Mani

Mani (c. 216-274) was a religious leader of Parthian origin and the founder of Manichaeism, a faith that emerged in the third century from a mixture of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. He belongs to late antiquity, a period of the Sasanian and Parthian empires, and his message spread widely before it was persecuted. He is an important figure for understanding how the religious traditions of the Iranian, Mesopotamian and Mediterranean worlds came into contact.

According to the surviving accounts, Mani came from a noble Parthian family. His father, Pattig, came from Hamadan, and his mother was related to the Arsacid dynasty. As a young man he lived among an ascetic Jewish-Christian community, the Elkesaites, linked to the Ebionites. Around the age of twenty-five he began to preach a doctrine that promised salvation through knowledge, self-denial, vegetarianism, fasting and chastity. Later he presented himself as the Paraclete promised in the New Testament and as the last in a long line of messengers sent by God, which included Seth, Noah, Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus. His followers credited him with miracles, though the sources are late and should be read with caution.

His first missionaries spread the faith through Persia, Palestine, Syria and Egypt. At first he enjoyed the support of the Sasanian emperor Shapur I, who protected him, and of Shapur's son Hormizd, who became his disciple. Hormizd died soon afterwards, and his brother Bahram I, a fierce opponent of Mani, succeeded him and had Mani imprisoned with the backing of the Zoroastrian priests. Mani died in prison, although the sources disagree about the exact manner of his death. Most of his writings have been lost, but his teachings survive in Coptic fragments, in later texts and in developed forms in China, especially around Turfan. His influence lasted for centuries across Central and East Asia, and his figure has inspired modern literature, such as Amin Maalouf's novel Les jardins de lumière (1991).