The Koran mentions the Sabi'un three times (II 6-2, V 69, XXII 17). "Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabi'un-whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does what is right-shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing to fear or to regret." This language is repeated in the second citation. The third appearance is slightly different: "As for true believers, the Jews, the Sabi'un, the Christians, the Magians, and the pagans, Allah will judge them on the Day of Resurrection. He bears witness to all things." 1 Early Islamic commentators often disagreed on the identity of the Sabi'un, and the confusion continued throughout the medieval Islamic period. 2 The term Sabi'un was applied by some early Koranic commentators to the survivors of an ancient Jewish-Christian sect, the Elchasites in southern Iraq. 3 One minority group of ethnic Arab "pagans" with a hellenized elite in Harran, in Arabia, also took the Koranic name Sabian in the third/ninth century to claim the status of a "people of the book" and therefore avoid persecution. It is this group that some later Muslims identified as Sabi'. 4 The scholarly consensus now suggests that the 5 Encyclopedia of Islam, "SABI'A." 6 Josef Stern, Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Ta'amei Ha-Mitzvot) (Albany, 1998). 7 Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, tr. M. Friedländer (New York, 1956 2), bk. 3, c. 29, 315. Nabatean Agriculture appeared in Arabic in 904 AD and was reputed to be an authentic translation from the Chaldean. See Shlomo Pines (tr. and ed.), Guide for the Perplexed (2 vols.,
