Mandaeans

Middle Eastern ethnoreligious groupYou may need to display the uncommon Unicode characters in this article correctly.Mandaeans (Mandaic: ࡌࡀࡍࡃࡀࡉࡉࡀ) (Arabic: المندائيونal-Mandāʾiyyūn), also known as Mandaean Sabians (الصابئة المندائيونal-Ṣābiʾa al-Mandāʾiyyūn) or simply as Sabians (الصابئةal-Ṣābiʾa), are an ethnoreligious group who are followers of Mandaeism. They believe that John the Baptist was the final and most important prophet. They may have been among the earliest religious groups to practise baptism, as well as among the earliest adherents of Gnosticism, a belief system of which they are the last surviving representatives. The Mandaeans were originally native speakers of Mandaic, an Eastern Aramaic language, before they nearly all switched to Mesopotamian Arabic or Persian as their main language. After the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies in 2003, the Mandaean community of Iraq, which before the war numbered 60,000–70,000 people, collapsed with most of the community relocating to Iran, Syria and Jordan, or forming diaspora communities beyond the Middle East. By 2007, the population of Manda