The Wedding of the Great Shishlam


The Wedding of the Great Shishlam is a Mandaean text. As a liturgical rather than esoteric text, it contains instructions and hymns for the Mandaean marriage ceremony. Traditionally, Mandaean priests recite the entire book at marriage ceremonies. The hymns in the text often contain the refrain "When the proven, the Pure One Went." Unlike most other Mandaean ritual scrolls, The Wedding of the Great Šišlam is not illustrated.

Manuscripts and translations

Copies of the text include Manuscript 38 of the Drower Collection, currently held at the Bodleian Library. A full transliteration, English translation, and commentary were published as a book by E. S. Drower in 1950.
Manuscripts held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France include:

Contents

The DC 38 manuscript has five parts. However, since Part 5 is a duplicate of Part 1, there are only four unique parts.
Part 2 has 16 hymns, and Part 3 has 55 hymns. They are not numbered in Drower.

Prayers

The qabin prayers in the Qulasta constitute prayers 179–232, all of which are also duplicated in Parts 2 and 3 of The Wedding of the Great Shishlam. There are two sequences, with the latter sequence consisting of two series.
  • 180–199 : Qabin prayers
  • *181: putting the lbuša on Manda d-Hayyi
  • *182: putting the himiana on Manda d-Hayyi
  • *183: putting the ksuia on Manda d-Hayyi
  • *184: putting the naṣipa, named Šamašeil, on Manda d-Hayyi
  • *185: putting the taga on Manda d-Hayyi
  • *186: putting the šarwala, named Nṣab, on Manda d-Hayyi
  • *187: putting the margna on Manda d-Hayyi
  • *188: putting the klila on Yawar
  • 200–214: Qabin prayers
  • *208: the bridegroom's various pieces of clothing
  • *210: the Seven bowing down before the bridegroom
  • 215–232: Qabin prayers : songs praising the bride and bridegroom
The kḏ azil bhira dakia prayers, which constitute prayers 233–256 of the Qulasta and are repeated in Part 3 of The Wedding of the Great Shishlam, come after qabin prayer 232.
All of the prayers above have been published using typesetted Mandaic by Majid Fandi Al-Mubaraki in Ktaba ḏ-Qabin, which makes up Part 2 in Volume 2 of Al-Mubaraki's Qulasta set.

Prayer sequence

In Part 1 of The Wedding of the Great Shishlam, the prescribed sequence of Qulasta prayers to be recited is as follows.