Manichaeans were part of a dynamic and highly competitive religious environment in late antique West Asia. What remains of their once prolific religious literature presents shifting portraits of the movement’s founder that seek to appeal to a diversity of missionary audiences. At the same time, Manichaean preaching elicited an unprecedented amount of polemic by its mainstream Christian opponents, particularly in the Syriac-speaking world. These hostile rivals sought not only to discredit the legacy of Mani and his followers but also worked to re-invent it for their own apologetical purposes. This work examines the westward mission of Manichaeism through the lens of its hagiographic traditions and heresiological encounters, with the aim of uncovering a more nuanced understanding of both Manichaean and anti-Manichaean discourses.