Manichaeism’s expansion rested on a deliberate missionary vision, closely tied to the great arteries of trade and the shifting fortunes of empires. Mani organized a structured community with “apostles,” teachers, and a disciplined body of missionaries, who were sent out from Mesopotamia both east and west. These envoys translated scriptures into local languages and consciously adapted their message to the religious landscapes they encountered, presenting Mani’s teaching as a universal wisdom that could speak to Zoroastrians, Christians, Buddhists, and others. Urban centers and royal courts were natural targets, since influence there could radiate outward into wider society. In this way, the faith’s spread was not accidental but the fruit of a carefully cultivated sense of global religious vocation.

Within the Roman world, Manichaean teaching moved along Syriac-speaking Christian and merchant networks from Mesopotamia into Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and further to cities such as Alexandria, Carthage, and Rome. There it presented itself as a rational, universal “true philosophy,” offering a systematic dualistic explanation of evil and the cosmos that appealed to some educated seekers. Manichaean communities in the West adopted Christian language—speaking of Christ, apostles, and church—and interpreted Mani as the Paraclete promised by Jesus, which made the movement intelligible and attractive to certain Christians, as the experience of Augustine of Hippo illustrates. Yet imperial authorities, beginning with Diocletian, increasingly regarded the movement as both heretical and politically suspect, issuing edicts that confiscated books, exiled leaders, and sometimes imposed harsher penalties. As a result, Manichaeism survived in the Roman sphere largely in hidden or marginal communities, gradually eroded by sustained ecclesiastical and state pressure.

In the Sasanian realm, Mani initially enjoyed a measure of favor under Shapur I, which allowed the new religion to organize and spread within Persia. Manichaean texts were composed in Syriac and Middle Persian and then rendered into other regional tongues, easing their reception across the empire. However, as Zoroastrian clergy consolidated influence at court, they came to view the movement as a threat, and Mani eventually died in prison amid a broader wave of persecution. These pressures did not extinguish the faith so much as scatter it, pushing Manichaean communities toward borderlands and beyond direct Sasanian control. Thus, even hostility became an unintended vehicle for diffusion, dispersing adherents into new cultural and political settings.

Across Central Asia, Manichaeism followed the Silk Road, moving with caravans through Iran into Sogdiana and other oasis regions that linked West and East. Merchants and missionaries alike carried texts and liturgies that had been translated into Sogdian, Bactrian, Parthian, and later Turkic and Chinese, allowing the religion to take root among diverse peoples. In these lands, Manichaeism showed a marked capacity for religious dialogue, drawing on the imagery and concepts of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and local cults; surviving art and manuscripts from places such as Turfan reveal a striking fusion of Iranian, Central Asian, and Buddhist motifs. Sogdian merchant communities became especially important bearers of the faith, and in time certain Turkic elites also embraced it. The most notable example is the Uyghur Khaganate, where the ruler Bögü adopted Manichaeism as state religion, creating a network of monasteries and scriptoria that anchored the tradition in Central Asia and opened pathways into northern China, even as later political reversals and persecutions would diminish its public presence.