to the pre-Islamic Middle East. Mandaean literature knows no genre comparable to histories in the conventional sense, and yet they have transmitted much about their long presence in the region through the extensive use of folktales. Their language and culture, Häberl argues, are key to understanding both the ancient and modern Near East. After 2003, the Mandaeans’ situation in Iraq became increasingly unstable, and they have since sought refuge in Western countries, including Germany, where Häberl also plans to conduct fieldwork. This diaspora lends urgency to his project, which will detail how Mandaean oral literature, combining elements of Near Eastern myth with recognizably biblical tales, has helped to preserve Mandaean culture. Bringing together folklore and performance studies with philology, archeology, history, and religious studies, Häberl’s project illuminates the history of an ancient but sparsely documented region—the marshy lands at the head of the Persian Gulf. By using oral histories collected from the formerly mute subaltern residents of this region, he can undertake, in his words, “a complete reconstruction of the history of the region ‘from the bottom up.’”