alternatehistory.com

The pagans of Ḥarrān (ancient Carrhae) are usually considered the last organized remnants of Late Antique paganism to survive, mainly because of the city's remote location on the border between the Roman and Persian/Arab empires.

Following the Islamic conquest, they managed to convince the Arabs to tolerate them under the pretense that they were "Sabians," an unidentified monotheistic group mentioned in the Quran.


Tenth-century Arab sources (ibn al-Nadim and al-Biruni) independently reproduce the ritual calendar of this community, explicitly naming gods with Greek and Assyrian names:

On the 6th of April they [the pagans of Ḥarrān] sacrifice a bull to the Moon.

On the 20th of April, they go to Dayr Kadhi, a sanctuary near one of the gates of the city, where they sacrifice three bulls, "[one to] Kronos, who is Zuhal [Arabic for the planet Saturn]; for Ares, who is Mirrikh [Arabic for the planet Mars], the Blind god; and one is for the Moon, which is Sin [name of the Assyrian moon god]."

On the 4th day of December, they begin a seven-day festival in honor of Baltha, who is Zahra [Arabic for the planet Venus], whom they call al-Shahmiyyah [the Glowing One]. They build a dome within her shrine and adorn it with fragrant fruits; in front of it, they sacrifice as many different kinds of animals as possible.​


Al-Masʿūdī, another tenth-century Arab historian, says that:
  • He personally visited Ḥarrān in 943 AD. He saw on the door of a "place of assembly" of the Ḥarrānites a "saying of Plato", which read "He who knows his own essence becomes divine."
  • The Ḥarrānites are the remnants of the "Egyptians." However, they are also similar to the Romans before their conversion to Christianity. Masʿūdī explicitly cites Julian the Apostate as an example of a Roman who followed a religion similar to that of the Ḥarrānites.
  • The Ḥarrānites are divided into two: the common people, who practice sacrifice and divination, and the learned, who are "philosophers."
  • The Ḥarrānites do not eat "pork, chicken, garlic, beans, and other things of this type."
  • The Ḥarrānites study the teachings of the following "prophets": Hermes Trismegistus (thought of as the Islamic prophet Idris), Agathodaemon (considered the Islamic prophet Seth), Homer, Aratus, "Aryasis", and "Arani".


There was an important Ḥarrānite scientist named Thābit ibn Qurrah in the ninth-century Arab court, and a later historian cites Thābit as declaring:

Although many have been subjugated to error by means of torture, our fathers, by the hand of God, have endured and spoken valiantly, and this blessed city [of Ḥarrān] has never been defiled with the error of Nazareth. And we are the heirs and transmitters of hanputho [pure religion], which is honored gloriously in this world.

Several sources mention that the first Arab conquerors of Ḥarrān converted the existing Moon Temple to a mosque, but allotted a place for the Ḥarrānites to build a replacement temple. This new temple existed until either 1032, when the Fatimids destroyed it during one of their wars with the Byzantines, or 1081, when the Turks destroyed it during their invasion of Anatolia.

Ḥarrān was then devastated by the Crusades, several other waves of Turks, and ultimately totally destroyed in 1271 by the Mongols, so that by the thirteenth century there was nothing left of the city. The current population of Ḥarrān dates from an Ottoman resettlement program in the eighteenth century. Sometime between 1081 and 1271, the last self-consciously non-Abrahamic community in the Mediterranean world died out.


So here's the AHC: with a post-Arab conquest POD, have Ḥarrān retain its "Sabian" community to the present day.
Top