TheSidra ḏ-Nišmata (Classical Mandaic:ࡎࡉࡃࡓࡀ ࡖࡍࡉࡔࡌࡀࡕࡀ,lit.'Book of Souls';Modern Mandaic:Sedrā d-Nešmāthā[1]), also known as theBook of Souls orBook of Gadana, is a collection ofMandaean litugical prayers that constitutes the first part of theQulasta. It is typically considered to consist of 103 prayers. TheSidra ḏ-Nišmata most likely constitutes the oldest stratum ofMandaean literature and dates to at least the 3rd century CE or earlier.[2]
TheSidra ḏ-Nišmata contains the most important prayers used in core Mandaean rituals, namely themasbuta andmasiqta.[3]
Below is a list of individual prayers of theSidra ḏ-Nišmata based on the text of Drower (1959),[7] with additional notes from Segelberg (1958)[8] and Buckley (2002).[3]
Litanies in theSidra d-Nishmata include prayers8,9,25,58,70,71,77,80, and81.[9]
Prayer 46: klila prayer (nhur nhura). Almost identical toPrayer 5, except that the first two words of Prayer 46 arenhar nhura instead ofnhur nhura in Prayer 5. As a result, Lidzbarski (1920) omits Prayer 46 as a duplicate of Prayer 5, although Drower (1959) and Gelbert & Lofts (2025) keep the prayer.[9]
^Häberl, Charles (2022).The Book of Kings and the Explanations of This World: A Universal History from the Late Sasanian Empire. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.ISBN978-1-80085-627-1.
^abBuckley, Jorunn Jacobsen (2002).The Mandaeans: ancient texts and modern people. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-515385-5.OCLC65198443.
^"Sidra d-Nishmata".The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (in myz). Retrieved2025-05-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
^Al-Mubaraki, Majid Fandi; Mubaraki, Brian (2010).Qulasta - Sidra d Nishmata / Mandaean Liturgical Prayer Book (Book of Souls) (volume 1). Luddenham, New South Wales.ISBN9781876888145.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) (1998 edition: ISBN 0-9585705-1-5)
^Lidzbarski, Mark. 1920.Mandäische Liturgien. Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, NF 17.1. Berlin.
^abDrower, E. S. (1959).The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
^abSegelberg, Eric (1958).Maṣbūtā: Studies in the Ritual of Mandaean Baptism. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell.
^abGelbert, Carlos; Lofts, Mark J. (2025).The Qulasta. Edensor Park, NSW: Living Water Books.ISBN978-0-6487954-3-8.
^Bacher, W. (1892)."The Mandaic Version of Psalm CXIV".The Jewish Quarterly Review.4 (3). [University of Pennsylvania Press, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania]:508–508.ISSN0021-6682.JSTOR1450286. Retrieved2024-07-24.
^Greenfield, Jonas Carl (1981). A Mandaic 'Targum' of Psalm 114. In: Jakob J. Petuchowski and Ezra Fleischer (eds.)Studies in Aggadah, Targum and Jewish Liturgy in Memory of Joseph Heinemann. Jerusalem: Magnes.
^Gärtner, Bernd (2013). "Ein Tauftext aus der Frühgeschichte der Mandäer (ML XC = CP 90) und seine Beziehungen zum Judenchristentum".Durch Dein Wort ward jegliches Ding! (in German). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.ISBN978-3-447-06973-1.OCLC856902570.
