The term Sābi’īn and Sābi’ūn has been referred to three times in the Qur'an. The Qur'an's conception in regard to the Sābi’īn religion, like other revealed religions, is based on tendency toward the Origin and Return (mabda‘ and ma‘ād), and salvation in the Hereafter. Nevertheless, it has been noticed that the translators and interpreters have spoken with ambiguity and suspicion and in an uncertain and general way about the followers of this religion when explaining the concept of this term and determining the faith of the adherents to this religion; some jurists have even avoided mentioning them as among the People of the Book.
This article is a research in the semantics of the term Sābi’īn in an exegetical, jurisprudential, and historical approach, emphasizing the fact that this term has undergone a transformation in a historical point of time and this confusion in attribution of the term caused the translators and interpreters of the Qur'an and certain jurists to fall into such diversity of opinion. The procedure taken in this article is to explicate the three Qur'anic verses in question, to compare various Persian translations of this term, and to study historical documents and exegetical opinions of the interpreters and jurists and to state their viewpoints.
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