Nasser Sobbi
Nasser Sobbi | |
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Born | Khorramshahr, Iran | March 13, 1924
Died | December 22, 2018 Flushing, Queens, New York, United States | (aged 94)
Nationality | Iranian, American |
Other names | Adam bar Mahnuš |
Occupation | Scribe |
Notable work | Ginza Rabba (1989 handwritten copy) |
Spouse | Shukrieh Sobbi |
Children | 5 |
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Nasser Sobbi (Persian: ناصر صبي; born March 13, 1924, Khorramshahr; died December 22, 2018, Flushing, Queens) was an Iranian-American Mandaean scribe, manuscript collector, and goldsmith[1]: 65 who was known as one of the last remaining fully fluent native speakers of Neo-Mandaic. He was a yalufa (learned Mandaean layman), though not a formally ordained Mandaean priest.[1]
Biography
Early life
Nasser Sobbi was born in
Mandaean manuscripts
On July 16, 1989, Sobbi finished copying a handwritten copy of the Ginza Rabba, the only one of its kind in North America.[1]: 65 Sobbi also owned the largest private collection of Mandaean manuscripts in North America, including a handwritten manuscript of the Mandaean Book of John that was copied by Sheikh Mhatam bar Yahya Bihram on April 9, 1910.[1] Sobbi also owned a copy of the Haran Gawaita from 1930[1]: 340 that was copied by Mulla Sa’ad, the grandfather of Jabbar Choheili.[3]
Sobbi became acquainted with Norwegian-American scholar Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley in 1994. For decades, he assisted Buckley with her research on Mandaean manuscript colophons.[3]
Mandaic language
Sobbi was a fluent native speaker, reader, and writer of Mandaic.[4]: 113 He spoke Neo-Mandaic regularly with his wife Shukrieh, his brother Dakhil A. Shooshtary, and his uncle Abdolkarim Moradi, a resident of Syosset, New York. Throughout the 2000s, Sobbi worked as Charles G. Häberl's Neo-Mandaic language informant for Häberl's 2006 Harvard doctoral dissertation The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr, which was later published as a monograph by Harrassowitz Verlag in 2009.[2]
Sobbi died on December 22, 2018, in Flushing at the age of 94.[5]
Family
Nasser Sobbi was the father of one son, Isa, and four daughters, Freshteh, Juliette, Labiba, and Nabila. Labiba's husband grew up in a Neo-Mandaic-speaking household and could understand the language, but was not a fluent speaker himself.[2]
Sobbi married Shukrieh Sobbi in 1950.[6] The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2000.[3]: 34
His brother,
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1-59333-621-9.
- ^ doi:10.7282/t3qf8r7c.
- ^ ISSN 1935-441X.
- OCLC 65198443.
- ^ "Nasser Sobbi". echovita.com. 2018-12-24. Retrieved 2024-02-03.
- ISBN 978-0-19-515385-9.
- ISBN 978-1-4567-6361-9.)
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