manichaeism

In a world without Islam (let's just say Muhammad dies a sickly infant or something along those lines), an assumption is that Christianity is a religion which does better without the Islamic Conquests with how the Middle East and North Africa were very much centers of Christianity prior to the...

Manichaeism was a founded in third century Iraq and was influenced by Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Gnostic Christianity. From the it had spread throughout the old world. The Manichean Prophet Mani was born to a sect of Gnostic Christians called the Elcesaites. This, however, makes me wonder what...

Say, for POD's sake, that Islam gets butterflied away, at least from beyond the Zagros. Sometime before or after the Islamic conquests (if they still happen in this timeline -- whether it does or not is not too relevant in this timeline for reasons that shall soon make itself clear), India sees...

The activites of Mani, founder of Manichaeism, were initially tolerated by the Sasanian authorities until the reign of Bahram I, during which he was imprisoned and was either executed or died beforehand. How plausible could it be for one of the early Sassanid shahs to not only tolerate...

Title. What if the ancient gnostic religion of Manichaeism survived past it's 13th-century extinction, and continued to be a prominent religion in Central Asia? How could this have happened? What would its effects be? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

Let's keep the point of divergence simple: imagine a world where Muhammad had simply never been born. In such a scenario, what religion is most likely to be the most significant competitor to Christianity in terms of number of followers by the year 2021? Said religion does not have to garner...

Hello folks, it's me again. After having written a non-islamic timeline (Dunes of the Desert) halfway till the modern day I am speculating the launch of another collaborative timeline, this time regarding one of the world religions that failed to make it: Manicheism. However, writing a...

My understanding is that Manichaeism lasted as a significant force much longer in China than it did in western Eurasia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Manichaeism So... with a point of divergence after the seventh century (so, after Christianity and Islam have become significant...

There is a currently-active thread asking a similar question about Islam, but I felt as though the topic could be broadened. To quote my post from that thread... Now, in hindsight, perhaps Tengrism was not a great example in this context, but my other points still stand. How come some...

Even as Manichaeism suffered persecution elsewhere in the world, it found a safe haven in China. So the religion managed to survive - even thrive - in China. To this day, China has the one of the populations of Manichaeans, though Manichaeism was never a majority religion. However, this was by...

After Sogdia was conquered by the Muslims, numerous Sogdian refugees came to the Uyghur Khaganate. There, they converted the Uyghur nobility to Manichaeism, and Manichaeism became the Khaganate's state religion. What if the Uyghurs had stayed Manichaean?

With a POD after the foundation of Manichaeism by Mani, come up with a scenario where Manichaeism is the world's largest religion with over a quarter of the world's population following it while Christianity is an extinct religion which is more or less a footnote in the history books even with...

Considering how far Manichaeism reached IOTL, with adherents living in places as far apart as Roman Gaul and China, I was wondering how Manichaeism could possibly reach Japan and how it would then develop on the islands. A few specific questions: If Manichaeism reaches Japan, how influential...

Back when I researching religions, I read about Manichaeism, a rather fascinating religious movement that combined eastern and western ways of thinking along with it being a gnostic tradition, which is rarely seen in the mainstream West. However, what really grabbed my attention was that it was...

As we all know, the Uighurs formed a large empire in the 8th and 9th centuries which at it's height, reached from Silla (OOC: TTL's term for Korea) in the east to the shores of the Mediterranean in the west, controlling most of Zhongguo, Transoxiana, Persia, Bactria, Mesopotamia, and Syria at...

Today there are only four religions whose faithful exceed 1% of the world's population: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism(and arguably a fifth, if we include the nebulously defined Chinese religious/philosophical traditions). And of those four/five, Christianity and Islam have a...