“Wisdom and deeds have always from time to time been brought to mankind by the messengers of God. So in one age they have been Citation from one of the books of Manes. brought by the messenger of God called Buddha to India, in another by Zoroaster to Persia, in another by Jesus to the West. Thereafter this revelation has come down, this prophecy in this last age, through me, Mání, the Messenger of the God of Truth to Babylonia.”
The migrations of the Manichæans are thus described in the Fihrist:—
“The Manichæans were the first religious community to enter the lands of Transoxiana beside the Shamanists. The reason of Migrations of the Manichæans. this was that when the Kisrá (Bahrám) slew Mání and crucified him, and forbade the people of his kingdom to dispute about religion, he took to killing the followers of Mání wherever he found them, wherefore they continued to flee before him until they crossed the river of Balkh and entered the dominions of the Kháqán (or Khán), with whom they abode. Now Kháqán (or Khán) in their tongue is a title conferred by them on the King of the Turks. So the Manichæans settled in Transoxiana until such time as the power of the Persians was broken and that of the Arabs waxed strong, whereupon they returned to these lands ('Iráq, or Babylonia), especially during the break up of the Persian Empire and the days of the Umayyad kings. Khálid b. 'Abdu'lláh al-Qaṣrí* took them under his protection, but the leadership [of the sect] was not conferred save in Babylonia, in these lands, after which the leader would depart into whatever land would afford him most security. Their last migration took place in the days of al-Muqtadir (A.D. 908-932), when they retired to Khurásán for fear of their lives, while such as remained of them concealed their religion, and wandered through these regions. About five hundred men of them collected at Samarqand, and their doctrines became known. The governor of Khurásán would have slain them, but the King of China (by whom I suspect the ruler of the Taghazghaz to be meant) sent unto him saying, ‘There are in my domains double the number of Muhammadans that there are in thine of my co-religionists,’ and swearing to him that should he kill one of the latter, he would slay the whole of the former to avenge him, and would destroy the mosques, and would establish an inquisition against the Muhammadans in the rest of his dominions and slay them. So the Governor of Khurásán let them alone, only taking from them the jizya (poll-tax on non-Muslims). So they diminished in numbers in the lands of Islám; but in the City of Peace (Baghdad) I used to know some three hundred of them in the days of Mu'izzu'd-Dawla (A.D. 946-967). But in these our days there are not five of them left at the capital. And these people are named Ájárí, and they reside in the suburbs of Samarqand, Sughd, and especially Nuwíkath.”
Of those who, while outwardly professing Islám, were really
Manichæans, the author of the Fihrist gives a long list, which
Manichæans
in Islám.
includes al-Ja'd b. Dirham, who was put to death
by the Umayyad Caliph Hishám (A.D. 724-743);
the poet Bashshár b. Burd, put to death in
A.D. 784; nearly all the Barmecides, except Muḥammad b.
Khálid b. Barmak; the Caliph al-Ma'mún (A.D. 813-833),
but this is not credited by the author; Muḥammad ibnu'z-
The Manichæans were divided into five grades—the
Duties imposed
on the Manichæans.
Mu'allimún or Teachers, called “the Sons of
Tenderness”; the Mushammasún or those illuminated
by the Sun,*
called “the Sons of Knowledge”;
the Qissísún or priests, called “the Sons of Understanding”;
the Ṣiddíqún or faithful, called “the Sons of the
Unseen”; and the Sammá'ún or hearers, called “the Sons of
Intelligence.” They were commanded to perform the four or
the seven prayers, and to abandon idol-worship, falsehood,
covetousness, murder, fornication, theft, the teaching and
study of all arts of deception and magic, hypocrisy in religion
and lukewarmness in daily life. To these ten commandments
were added: belief in the four Supreme Essences: to wit, God
(“the King of the Paradises of Light”), His Light, His Power,
and His Wisdom; fasting for seven days in each month; and
the acceptance of “the three seals,” called by St. Augustine
and other Christian writers the signacula oris, manuum et sinûs,
typifying the renunciation of evil words, evil deeds, and evil
thoughts, and corresponding to the hûkht, hûvarsht, and
hûmat (good words, good deeds, and good thoughts) of the
Zoroastrian religion. Details of the fasts and prayers, and
some of the formulæ used in the latter, are also given in the
Fihrist, from which we also learn something of the schisms which
arose after Mání's time as to the Spiritual Supremacy, the chief
divisions being the Mihriyya and the Miqlásiyya. The seven
books of Mání (of which, as has been already said, six were in
Syriac and one—the Sháburqán—in Pahlawí) were written in
The writing
invented by
Manes.
a peculiar script invented by their author and
reproduced (in a form greatly corrupted and
disfigured in the existing MSS.) by the Fihrist.
To this script, and to the art of writing in general, the
Manichæans (like the modern Bábís, who, as is well known,
have also invented a script peculiar to themselves called
khaṭṭ-i-badí', “the New Writing”) would appear to have
devoted much attention, for al-Jáḥidh (ninth century) cites
Ibráhím as-Sindí as saying that “it would be well if they were
The legendary
Arzhang-i-Mání.
to spend less on the whitest, finest paper and the
blackest ink, and on the training of calligraphists.”
From this, as Professor Bevan conjectures, arose
the idea of Mání as a skilful painter which is prevalent in
Persia, where it is generally believed that he produced a picture-