Likewise, the Mandaeans believe that Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad were false prophets, but recognize other prophetic figures from the monotheistic traditions, such as Adam, his sons Hibil (Abel) and Šitil (Seth), and his grandson Anuš (Enosh), as well as Nuh (Noah), his son Sam (Shem) and his son Ram (Aram). The latter three they consider to be their direct ancestors.
There is a strict division between Mandaean laity and the priests. According to E.S. Drower ("The Secret Adam", p. ix):
There are three grades of priesthood in Mandaeism: the "tarmidia" "disciples" (Neo-Mandaic "tarmidānā"), the "ganzibria" "treasurers" (from Old Persian "ganza-bara" "id.", Neo-Mandaic ') and the "rišamma" "leader of the people." This last office, the highest level of the Mandaean priesthood, has lain vacant for many years. At the moment, the highest office currently occupied is that of the ', a title which appears first in a religious context in the Aramaic ritual texts from Persepolis (ca. 3rd c. BCE) and which may be related to the "kamnaskires" (Elamite <qa-ap-nu-iš-ki-ra> "kapnuskir" "treasurer"), title of the rulers of Elymais (modern Khuzestan) during the Hellenistic age. Traditionally, any ' who baptizes seven or more ' may qualify for the office of "rišamma", though the Mandaean community has yet to rally as a whole behind any single candidate.
The contemporary priesthood can trace its immediate origins to the first half of the 19 century. In 1831, an outbreak of cholera devastated the region and eliminated most if not all of the Mandaean religious authorities. Two of the surviving acolytes ("šgandia"), Yahia Bihram and Ram Zihrun, reestablished the priesthood on the basis of their own training and the texts that were available to them.
According to the "Fihrist" of ibn al-Nadim, Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, was brought up within the Elkasaites ("Elcesaites" or "Elchasaite") sect. The Elkasaites were a Christian baptismal sect which may have been related to the Mandaeans. The members of this sect wore white and performed baptisms like the Mandaeans. They lived in east Judea and northern Mesopotamia. According to the "Harran Gawaitā" legend, the Mandaeans migrated to southern Mesopotamia from there. Mani later left the Elkasaites to start his own religion. Mandaean scholar Säve-Söderberg showed that Mani's "Psalms of Thomas" were closely related to Mandaean texts. This would imply that Mani had access to Mandaean religious literature.
Other groups which have been identified with the Mandaeans include the "Nasoraeans", described by Epiphanius, and the Dositheans, mentioned by Theodore Bar Kōnī in his "Scholion". Ibn al-Nadim also mentions a group called the "Mughtasila", "the self-ablutionists," who may be identified with one or the other of these groups. The members of this sect, like the Mandaeans, wore white and performed baptisms.
It is difficult to say if groups such as the Elkasaites, the Mughtasila, the Nasoraeans, and the Dositheans are related to the Mandaeans or to one another.
The names say that there are a number of different groups. Much of the teaching of these groups is secret. This makes it difficult to see the nature of these groups or the relationships between them.
Under Saddam Hussein, the Mandeans were recognised as a religious minority. Many of them are craftspeople, like smiths or traders of gold and silver. These people belonged to the middle classes. Since the change of government in Iraq, islamic extremists have harassed them. There are also reports of attacks on women who refuse to veil themselves. Most Iraqi Mandaeans have fled as a result, and the Mandaean community in Iraq faces extinction.
In Iran, Mandeans do not have a problem with violence, but they are prohibited from fully participating in civil life because of "Gozinesh" Law. This law and other "gozinesh" provisions require a "religious screening" for people who want to access employment, education, and a range of other areas. A very important part of this screening procedure is devotion to the tenets of Islam. These laws are regularly applied to discriminate against religious and ethnic groups that are not officially recognized, such as the Mandaeans.
There were over 60,000 Mandaeans in Iraq in the early 1990s. In 2007, only about 5,000 to 7,000 remain there; over 80% of Iraqi Mandaeans were refugees in Syria and Jordan. This is a result of the Iraq War. There are small Mandaean populations in Australia (c. 3,500 as of 2006), Canada, the USA (c. 1,500), the UK (c. 1,000) and Sweden (c. 5,000).
The current status of the Mandaeans has prompted a number of American intellectuals and civil rights activists to call for their government to extend refugee status to the community. In 2007, the New York Times ran an op-ed in which Swarthmore professor Nathaniel Deutsch called for the Bush administration to take immediate action to preserve the community:
Substitution box
In cryptography, a S-Box ("Substitution-box") is a basic component of symmetric-key algorithms. In block ciphers, the S-Boxes are used to make the relation between the key and the ciphertext (coded text) difficult to understand–Shannon's property of confusion. The S-Boxes are carefully chosen to resist cryptanalysis (decoding).
In general, an S-Box takes some number of input bits, "m", and transforms them into some number of output bits, "n": an "m"×"n" S-Box can be implemented as a lookup table with 2 words of "n" bits each. Fixed tables are normally used, as in the Data Encryption Standard (DES), but in some ciphers the tables are generated dynamically from the key; e.g. the Blowfish and the Twofish encryption algorithms. Bruce Schneier describes IDEA's modular multiplication step as a key-dependent S-Box.
One good example is this 6×4-bit S-Box from DES (S):
Given a 6-bit input, the 4-bit output is found by selecting the row using the outer two bits, and the column using the inner four bits. For example, an input "011011" has outer bits "01" and inner bits "1101"; the corresponding output would be "1001".
The 8 S-Boxes of DES were the subject of intensive studies for many years cause of a concern that a method of bypassing the DES cipher to obtaining access to the plaintext–a "vulnerability" ("susceptibility") known only to its designers–might have been "planted" (inserted) in the cipher. In 1994, the S-Box design criteria were finally published by its designers after the public rediscovery of differential cryptanalysis, showing that they had been carefully tuned the design to increase resistance against differential cryptanalysis attacks. Other research had already indicated that even a very small modification to one of the 8 S-Box used by the DES could weaken it very much.
The design of good S-Boxes was the subject of a great amount of research; now much more is understood about their use in block ciphers than when the DES S-Boxes were released.
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Meyreuil
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Miramas