Mandaic language

Mandaic (, "") is a southeastern Aramaic dialect type in use by the Mandaean community for their religious books. Classical Mandaic is still employed by Mandaean priests in liturgical rites. The modern descendant of Classical Mandaic, known as Neo-Mandaic or Modern Mandaic, is spoken by a small section of Mandaeans around Ahvaz and Khorramshar in the south Iranian province Khuzistan. Liturgical use of Classical Mandaic is found in Iran (particularly the southern portions of the country), in Baghdad, Iraq and in the diaspora (particularly in the United States, Sweden, and Germany). It is an Aramaic dialect notable for its abundant use of vowel letters ("mater lectionis" with "aleph", "he" only in final position, "‘ayin", "waw", "yud")) in writing, so-called "plene" spelling (Mandaic script) and the amount of Iranian and Akkadian language influence on its lexicon, especially in the area of religious and magical terminology.
Classical Mandaic belongs to the group of Southeastern Aramaic and is closely related to the Aramaic dialect in the major portions of the Babylonian Talmud, but less to the various dialects of Aramaic and Syriac appearing in the incantation texts on unglazed ceramic bowls so-called incantation bowls found mostly in central and south Iraq as well as the Iranian province of Khuzistan. It is less related to the northeastern Aramaic dialect of Syriac.
This southeastern Aramaic dialect is transmitted through religious, liturgical, and magical manuscripts as well as a unique astronomical and astrological omen manuscript, most of them stored today under the Drower Collection, Bodleian Library (Oxford), and in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), the British Library (London) and others. More specific written objects and of linguistic importance on account of their early transmission (5th – 7th centuries CE) are the earthenware incantation bowls and lead rolls (amulets), including silver and gold specimens that were often unearthed in archaeological excavations in the regions of their historical living sites between Wasiṭ and Baṣra, and frequently in central Iraq, for example (Bismaya, Kish, Khouabir, Kutha, Uruk, Nippur), north and south of the confluences of the Euphrates and Tigris (Abu Shudhr, al-Qurnah), and the adjacent province of Khuzistan (Hamadan).  
Mandaic is written in a specific alphabet consisting of 23 graphemes with the last being a ligature. Its origin and development is still under debate. Graphemes appearing on incantation bowls and metal amulet rolls differ slightly from the late manuscript signs.
Neo-Mandaic.
Neo-Mandaic represents the latest stage of the phonological and morphological development of Mandaic, a Northwest Semitic language of the Eastern Aramaic sub-family. Having developed in isolation from one another, most Neo-Aramaic dialects are mutually unintelligible and should therefore be considered separate languages. Determining the relationship between Neo-Aramaic dialects is difficult because of poor knowledge of the dialects themselves and their history.
Although no direct descendants of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic survive today, most of the Neo-Aramaic dialects spoken today belong to the Eastern sub-family of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic and Mandaic, among them Neo-Mandaic that can be described with any certainty as the direct descendant of one of the Aramaic dialects attested in Late Antiquity, probably Mandaic. Neo-Mandaic preserves a Semitic "suffix" conjugation (or perfect) that is lost in other dialects. The phonology of Neo-Mandaic is divergent from other Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects.
Three dialects of Neo-Mandaic were native to Shushtar, Shah Vali, Masjed Soleyman, and Dezful in the northern Khuzestan Province, Iran before the 1880s. During that time, Mandeans moved to Ahvaz and Khorramshahr to escape persecution. Khorramshahr had the most Neo-Mandaic speakers until the Iran–Iraq War caused many people to leave Iran. Ahvaz is the only community with a sizeable portion of Neo-Mandaic speakers in Iran as of 1993.