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.

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.

A collection of folktales from Iraq, dating from the 1930s, found in the archives of the famous English Lady E. S. Drower (1879–1972), who was novelist, folklorist, specialist on the Mandaeans, and writer of travel accounts. New tales edited by Jorunn Buckley form a second volume of Drower’s Folktales. The stories—carrying recognizable Near Eastern folk-tale features—feature monsters and heroes, maidens and fairies and they give a vivid picture of a now extinct oral folktale tradition. This Gorgias Press edition includes previously unpublished tales in addition to those of the 1931 edition.