This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Nearly five centuries after Bahram I ended Manichaeism's patronage in Persia, the Uyghur ruler accepted the faith as the official religion of his Central Asian empire in 762 CE, after meeting Manichaean priests during a military campaign into Tang China, a chance encounter on campaign that changed the faith's fortunes more than any deliberate missionary effort had managed in the centuries since Diocletian's edict.
It was the single greatest political success Manichaeism achieved anywhere in its history. A religion that had been hunted underground in both its Persian homeland and the Roman Empire it later reached now had an entire steppe empire as its patron, and Manichaean temples and clergy became a recognized part of Uyghur state life rather than a persecuted minority faith forced to disguise itself to survive.
The reversal was total rather than partial. Where Bahram I had executed the faith's own founder and Diocletian had ordered it annihilated across an entire empire, the Uyghur Khaganate now built its temples openly and gave its clergy standing at court, the same kind of protection Shapur I had once given Mani himself, five centuries earlier and half a continent away.
What the Uyghur Khaganate's adoption changed for Manichaeism's spread was standing an empire could confer that no earlier patron had matched. After Shapur I's three decades of protection and the centuries of Roman persecution that followed it, Manichaeism held state religion status in its own right, for the only time anywhere in its history, at the center of a major Central Asian power.