72 chapter one
mission and its members began to establish their rules: to eat fruit
and drink water and kumis. However, due to abuses and mainly those
related to trade, the preachers were expelled from the capital in 817 A.D.
In order to gain the heart of the Uighurs and to overcome the nega-
tive attitude towards the foreign, the Manichaean preachers developed
a very clever approach. Th ey intentionally bound their religious con-
cepts, symbols and even terminology with the Turkic ones. Some of
the ideas of the Manichaeism, for example, having a direct relation
to the light, were assimilated to the ancient Moon and Sun worship
of the Turks. Besides, the Manichaeans ‘attached’ the Turkic word
‘bilig’ (“knowledge”, meaning also “wisdom”, a term associated by the
nomads with the person of the ruler in general) to the fi ve main vir-
tues (e.g. love-wisdom, faith-wisdom, patience-wisdom, etc.). Yet they
used, as already noted, the Turkic word ‘qut’ for “soul”.
Such fl exibility in promoting some of the so-called world religions
in steppe Eurasia was typical for the Nestorians too. Both Manichaean
and Nestorian preachers avoided the extremes in the sphere of faith
and for that reason both religions won many followers in Central Asia
in the early medieval period. Th e religious systems are much more
successful and eff ective when adjusted to the philosophy of the ‘tar-
get group’ thus creating the feeling that the ‘new’ message is just an
“improvement” of the old beliefs and that it can fi t perfectly the tradi-
tional concepts of the people.^219
However, it was not only the opposition to China that mattered in
Central Asia but also the rivalries with other steppe rulers, the Karluks
in particular. Th ey inherited the leading position in the Western kha-
ganate aft er the Turks’ collapse. Th ere was also another rivalry—with
the Qïrghïz people who supported Christianity as did the Karluks.
Th e opposite ‘pole’ in these complicated schemes of opposition in
Central Asia, during the eighth and the ninth centuries, was held by the
Tibetans who followed Buddhism. Th e commercial factor also played
an important role in the choice of religion as was the case with the
Khazars. It was in fact the Uighur appeal to the Sogdian Manichaean
diaspora and the Khazar one—to the Jewish.^220 Th e actual signifi cance
of Manichaeism for the common people in the Uighur khaganate is
(^219) Foltz 1999, 75, 81, 83.
(^220) Khazanov 1994, 20. Foltz 1999, 78, argues that it was again the Sogdian people
who started disseminating Manichaeism. Th e Sogdians fi rst translated into the Sog-