I thank JimJam @ShiaChat for providing with some references to the Sabians. See here
Henry Corbin stated in his book [1]
But of particular importance is the school of the 'Sabians of Harran', established in the neighbourhood of Edessa. The pseudo-Majriti contains much valuable information about their astral religion. They traced their spiritual line of descent back to Hermes and Agathodaimon, as al-Suhrawardi did later. Their doctrines bring together the ancient astral religion of the Chaldeans, studies in mathematics and astronomy, and neo-Pythagorean and neo-Platonic spirituality. From the eighth to the tenth centuries
they produced a number of very active translators, of whom the most famous was Thabit ibn Qurrah (ca. 826-901), a great adherent of the astral religion and an outstanding author of mathematical and astronomical works. [page 17]
We saw above that the Sabians of Harran traced their descent back to Hermes and to Agathodaimon. Thabit'ibn Qurrah (d. 288/901), their most famous teacher, had written a book in Syriac on the 'Institutions of Hermes' and had himself translated it into Arabic. For the Manichaeans, Hermes was one of the five great prophets who preceded Mani. The person of Hermes passed from Manichaean prophetology into Islamic prophetology, in which he is identified with Idris and Enoch (Ukhnukh).
The Sunnis (according to the evidence of al-Shahrartani) condemned the hermeticism of the Sabians as a religion incompatible with Islam, because it can dispense with the prophet (the prophet-legislator of a shari'ah, that is): the ascent of the spirit to Heaven, into which Hermes initiated his disciples, made it unnecessary to believe in the descent of an Angel who reveals the divine text to the prophet. This flat incompatibility ceases to exist when the 2. like many 'strong personalities' of the time, the Iranian philosopher al-Sarakhsi (d. 286/899), a pupil of the philosopher al-Kindi (see below, V, 1), was a Shiite, or was thought to be one. He had written a book, now lost, on the religion of the Sabians. His teacher al-Kindi had also read what Hermes had to say to his son {no doubt an implicit reference to the Pimander) concerning the mystery of divine transcendence, and he stated that a Muslim philosopher like himself could not have put it better, Unfortunately, the Sabians did not possess a 'Book' brought to them by a prophet-legislator, a Book which might have won them official recognition as ahl al-kitab.
Little by little, they had to convert to Islam. Their last known leader, Hukaym ibn Isa ibn Marwan, died in 333/944. Their influence has nonetheless left ineradicable traces. Their conviction that syllogism was inadequate to distinguish the divine attributes is reminiscent of the reservations expressed by the Imam Ja'far with regard to dialectic (the science of the kalam). Something of their terminology, allied to that of Manichaeism, appears in the work of al-Shalmaghani (d. 322/934), the moving figure of a personal tragedy fitting for an ultra-Shiite. Something of it enters Sufism (al-Kharraz, d. 286/899; al-Hallaj, d. 309/922) through the intermediary of Dhu al-Nun al-Misri (d. 245/859), an Egyptian who was both alchemist and mystic. The neo-Platonists of Islam who effected the synthesis between philosophical speculation and mystical experience, such as al-Suhrawardi (d. 587/1191) and Ibn Sab'in (d. 669/1270), expressly claimed to be part of a chain of initiation (isnad) which goes back to Hermes. In the seventh/thirteenth century, Afdal al-Din al-Kashani, a Shiite Iranian philosopher, translated a hermetic treatise into Persian.
Reference
[1] Book: Henry Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, Institute of Ismaili Studies
