Negm bar Zahroon
Negm bar Zahroon was a Mandaean priest. He is known for his role as E. S. Drower's main field consultant who helped her procure dozens of Mandaic texts, now kept in the Bodleian Library's Drower Collection.
Names
He is often known simply as Sheikh Negm or Sheikh Nejm in E. S. Drower's writings. His Mandaean baptismal name is Adam Negm bar Zakia Zihrun bar Ram Zihrun. In his letters to Drower, he refers to himself as Sheikh Negm, son of Sheikh Zahroon.Life
Sheikh Negm was born in Huwaiza in 1892 into the Khaffagi clan. He lived in Khorramshahr during his early youth. He later moved to Liṭlaṭa, Qal'at Saleh in 1914, where he was later initiated as a tarmida. He became acquainted with E. S. Drower sometime before 1933, with whom he had a lifelong collaboration. He helped Drower obtain many of the Mandaic manuscripts in the Drower Collection, typically by serving as an agent to help purchase them, but at times also copied some of Mandaic texts himself. Drower Mss. 2, 4, 15, 22, 23, 28–32, 34, 35, 38–41, 43, 44, and others were obtained via the assistance of Sheikh Negm.In 1920, he was initiated as a tarmida by two ganzibras from the Manduia clan, namely Sheikh Damouk, and by Sheikh Sahan. In 1947, he was ordained as a ganzibra. That same year, Sheikh Negm initiated his son Abdullah as a tarmida. Abdullah later married Sheikh Abdullah Khaffagi's daughter Šarat from Ahvaz.
From 2 February 1936 to 1 February 1950, Sheikh Negm wrote letters to Drower mostly while she resided in Baghdad, using seven different scribes who could write in English. A few letters were also written in Neo-Mandaic. Many of Sheikh Negm's letters date to 1939.
Sheikh Negm died in 1976.
Family
Negm bar Zahroon's father and Abdullah Khaffagi's father were both the sons of Ram Zihrun, one of the survivors of the 1831 cholera epidemic that nearly wiped out the Mandaean priesthood. Yahya Bihram was Sheikh Negm's grandfather's cousin and brother-in-law.His brother was Yahya bar Zakia Zihrun.
His son, Sheikh Abdullah of Baghdad, was a rishama who later emigrated to the United Kingdom, and died in the Netherlands in 2009. Sheikh Abdullah bar Negm was known for initiating Sheikh Haithem into the priesthood in Iraq. Rafid al-Sabti, a tarmida currently residing in Nijmegen, Netherlands, is the son of Sheikh Abdullah, and is hence also Sheikh Negm's grandson.
Negm bar Zahroon's nephew Abdelelah Khalaf al-Sebahi, who was educated in Moscow when Iraq had close ties with the USSR, currently lives in Denmark.