A tree of life heavily laden with fruit, with three intertwined trunks, dominates this large painting from cave 38 at Bezeklik, which stands 5 feet (1.5 m) high, 8 feet (2.4 m) wide, making it one of the world’s largest surviving Manichaean artworks. The Uighur-language prayers at the base of the tree give the name of the donor, who requests the protection of guardian deities. The female donor wears an unusual bird headdress and kneels at the right of the tree; two guardian deities stand behind her, and three others kneel next to her. The opposite side of the painting shows her husband, partially effaced, wearing a similar headdress. This copy was made in 1931, when the mural was already severely damaged.
Like most Christians in Central Asia, the Christians at Turfan belonged to the Church of the East, which was based in Mesopotamia, and the liturgical language was Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. The teachings of the Church of the East held that Christ had two natures—divine and human—and, furthermore, that Mary was the mother of the human Jesus but not the divine Christ. Their opponents sometimes called them Nestorians in an effort to associate them with Nestorius (ca. 381–ca.
451), a Syrian patriarch in Constantinople from 428 to 431, who had been expelled
from the church, but members of the church do not refer to themselves as such.92 After the kaghan’s conversion, Manichaeism was the official religion of the Uighur Kaghanate. One charter, 125 lines long, specifies how a Manichaean monastery should be run, and most likely dates to the ninth century. It is not clear whether the Uighur government of Turfan or the monastery’s own leaders issued the document, which charges different monastic officials with supervising fields, vineyards, and the monastery storehouse. Some of the titles, like “elect,” are unique to Manichaeism, but the monastery’s structure closely resembled that of Buddhist monasteries. Dependent workers tilled the fields and supplied the monastery’s residents with grain and clothing. The clergy conducted feasts and were responsible for the spiritual lives of the congregation, whose main obligation was to supply them with vegetarian food that they would eat and so increase the amount of light in their bodies.93
Albert von Le Coq, the German excavator who was so active at Kucha, found some of the most interesting documents about Manichaeism in two buried monastic libraries dating to the period of Uighur rule. Texts of many Manichaean hymns survive: some in the liturgical language of Parthian, which Mani spoke, some in Uighur, the local language of Turfan by the year 1000. These hymns often celebrate the victory of the forces of light over the forces of darkness:
All beings of Light, the righteous [elect] and the auditors, who have endured much suffering, will rejoice with the Father.…
For they have fought together with Him, and they have overcome and vanquished that Dark One who had boasted in vain.94
Hymns like this have permitted scholars to reconstruct the major tenets of Manichaeism, which would otherwise be unknown, since so few Manichaean texts exist anywhere in the world.
Some of the texts Le Coq found were beautifully illustrated but so severely damaged by water that all the pages stuck together and could not be separated. One such fragment survives in the Museum of Indian Art in Berlin, which holds all the material brought back by the four German expeditions that survived the bombing during World War II. This miniature depicts the Bema festival, the most important holiday of the Manichaean year, in which the clergy, or elect, sang hymns, read aloud Mani’s teachings, and ate a meal, shown in color plate 11A.95
Although Manichaeism was the official state religion of the Uighur Kaghanate, little Manichaean art survives onsite at Turfan. Only one cave painting at Bezeklik, all scholars concur, is definitely Manichaean.96 The mural has suffered great damage since 1931 when the copy shown on page 109 was made, and those
managing the site rarely show it to visitors.
Why does so little Manichaean art survive at Turfan and the surrounding cave sites? Sometime around the year 1000 the rulers of the Uighur Kaghanate chose to patronize Buddhism and not Manichaeism.97 Several surviving caves in Turfan, including cave 38 at Bezeklik, bear witness to this shift: close examination of the cave walls shows that the caves had two layers, often a Manichaean layer (not always visible) lies beneath a Buddhist layer. The Uighur court’s decision to support Buddhism apparently ushered in a new era in which only one religion was tolerated.
In 1209 the Mongols defeated the Uighur Kaghanate of Turfan but left the Uighur kings in place. In 1275 the Uighurs sided with Khubilai Khan. When defeated by one of his rivals, the Uighur royal family fled and settled in Gansu in 1283.
Although peasant rebels overthrew the Mongol rulers of China and established the Ming dynasty in the fourteenth century, Turfan remained outside of the borders of China and under the rule of the united Mongols and, later, the Chaghatai branch of the Mongols. In 1383 Xidir (Xizir) Khoja (reigned 1389–99), himself a Muslim, conquered Turfan and forced the inhabitants to convert to Islam, the prevailing religion of the region today.98 The region remained independent of China until 1756, when the Qing dynasty armies invaded.99
The history of Turfan falls into three distinct periods: before the Tang conquest of 640, Tang rule (640–755), and after 803, when the Uighur Kaghanate was based in the oasis. In the periods both before and after Chinese rule, the economy was largely self-sufficient. Most of the documented movement along the overland routes was either by envoys or refugees. The high point of the Silk Road trade coincided with (because it was caused by) the presence of the Chinese troops. The Tang government injected vast amounts of both cloth and coin into the local economy, which resulted in high interest rates on loans even for poor farmers. But when the Chinese forces withdrew after 755 the local economy reverted to a subsistence basis. As coming chapters will show, much information about the spending patterns of the Tang government survives in other oases (particularly Dunhuang), but the overall pattern is clear. The Silk Road trade was largely the byproduct of Chinese government spending—not long-distance commerce conducted by private merchants, as is so often thought.