Imam Mahdi

The Sunnis view the Mahdi as the successor of Prophet Mohammad, the Mahdi is expected to arrive to rule the world and he is to reestablish uprightness, harmony, and correct religion.


The definite term mahdi, means “the rightly-guided one”. The Mahdi is not mentioned in the Qurʾān, but rather in Hadith. Some hypothesise he came about when the Arabian tribes were settling in Syria under Mo’awiya. “They anticipated ‘the Mahdi who will lead the rising people of the Yemen back to their country’ in order to restore the glory of their lost Himyarite kingdom. It was believed that he would eventually conquer Constantinople.”

The Kaysāniya extented two other notions that became thoroughly related with the belief in the Mahdi. The first was the notion of return of the dead, particularly of the Imams. The second was the indication of occultation. “When Moḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiya died in 700, the Kaysāniya maintained that he was in occultation in the Raẓwā mountains west of Medina, and would one day return as the Mahdi and the Qāʾem.”

The appearance of the Prophet was also proposed unto the Mahdi. “An enormously influential tradition attributed to ʿAbd-Allāh b. Masʿud has Moḥammad predict the coming of a Mahdi coined in his own image: ‘His name will be my name, and his father’s name my father’s name’” 

Mahdism in Twelver Shi'ism

Mahdism is more prevalent in the Shiism. The Twelver Shiʿites believe him to be the Twelfth Imam who is in occultat until he returns at the end of time. Mahdism in Twelver Shiʿism innate many of its essentials from previous sacred trends. According to the customary date most often taken, Imam Ḥasan ʿAskari, the eleventh Imam, died in 874. His death, like that of preceding Imams, gave rise to an age of commotion among the faithful, but this phase the calamity appeared even more solemn and the Imamis did not themselves waver to plea the eras that were to trail “the period of perplexity” or “confusion”.

The cryptic destiny of the assumed son of the eleventh Imam led to numerous rifts with prominent doctrinal adjustments. Some groups claimed that his son died at a very early age, others that he had survived until a certain age and then died, and still others solely denied his very reality, considering that Ḥasan ʿAskari never had a son. Only a small minority sustained the notion that the son of the eleventh imam was alive, that he was in “occultation”, and that he was to recur as mahdi at the end of time. This idea was progressively accepted by all Imamis, who accordingly became known as “Twelvers”. Sources from this era replicate, in their specific method, the hesitation and crisis believers experienced. A close study of these sources definitely seems to display that thoughtful hesitations and serious gaps occurred concerning a significant number of vital doctrinal fundamentals that became articles of faith.

There are many theories to about the twelve Imam. There are sources that attribute two dissimilar formations of the occultation to Mahdi. According to the first, mentioned by Ebn Bābuya, the Hidden Imam “exists in the world by his spiritual substance thanks to a subsisting essence”

According to another theory stated by Ebn Nadim, Abu Sahl is said to have kept that the twelfth Imam died, but covertly left behind a son as a descendant to him; the heredity of Imams would therefore be preserved in occultation from father to son until the last Imam reveals himself publicly as the Mahdi. Ultimately, none of the theories were continued, but here one distinguishes uncertain struggles to justify the notion of occultation. Everything of this inclines to show that through this stage of development, the Imami community experienced what one might deliberate an attentive identity predicament.