mahdī

mahdī, in Islamic eschatology, a messianic deliverer who will fill earth with justice and equity, restore true religion, and usher in a short golden age lasting seven, eight, or nine years before the end of the world. The Qurʾān does not mention him. Several canonical compilations of Hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) do include traditions concerning the mahdī, although such traditions are notably absent from the two most-revered compilations, those of al-Bukhārī and Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj. Many orthodox Sunni theologians accordingly question Mahdist beliefs, but such beliefs form a necessary part of Shīʿite doctrine.

The doctrine of the mahdī seems to have gained currency during the confusion and insecurity of the religious and political upheavals of early Islam (7th and 8th centuries). In 686, al-Mukhtār ibn Abī ʿUbayd al-Thaqafī, leader of a revolt of non-Arab Muslims in Iraq, seems to have first used the doctrine by maintaining his allegiance to a son of ʿAlī (Muhammad’s son-in-law and fourth caliph), Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah, even after al-Ḥanafiyyah’s death. Abū ʿUbayd taught that, as mahdī, al-Ḥanafiyyah remained alive in his tomb in a state of occultation (ghaybah) and would reappear to vanquish his enemies. In 750 the ʿAbbāsid revolution made use of eschatological prophecies current at the time that the mahdī would rise in Khorāsān in the east, carrying a black banner.

Belief in the mahdī has tended to receive new emphasis in every time of crisis. Thus, after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), when most of Spain was lost for Islam, Spanish Muslims circulated traditions ascribed to the Prophet foretelling a reconquest of Spain by the mahdī. During the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt, a person claiming to be the mahdī appeared briefly in Lower Egypt.

Because the mahdī is seen as a restorer of the political power and religious purity of Islam, the title has tended to be claimed by social revolutionaries in Islamic society. North Africa in particular has seen a number of self-styled mahdīs, the most important of whom were ʿUbayd Allāh, founder of the Fāṭimid dynasty (909); Muḥammad ibn Tūmart, founder of the Almohad movement in Morocco in the 12th century; and Muḥammad Aḥmad, the mahdī of the Sudan who, in 1881, revolted against the Egyptian administration.