page_title: Arzhang
section_title: Influence and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Arzhang / Influence and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Painter Mani presenting king Bahram-Gur with his drawing. 16th century painting of Shakrukhia (Tashkent)
context_page_description: The Arzhang, also known as the Book of Pictures, was one of the holy books of Manichaeism. It was written and illustrated by its prophet, Mani, in Syriac, with later reproductions written in Sogdian. It was unique as a sacred text in that it contained numerous pictures designed to portray Manichaean cosmogony, which were regarded as integral to the text.
  The original Arzhang illustrated by Mani has been lost and its exact content is unknown. However, it is known that its illustrations were of appreciable quality, and copies were preserved in the Middle East as late as 1092 AD, when it is recorded that the library of Ghazni held a copy. Since the discovery of Manichaean artwork during the German Turfan expeditions, scholars began piecing together the style of the Arzhang and reassessed the influence of Manichaean art in general.
context_section_description: Following the discovery of Manichaean paintings in Turfan, art historian Thomas W. Arnold suggested that the Manichaean tradition of illustrative bookmaking was the source of Persian miniature painting style during the time of the Safavid Empire; Arnold stated: “The only other religious art that could have produced these pictures was the Manichaean, the Eastern Character of the types of face and figure, and the similarity in technical details to the Manichaean paintings that have survived in Central Asia, suggest that this is the source to which these strange pictures must be traced back.” Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād, the most famous of the Persian miniature painters, was praised by the contemporaneous Afghan historian Albdulkarim Khondamir, who wrote; “[Behzād’s] Mani-like brushwork overwhelmed all other painters.” From her studies of the fragments,  Zsuzsanna Gulácsi concluded that a set of the artwork come from an authentically Manichaean book of pictures, harboring elements (such as the iconography, brush style, and use of colors) that originated in Mani’s original Arzhang and were turned into the traditional painting style of future generations of Manichaeans. Additionally, the Turfan fragments possess a primarily Persian appearance, specifically similar to the art that has survived from the  Sassanid era (during which Mani lived), with such identifiable elements as the quality of the lines, the simplicity of the faces, and the exuberant amount of detail in the folds of the garments. These similarities link the Turfan fragments to what is known of art in the Greater Iran area before the arrival of Islam.
  The Buddhist practice known as e-toki (絵解(き), meaning "picture deciphering, picture explaining”) was used by the Japanese Pure Land Buddhists as a method of teaching, beginning in China as early as 931 AD. Etoki performances typically filled halls with vertical scrolls that illustrated the story of the Buddha and various Buddhist principles. Like Buddhism itself, this practice spread into Japan from China. The scrolls also often illustrated the life of Prince Shōtoku, who is credited as the founder of Japanese Buddhism. During the Yuan dynasty and the Ming dynasty (during which the Hongwu Emperor banned Manichaeism in 1370), the Monijiao Manichaeans in southern China became close to the Pure Land Mahayana Buddhists, synthesizing the tradition of didcatic illustration that began with the Arzhang with the formal attributes of the hanging scrolls used in e-toki, while also syncretizing Buddhist and Manichaean beliefs.
  An Islamic account of Mani’s life described the prophet as a painter who founded a sectarian movement against the Zoroastrian state religion of Sassanid Persia under Shapur I. Prompted by threats, Mani fled to Turkestan, where he gained followers and painted a few temples (incidentally, a few paintings in Bamyan are attributed to Mani). Mani then spent a year in the solitude of a cave after telling his followers that he was going to heaven. After the year, Mani returned with the Arzhang, which he said he had brought down from heaven. After the death of Shapur, he and a large procession of followers returned to Persia. According to this account, the new king Bahram I received and favored Mani, but he was later flayed alive for his heresies. In a 16th-century painting by Ali-Shir Nava'i from modern-day Uzbekistan, Mani is shown at the throne Bahram as the king inspects one of the prophet’s illustrations.
  In Islamic tradition (excluding Ibn al-Nadim’s account of Mani’s life) Mani is referred to as "Mani the Painter", almost always replacing the topos of "Founder of a Religion". In addition, Arzhang is the name of the daeva (demon) in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh who takes Kay Kāvus to Mazanderan, and whom Rostam defeats in his sixth trial. The word "arzhang" meaning "worthy" in Middle Persian is likely the reason for the shared names, although it is coincidental (if Thomas W. Arnold's theory on the Manichaean origin of Persian miniature painting is correct) that the character of Arzhang first would've been illustrated in th
caption: Mani presenting an illustration to King Bahram I in a painting by Ali-Shir Nava'i, c. 16th century
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