Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley’s new book is both an updated academic study and an autobiographical account of her decades-long Mandaean encounters. The book includes the author’s intellectual timeline in Mandaean studies from the late 1960s until today, a study of Mandaean scribal lineages, accounts of private and public meetings with Mandeans around the world with 26 anecdotes / vignettes, as well as selections from a privately printed book on her international human rights work for Mandaeans. The book is dedicated to a treasured Mandaean friend, the yalufa (learned layman) Sh. Salem Choheili.

The mythology, history, and ritual of the Mandaeans, with an account of their clergy, ritual, language, and numbers, written by a Syriac Christian who was French consul in Mosul for twenty years.

Mandaean priests, representatives of a religious heritage that can be traced back to Late Antique Mesopotamia, still copy their ancient literature by hand. The Great Stem of Souls is a study of the colophons – postscripts at the end of each text – that are appended to most Mandaean documents. A study of the contents of the colophons provides a framework for reconstructing Mandaean history.