Water pollution in Iraq threatens Mandaean religious rites
Worshippers of the sect bathe in the waters to purify souls, but the rivers are polluted today
Every Sunday in Iraq, along a strip of embankment on the Tigris River reserved for followers of the obscure and ancient Mandaean faith, worshippers bathe themselves in the waters to purify their souls.
But unlike in ancient times, the storied river that runs through Baghdad is fouled by untreated sewage and dead carp, which float by in the fastmoving current.
“It’s very saddening. Our religious books warn us not to defile the water. There are guardians watching over it,” said Shaikh Satar Jabar, head of Iraq’s Mandaean community.
Iraq’s soaring water pollution is threatening the religious rites of its tight-knit Mandaean community, already devastated by 15 years of war that has also affected the country’s other minority sects.
Mandaeism follows the teachings of John the Baptist, a saint in both the Christian and Islamic traditions, and its rites revolve around water.
On the eastern bank of the Tigris recently, Jabar watched as a younger cleric blessed congregants in the river, then anointed them with holy oil and gave them a sacrament of bread and water on dry land.
The women, shrouded in white and their hair tucked under headdresses, went into the river first, receiving their blessings in a Mandaean dialect of Jesus’s native tongue, Aramaic. Then the ceremony was repeated for the men.
Finally, a one-year-old baby, Yuhana, received his first baptism, squirming and sputtering as his father dipped him in the water. The faith holds that only flowing water can baptise the faithful, and that it should be clear, pure and fit for human consumption.
Until 2003, nearly all the world’s Mandaeans lived in Iraq, but the conflicts since the US invasion have driven minorities out of the country.
Ebbing numbers
Shaikh Jabar estimates there are just 10,000 Mandaeans left in Iraq today, a fraction of what it was before. Their numbers are particularly susceptible to the toll of migration because Mandaeism does not accept converts: worshippers must be born into the faith.
As for Baghdad’s river, it’s a stew of industrial chemicals, sewage and poisonous agricultural runoff, the Save the Tigris civil society campaign said in a report. Water levels are falling, owing to the changing climate and damming in neighbouring Turkey, Syria and Iran. About 70 per cent of Iraq’s water flows from upstream countries.