Mani
216 CE–274 CE · Ctesiphon
Mani (c. 216 - c. 274/277) was a prophet of the Sasanian era and the founder of Manichaeism, a dualist religion of cosmic light versus darkness. Born near Ctesiphon in Babylonia, he preached across the Sasanian empire and as far as India before dying in prison under King Bahram I. Manichaeism spread widely and deeply influenced - and rivaled - early Christianity (Augustine was a Manichaean hearer for nine years before his conversion); the Church treated it as a dangerous rival faith rather than an internal heresy, and the Roman state outlawed it by imperial edict.
Contested teaching
Mani founded Manichaeism, an independent dualist religion - not a Christian heresy condemned by a church council. The Roman state outlawed it by imperial edict, and Augustine (a Manichaean 'hearer' for nine years) later wrote against it.
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CtesiphonMesopotamia (Sasanian Persia)
What they did here
Mani was born near Ctesiphon in Babylonia and began proclaiming his dualist revelation across the Sasanian realm.
About Ctesiphon
Ctesiphon, on the east bank of the Tigris about 35 km southeast of modern Baghdad in Iraq, became the capital of the Parthian kings and then of the Sasanian Persian Empire. With its neighbouring cities it formed the metropolis that Arabic sources call al-Mada'in, home to Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians; the patriarch of the Church of the East had his seat there. The prophet Mani, founder of Manichaeism, was born in or near the city around 216. Muslim forces took it in 637, and it declined after the founding of Baghdad. Its great arch, the Taq Kasra, still stands, and the companion of the Prophet Muhammad Salman al-Farisi is traditionally buried at al-Mada'in, where a shrine marks his tomb.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Mani’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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