Mani prophet: Encyclopedia II - Mani prophet - After Mani's death

Mani prophet - After Mani's death

It is theorized that the Manichees made every effort to include all known religious traditions. As a result they preserved many apocryphal Christian works, such as the Acts of Thomas, that would have been lost otherwise. Mani was eager to describe himself as a "disciple of Jesus Christ", but the orthodox church rejected him as a heretic. Mani declared himself, and was also referred to, as the Paraclete: a Biblical title, meaning "one who consoles" or "one to intercedes on our behalf", which the Orthodox tradition understood as referring to God in the person of the Holy Spirit. The title was later applied to Muhammad, founder of the Islamic religion who may have extracted this knowledge about himself from the New Testament and claimed to be the last of prophets promised to humanity, as Mani claimed to be the last of the prohets. Muhammad said that his prophethood was revealed to him by an angel, as Mani had claimed about himself. And as Mani claimed to be the successor to prophets like Jesus and other prophets whose teachings he said were locally corrupted (or corrupted by his followers), so too did Muhammad later claim to be the successor to prophets whose teachings he said were locally corrupted.

Some fragments of a Manichaean book written in Turkish mention that in 803 CE the Khan of Uighur Kingdom went to Turfan and sent three Manichaean Magistrates to pay respects to a senior Manichaean cleric in Mobei. A Manichaean hymn of the 8th century from Turfan written in Middle Persian mentions that most of the Khan's kinsmen were devoted to Manichaean faith. The Manichaean manuscripts found in Turfan were written in three different Iranian scripts, viz. Middle Persian, Parthian and Sogdian script. These documents prove that Sogdia was a very important centre of Manichaeism during the early mediaeval period and it was perhaps the Sogdian merchants who brought the religion to Central Asia and China.

During the early 10th century Uighur emerged a very powerful empire under the influence of Buddhism with some Manichaean shrines converted into Buddhist temples. However, there was no denying the historical fact that the Uighurs were worshippers of Mani. The Arabian historian An-Nadim informs us that the Uighur Khan did his best to project Manichaeism in the Central Asian kingdom (of Saman). Chinese documents record that the Uighur Manichaean clerics came to China to pay tribute to the imperial court in 934 CE. The envoy of Song Dynasty by the name of Wang visited Manichaean temples in Gaochang. It appears that the popularity of Manichaeism slowly declined after 10th century in Central Asia.

Some scholars find that the influence of Manichaeism subtly influences Christian thought, in the polarities of good and evil and in the increasingly vivid figure of Satan. This is partly through the influence of Augustine of Hippo, who converted to Christianity from Manichaeism, and whose writings continue to be enormously influential among Catholic theologians.

Mani was ranked #83 in Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.

Mani prophet - Mani in fiction

• The novel The Gardens of Light by Amin Maalouf tells the story of Mani.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "After Mani's death", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki