The City of the Moon God

The City of the Moon God treats the religious and intellectual history of the city of Harran (Eastern Turkey) from Biblical times down to the establishment of Islam. The author starts from the well-known reference in the Quran and the early Islamic histories to the people of Harran as Sabians, one of the 'peoples of the book'. But what was the Sabian 'book'? Why was their belief seen by the early Muslims as being so akin to Christianity and Judaism? More importantly, what does information about the religion of Harran reveal to us about the intellectual origins of Islam, and does this support later attempts to see in early Islam a pure, monolithic belief? The author unravels strands of religious tradition in Harran that run from the old Semitic planetary cults through Hellenistic hermeticism, gnosticism and Neo-Pythagoreanism and Christian cults to esoteric Islamic sects such as the Sufis and Shia, showing the city to be a collection point for Near Eastern and Hellenistic ideas and as such a microcosm of the later world of Islam. She also points to the process by which a multiconfessional world was gradually given Muslim garb and integrated into an Islamic community.