Manichaeism

Mani, the prophet of Manichaeism, was born in 216 near Ctesiphon. The Manichaean community was divided into the Elect, ascetic monks and nuns, and the Hearers who supported them. Manichaeism spread west to Roman North Africa, where Augustine was a Hearer for nine or ten years before turning against it, and east to Central Asia, where the Uyghur khagan Bögü made it the state religion in 763.

By 1337 it survived only in China, where believers sheltered behind Buddhist and Taoist forms and honoured Mani as the Buddha of Light. At Cao'an near Quanzhou a statue of Mani was donated and the temple rebuilt in 1339. The Ming banned it in 1370, and it was soon absorbed into Buddhism and Taoism.