Naman’s reference is the Mandaeism Mandaeism, also known as Sabianism, is a Gnostic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. Mandaeans consider Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem, and John the Baptist to be prophets with Adam the founder of the religion and John is the greatest and final prophet. The Mandaeans speak an Eastern Aramaic language known as Mandaic. The name 'Mandaean' comes from the Aramaic manda, meaning knowledge. Within the Middle East, but outside of their community, the Mandaeans are more commonly known as the Arabic: صُبَّة Ṣubba (singular: Ṣubbī) or Sabians. The term Ṣubba is derived from the Aramaic root related to baptism, the neo-Mandaic is Ṣabi. In the Quran, the Sabians (Arabic: الصَّابِئُون, aṣ-Ṣābiʾūn) are mentioned three times, alongside Jews and Christians. Occasionally, Mandaeans are called "Christians of Saint John". Mandaeans assert that their religion predates Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a monotheistic faith. Mandaeans believe that they descend directly from Shem, Noah's son, in Mesopotamia and also from John the Baptist's original Nasoraean Mandaean disciples in Jerusalem. The Mandaeans have remained separate and intensely private. Reports of them and their religion have come primarily from outsiders: particularly from Julius Heinrich Petermann, an Orientalist as well as from Nicolas Siouffi, a Syrian Christian who was the French vice-consul in Mosul in 1887, and British cultural anthropologist Lady E. S. Drower.