Manti is a type of dumpling mainly found in Uyghur cuisine, Armenian cuisine and Central Asian cuisine but also in West Asia, South Caucasus, and the Balkans. Manti is also popular among Turkish cuisine, and it is consumed throughout post-Soviet countries, where the dish spread from the Central Asian republics. The dumplings typically consist of a spiced meat mixture, usually lamb or ground beef, wrapped in a thin dough sheet which is then boiled or steamed. The size and shape of manti vary significantly depending on geographic location.

Manti resemble the Chinese jiaozi and baozi, Uyghur manta, Korean mandu, Mongolian buuz and the Tibetan momo. The dish's name is cognate with Chinese mantou, Korean mandu, and Japanese manjū, though the modern Chinese and Japanese counterparts mostly refer to different dishes.

The name, depending on the language, can refer to a single dumpling or to more than one dumpling at a time; in English, it is often used as both a singular and plural form.

The Chinese word mantou has been suggested as the origin for the word manti. The term mantou (饅頭) appears in early records of the Jin dynasty (266CE–420CE) Different Chinese synonyms such as manshou (饅首)" and zhengbing (蒸餅) were also already in use, where both tou and shou mean head in Chinese. Originally, mantou was meat-filled. Mantou still retains its old meaning of stuffed bun in Wu Chinese as moedeu. But in Mandarin and many other varieties of Chinese, mantou refers to plain steamed buns, while baozi resemble the ancient mantou stuffed with meat.

Some of the earliest mentions of dishes resembling Turkic manti date to the Mongol Empire. One such mention of manta is found in the 1330 manuscript Yinshan Zhengyao by Hu Sihui, a Chinese court therapist in service of the Yuan Dynasty Emperor, Buyantu Khan. Some variations may be traced back to the Uyghur people of northwest China.

In general, there is agreement that the recipe was carried across Central Asia along the Silk Road to Anatolia by Turkic and Mongol peoples. According to Holly Chase, "Turkic and Mongol horsemen on the move are supposed to have carried frozen or dried manti, which could be quickly boiled over a camp-fire". Migrating Turkic-speaking peoples brought the dumpling with them to Anatolia, where it evolved into the Turkish mantı. Korean mandu is said to have arrived in Korea through the Mongols in the 14th century.

However, some researchers do not discount the possibility that manti may have originated in the Middle East and spread eastward to China and Korea through the Silk Road.

The earliest written Ottoman mantı recipe appears in a 15th-century cookbook written by Muhammed bin Mahmud Shirvani. The version in Shirvani's book is a steamed dumpling with a minced lamb and crushed chickpeas filling spiced with cinnamon and flavored with vinegar. The dish was garnished with sumac and like most contemporary mantı variations, it was served with a garlic-yoghurt sauce.