Abstract
Few Mandaean literary works are explicitly historical in scope. The Scroll of Inner Harran (Diwān Harrān Gawaytā), the subject of a new critical edition by Bogdan Burtea, is one such work. The Inner Harran revisits the world era of prior Mandaean works and revises it in light of subsequent developments, most notably the advent of Islam and the conclusion of the prior world era on Saturday, 5 June 678. In his edition, Burtea adeptly contextualizes this work within the body of philological scholarship that has grown around it since its editio princeps in 1953, albeit without situating it within the body of literature from Mandaeans and other related communities during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In this review article, I attempt to supplement Burtea’s edition by placing its subject within a broader literary and specifically historiographic context.