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Concept
Qolasta
Summary
The Qolastā, Qulasta, or Qolusta (ࡒࡅࡋࡀࡎࡕࡀ; Qōlutā) is the canonical prayer book of the Mandaeans, a Gnostic ethnoreligious group from Iraq and Iran. The Mandaic word qolastā means "collection". The prayerbook is a collection of Mandaic prayers regarding baptisms (masbuta) and other sacred rituals involved in the ascension of the soul (masiqta).
The Qolasta, and two other key texts to Mandaic literature, the Mandaean Book of John and the Ginza Rabba, were compiled together. However, their date of authorship is heavily debated, some believing it to be during the second and third centuries, and others believing it to be conceived during the first century.
In 1949, Torgny Säve-Söderbergh demonstrated that many passages in the Manichaean Psalms of Thomas were paraphrases or even word-by-word translations of Mandaean prayers in the Qolasta. Säve-Söderbergh also argued that the Manichaean psalms had borrowed from Mandaean sources rather than vice versa. As a result, much of the Qolasta can be dated to before 3rd century, i.e. before Mani's lifetime.
It has been translated into English by E. S. Drower in 1959 and by Mark Lidzbarski into German in 1920. Lidzbarski's translation was based on two manuscripts, including Ms. Syr. F. 2 (R) held at the Bodleian Library, which he called "Roll F."
E. S. Drower's version of the Qolasta contains 414 prayers (338 prayers if excluding duplicated prayers), which was based on manuscript 53 of the Drower Collection (abbreviated DC 53). The fragmentary DC 3, which is an incomplete codex of the Qolasta, was also consulted by Drower. DC 53 was copied in 1802 by the ganzibra Adam Yuhana, the father of Yahia Bihram, in Huwaiza, Khuzistan. The manuscript was purchased by Drower in 1954.
Carlos Gelbert has also translated the 103 prayers from Lidzbarki's Mandäische Liturgien into Arabic. A typesetted Mandaic version has also been published in 1998 by Majid Fandi Al-Mubaraki.
Part 1 of Mark Lidzbarski's Liturgien (1920) (commonly abbreviated ML in Mandaic studies), titled the Qolastā, has only 103 prayers.
Official source
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