For Muslims two authoritative poles of religious reference exist: the Qur'an, and the Sunnah plus the Hadith (Arabic plural Ahadith). The Sunnah is the customary practice of the Islamic community as derived from the actions and words of the prophet Muhammad (d. 632 cE/10 AH). Hadiths are narrative accounts of the these same actions and pronouncements, rather like "hearsay" records of what Muhammad did and said." Hadiths are not the word of God in the sense that the Qur'an is, but they are of only slightly lesser importance. They were almost certainly orally transmitted for some time before being redacted in the first few centuries of Islamic history. A specialized field of hadith criticism and analysis developed as a means of sorting the wheat of legitimate traditions-that is, ones that ostensibly truly went back to Muhammad-from the chaff of forgeries.

Two aspects of individual hadiths became the focus of scholarly criticism within the early Islamic world: the matn (plural mutun or mitan), or "text," and the isnad (plural sanad), or "chain of transmission." A matn might well be rejected on the grounds that it seemed to contradict the Qur'an. But the focus of hadith criticism was channeled into investigating the isnads rather than the matns. The number, credibility, and seamless­ness of the transmitters became more important than what the tradition actually said. And so as long as a hadith text did not actually contradict the Qur'an, it had a shot at being accepted by at least some segment of the early Islamic community, especially if what it said proved useful in some manner, usually political. Hadiths were ranked into three categories based on the trustworthiness of their chains of transmission going back to the Prophet: sahih, "sound"; hasan, "good"; and da'if, or "weak." This categorization was largely worked out by Muhammad b. Idris al-Shafï i (d. 820 cE), who had been disturbed by the proliferation of questionable, even down­right false, traditions in his time and developed the gauge of isnad legiti­macy as a means of differentiating spurious hadith from acceptable ones. If a consensus of scholars agreed a particular hadith was acceptable, then it was deemed so for the entire Islamic world. By the end of the ninth century cE two major compilations of Islamic traditions existed. One had been assembled by Ismà it al-Bukhari (d. 870 CE and the other by Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875), and these two earliest collections are to this day considered the most authoritiative ones.

The first major empire conquered by the Arab Muslims, in the seventh century CE, was that of Sasanian Persia (centered on modern Iran). The Persians at that time adhered to the teachings of Zartusht, or "Zoroaster," a Persian prophet who lived probably in the first millennium BCE and created a religion that was, for all practical purposes, dualistic. Zoroastrians believed in two gods: a good one, Ahura-Mazda, and a bad one, Ahriman. Their religion sported a number of characteristics that arguably influenced Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam: a distinct heaven and hell, angels and demons, and judgment. In particular, Zoroastrian eschatology posits a cyclical cosmic history of 3,000-year dispensations and the appearance of a messianic or saviour figure, a saoshyant, at the end of time. What is particularly interesting about Zoroastrianism in this regard is that the messianic figures, Usedar and Pisyotan, come in tandems. One ushers in the other's millennial reign.

By virtue of its conquest of Sasanian Persia, the developing religion of the Muslims came into contact with two major eschatological ideas that very likely later manifested themselves within Islam: the hidden-yet-returning deliverer, which would predominate in Shï ism's ideas of the occulted Imams; and the division of labor between the deliverer and his precursor or helper, an eschatological paradigm in both Shï i and Sunni Islam that is reflected in the respective End Time tasks apportioned to the Mahdi and Jesus.

Even so, Zoroastrian antecedents are not sufficient to explain Mahdism. Judaism and Christianity also influenced Islam. Throughout most of Jewish history any prophet, priest, or ruler could be anointed as a sign of God's favor and thus wear the mantle of mashiakh. Eventually, however, the term came to be applied specifically to David, second ruler (after Saul) of the united kingdom of Israel from about 1000 to 961 BCE, and his descendants, including the predicted future Messiah. This Messiah would be an individual historical figure who would restore not only the good fortune but also the political autonomy of the Jewish people.

Over the centuries, as various factions have developed within Judaism, different views of the future Messiah have also evolved, a process similar to that undergone later by Muslims regarding the Mahdi. Orthodox Jews still look to the future for the Messiah; indeed, some within this fold of Judaism think the state of Israel has advanced the time of the messianic advent. In this they ironically share a viewpoint with conservative and fundamentalist Christian denominations that think the reestablishment of the Jewish homeland in 1948 presages the return of Jesus.

Others in the Orthodox Jewish community have always considered Zionism and even modern Israel itself illegitimate in that the Messiah was not involved in the movement to reestablish a Jewish homeland. The American Conservative and Reform Jewish movements, in contrast, downplay the actual historical manifestation of the Messiah. They do this either by dispensing with him as a historical figure altogether, substituting instead a mood of universal ethical regeneration, or by calling for what is in effect a demessianization of Judaism. In the final analysis, however, the fact remains that historically, and certainly in pre-Islamic times, the Jewish idea of a messiah has been important and a crucial influence on its two monotheistic children, Christianity and Islam.

The early church transformed the idea of Jesus as  also a  political-spiritual leader who would throw off the occupier's yoke for the Jewish people to that of a crucified and resurrected spiritual savior for all humanity, the Christ. Christians also believe that 40 days postresurrection Jesus ascended to heaven, whence he will return eventually. Christian interpretations of this Second Coming and its ultimate ramifications fall into three broad categories, commonly called amillennial, premillennial, and postmillennial. All three views reference the 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth predicated in Revelation  Amillennialists hold that there will not be a literal, historical millennial rule by the returned Jesus. Premillennialists maintain that Christ will return before this utopian millennium begins, and that after it is over will come the other eschatological events.

Postmillennialists believe that human societies will grow progressively better and better by following Christianity and that at some point a utopian millennium will commence, at the end of which Christ will return. Different Christian denominations tend to fall into one or another of these categories: Lutherans are officially amillennial, for example; whereas Baptists, especially Southern ones, are predominantly premillennial, as seemingly are the writers of the Left Behind bestsellers. And although almost all Christian denominations agree that Jesus will return someday, as avowed in the Apostle's, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, they do differ on several points: whether Christ's return will accompanied by a "Rapture," or taking up of all Christians bodily to heaven;" and perhaps more important, when this return will occur and what will be the world political, social, and economic situation that will precede it. For despite Jesus' own admonitions that not even he knew when that time would come, Christians have throughout history, especially whenever a new millennium dawns, exerted great efforts to predict his Second Coming.

Mahdism shares some characteristics with Jewish and Christian messianism, but there are also significant points of departure. Unlike Jewish and Christian messianic figures, the Islamic one cannot be found in the religion's holy scriptures: the Qur'an says nothing of the Mahdi, whereas the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament" both mention their respective Messiahs (the latter, of course, numerous times). The Mahdi, as we shall see, appears in traditions attributed to the prophet Muhammad.

Mahdism is akin to Jewish messianism in that both the Mahdi and the still-to-come Jewish Messiah are primarily political-military leaders whose tasks will be accomplished within the framework of human history. Jesus, in contrast, is in his returned state the second person of the Godhead and operates largely outside the space-time continuum. Mahdism also shares with Jewish messianism a belief that one of the major emphases of the Mahdi or Messiah will be collective socioeconomic justice, rather than salvation of individual souls as in the Christian formulation. It is true that Islam is the only world religion besides Christianity that officially and canonically includes Jesus- as a great prophet,-and fully expects his return, albeit as a Muslim. Nonetheless, the actual messianic figure in Islam, the Mahdi, has more in common with Jewish ideas of the Messiah than with Christian ones. And just as a significant number of Christians comb the Bible and the front pages of the newspapers attempting to ascertain if Jesus return is nigh, a growing number of Muslims, including Sunnis, have begun a similar effort vis-à-vis the Mahdi by trying to read the Qur'an and the relevant traditions in light of early-twenty-first-century events.

Unlike Jewish and Christian messianic figures, the Islamic one cannot be found in the religion's holy scriptures: the Qur'an says nothing of the Mahdi, whereas the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament both mention their respective Messiahs.But elucidating the Mahdi  however demands also  some discussion about the Dajjal  the End Time plus also, Jesus.

For centuries Muslim eschatological commentators have divided the signs and figures of the approaching end into two categories: major and minor. In general, the minor signs are types that prefigure or point to the End Time; the major ones will be proof that the end of history itself is drawing nigh. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the minor signs are tantamount to "the end of the beginning," whereas the major signs truly mark "the beginning of The End." The appearances of the Mahdi, Jesus, and the Dajjal are three signs always deemed major; but others often mentioned in this same category are the sun rising in the West, Yajuj and Majuj, the Dabbah, and the consuming fire from Yemen. Infrequently the Mahdi is posited as neither major nor minor, but the crucial transformative link between the two categories.

The minor signs include, but are not limited to, earthquakes, increased sexual immorality, strife within the Muslim community, great disparities in wealth, and the conquest of "Constantinople" (Istanbul since 1453) and Rome by Muslim armies. Some Mahdist apologists further break down the most important minor signs into dozens of more spécfic ones, a process that seems to involve a not inconsiderable degree of speculation and sensationalism. Some of these signs may have already transpired; others are yet to happen . But all of them are merely a warmup, as it were, for the main event: the appearance on the world historical stage of the likes of the Mahdi, Jesus, the Dajjal, and the Sufyani.

Whether the Mahdi is typified as a major or minor sign, he usually comes first in the eschatological chronology spelled out in the expressive literature of the Mahdist writers. All such writers agree in general with the traditional description of the Mahdi and his role in history: that he will resemble Muhammad in name and appearance; that he will be of the Prophet's family; that he and Jesus will eventually, somehow, cooperate against the forces of evil; that his primary task during his limited tenure on earth will be to fill the world with justice and equity, eliminating injus­tice and disparities of wealth and power. The modern Mahdist apologists do depart' from these common bases to imbue their virtual Mahdi with their own preferred characteristics, however.

In terms of lineage and background, the Mahdi's family origins are said to be traceable simply to Fatimah or to Fatimah through Hasan. One might see such statements as evidence of the convergence of Sunni and Shï i Mahdist views, except that other Mahdist loyalists take pains to point out that although descended from Fatimah, the Mahdi will be a rightly guided caliph and imam who is not Shï iIt is also sometimes asserted that that Mahdi must be specifically an Arab leader who eventually takes the reins of the entire Muslim world and then the entire planet. He must be al-manzalah al-samiyah, "of Semitic status," and so any non-Arab Muslim leader is ipso facto wrong when trying to claim such a status-as did, allegedly, the Ottoman Turkish sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861-1876) on advise from ‘Al Afghani’ following the Sudanese Mahdi’s death.

The Mahdi's role is also fine-tuned by his modern devotees, fleshed out beyond the rather vague one as restorer of global justice and equity. On the psychological level, once he comes forth the Mahdi will move beyond his current status as abstract symbol of hope to Mulsims into that of an inspirational leader, filling believers' hearts with magnanimity and liberating them from the grip of evil and its handmaiden anxiety, both individ­ual and collective. Further, the Mahdi will reify such psychic yearnings in a number of ways. In what amounts to a rather gender-conflating metaphor, the Mahdi will, it is said, function as the "mid-wife" for the new, more just Islamic world order that is even now beginning its birth pains. He will formulate a beneficial ideology that, when realized, will allow for the establishment of a divinely based program,77 one that will elevate Muslims, religiously and politically, worldwide.This divine agenda not only will restore Islam to its rightful place as the world's largest religion and master of the world but also will engender the cre­ation of a planetary Islamic polity, called by some Mahdist literature the dawlah Islamiyah (the Islamic state) or alternatively the dawlah Allah (the state of God)." Whatever it is called, the operative and overriding religiopolitical principle will be true Qur'an-based laws and governance, replacing the extant dawlat al-batil, "illegitimate state," a term that could refer to the current world political system, modern Middle Eastern and Islamic regimes, or perhaps even the State of Israel.

As with the Mahdi, there is a basic corpus of beliefs concerning Jesus upon which all Mahdist writers agree. He will descend to earth; repudiate Christianity and vindicate Islam by destroying all the world's crosses, killing all the world's swine, and reciting the Muslim profession of faith; cooperate with the Mahdi to overcome the forces of evil, in particular the Dajjal; and finally, die a natural death and be buried next to the prophet Muhammad.As with their elaboration of the Mahdi over and above the bare bones information contained in hadiths, however, Mahdists today add their own spin on the return and role of Jesus. His descent, for example, is predicted as being upon the minaret of the white mosque near Damascus International Airport.

When will this happen? Most Mahdist writers think the event will occur prior to the Mahdi s emergence, probably after "the Jews" have rebuilt their Temple on the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque 94 which by then will likely have been destroyed in a nuclear Harmigiddun, or "Armageddon." (No repentant word yet from the Mahdist writer who claimed Jesus would return in autumn 2001.) Others say that Jesus will not return until after the Mahdi has established his global state.

What will be the nature of the relationship between Jesus and the Mahdi? One school of interpretation holds that Jesus will be the senior partner and the Mahdi his loyal lieutenant as wazir muqarrab, or "intimate advisor"; furthermore, this view maintains that Jesus will be the more powerful because he alone will kill the Dajjal, possibly in Lydda (or Lod), not in Jerusalem. Another Mahdist apologist perspective is that, to the contrary, the Mahdi will outrank Jesus because the latter will need the former's help to kill the Dajjal. When they pray together afterward, Jesus will prostrate himself in the mosque behind the Mahdi.1°' A more ecumenical view is that the Mahdi and Jesus will be coarchitects and corulers of the "godly state," which will represent the "kingdom of God" on earth, the malakut Allah-a phrase that appears four times in the Qur'an-and can be seen as the same "kingdom of God" of which Jesus spoke in the Gospels.Thus, the Mahdist Muslim state will be the same one for which Christians are yearning and will allow the two historically opposed religious communities to live together peacefully at long last, although this irenic view flies in the face of most Muslim eschatological exegesis, which seems to mandate conversion to Islam of all in the com­ing Mahdist state, including or perhaps especially Christians.

The traditional conventional wisdom regarding Muslim disdain for the Bible--that it ‘ never becomes of relevance to the legal issues within the Islamic community, nor generally, for any theological judgements" is not  accurate, at least insofar as Madhist apologetics is concerned. No longer do Muslims, at least of the Mahdist variety, merely reiterate hadiths; in the past few decades, shaping them'to fit a specfic geopolitical context has become paramount. Furthermore, not long after 1967 we begin to see, in the eschatological Islamic literature in general and in the Mahdist kind in particular, an interpretive stew in which classical Muslim apocalyptic, antisemitic [sic] conspiracy theories, and a great deal of Biblical material are included even, by adding American evangelical glosses on the End Time passages in Daniel, the Gospels, and Revelation.

Mahdists also approvingly cite the warnings in the Book of Revelation about the great battle of Armageddon, alongside Qur'an and Hadith, with the name either Arabicized to Harmagiddun or reentitled al-Malhamah al-Kubra, the great battle. Some Mahdist writers see this titanic clash as a nuclear war between two great alliances. Interestingly enough, considering the rancor today in the Muslim world directed at the West in general and the United States in particular, a number of Mahdist scenarios posit the Mahdi allied with the Christian West against a common "Eastern" enemy, at least in the intial stages of the global battle for supremacy  The Mahdi will join forces with the Europeans and Americans, or more likely just the Americans, against the Russians, Chinese, and probably Iranians, who will be led by the Dajjal.14 Later, once the Mahdi and his allies have tri­umphed, the West will betray him and attack his army, only to be defeated, thus leading to the Mahdi s global supremacy. The nuclear Armageddon will come either during the Mahdist and Western victory over "the East," or later in the aftermath of the American treachery.

The Mahdi s defenders also adduce a number of other references from that corrupted document, the Bible, to support their rather tortured exe­gesis: the Gog and Magog accounts; the parable of the workers in the vineyard (presumably because Muslims-the community of the final Prophet-are analogized to the last group of workers hired, who nonethe­less receive the same reward); the day of the Lord, described by St. Paul (which mentions the "Rapture," so excoriated by liberal Christians and the problematic nature of which for Islam seems to largely escape, or get ignored by, approving Mahdist writers); the Old Testament account of Jerusalem's besiegement and a concomitant great plague (equated with post-nuclear attack radiation poisoning); and the famous apocalyptic warnings of Jesus.

The pro-Mahdist literature not only utilizes the Christian and Jewish Scriptures but also positively cites a plethora of American Protestant leaders-or at least their eschatological musings. These leaders include the likes of Pat Robertson, founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, one-time presi­dential candidate in 1988, and leader of the Gospel Fundamentalists; Hal Lindsey, who began the modern Christian eschatological craze with his book The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970; Jerry Falwell, Baptist minister, president of Liberty University, and founder of the now-defunct Moral Majority; Jimmy Swaggart, the disgraced but now returned Pentecostal televangelist; and Billy Graham, the famous evangelist and counselor to U.S. presidents.

So, too, are former presidents Richard Nixon (d. 1994) and Ronald Reagan (d. 2004), both of whom are said by Mahdists to have expected Armageddon and Jesus' Second Coming in the very near future.  Finally, some Mahdist apologists reach far back into history for another Western Christian validator regarding the imminent End Time: Nostradamus (d. 1566). The famous French Catholic (who was not attempting to predict the future but rather masked the/his otherwise forbiddnen comments about developments in  his own time) is cited to the effect that "great terror from the sky will strike the Middle East around the year 1999."This may, of course, mirror the great interest in Nostradamus's apocalyptic predictions among Westerners prior to the turn of the recent millennium.

Besides classical Muslim eschatological traditions and borrowings from the Bible as refracted primarily through the aforementioned conservative and fundamentalist Protestant commentators, the modern Mahdist writer has an unfortunate tendency to incorporate anti-Semitic ideas into the End Time scenarios regarding the Mahdi s coming. Consider, for example, the reformulation of the "king of the south" mentioned in the book of Daniel, where he is an evil ruler and conqueror who will "desecrate the [Jewish] Temple" and "set up the abomination that causes desolation."Today's Mahdist literature refers to him as al-rajul al-Ashuri, "the Assyrian man," or mahdi al-Sahyuni, "the Zionist Mahdi," and sees him not as evil but as a garbled understanding of the coming Mahdi, wrongly portrayed as malevolent in the Jewish Scriptures because in the run-up to the End Time many Jews will follow the Dajjal, who will be opposed by the Mahdi.

However, just how this inverted, End Time understanding of the Mahdi is retrojected into a Jewish holy book written in the second century BCE (if not earlier) is never explained. This example nonetheless serves to illustrate that Mahdist writers are at least as prone to anti-Jewish conspiracy theorizing as their non-Mahdist brethren in the Muslim world.

The modern point of origin for such an Islamic worldview might well be traced to the writings of Mahmud Abu Rayya, a disciple of Rashid Rida, who around the time of World War II conflated the aforementioned Muslim trepidation about alleged Jewish attempts to undermine Islam in its early days with the modern state of Israel and its Zionist ideology.

Mahdist circles may not be official or establishment, but their denizens have drunk as deeply at this well as have the muftis of al-Azhar, and perhaps more so. Mahdist prognosticators interpret Hadith to mean that Jews will be among the largest contingent of the Dajjal's followers, with his vanguard consisting of perhaps 70,000 of them, from Isfahan (Iran). Also, theological criticism of Jews for not believing in Jesus' return, as do Christians and Muslims, can all too easily elide into the anti-Jewish stereotype so beloved of some Islamists. Jews in Iran, particularly, are seen as a nefarious force allied with Christians and Communists to undermine Islam-and this even after the establishment of the Islamic Republic there.Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Ottoman general who almost single-handedly created the modern state of Turkey, is portrayed in this literature as the main reason for the fall of the Ottoman caliphate.

He is said to have been dedicated to injuring Islam in this way by virtue of his allegedly being a Dönme, a descendant of those Jews who followed the seventeenthcentury Jewish leader Sabbatai Sevi from Jewish messianism into Islam.The Zionists are said to be helping undermine Islam not just by occupying Palestinian land but by aiding and abetting the Baha'i heresy, since the worldwide headquarters of Baha'ism is in Israel. In the Great Battle that finally decides humanity's political fate and brings the Mahdi to planetary power, his pious Muslim armies will triumph over those of the Americans, Turks, and Israelis.So, Judaism, through its political incarnation of Zionism, is seen as trying to hinder or oppose the Mahdi, with predictable results (or so the Mahdists hope).

The Dajjal whom so many Jews will allegedly follow will, say modern Madhists, come from "the East"-Iran, Russia, perhaps one of the former Soviet republics like Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan-or alternatively, from the Arabian Peninsula. He will escape or be freed from some form of angelic incarceration at the end of a time of great famine and drought and after either the conquest of "Constantinople"-modern Istanbul-or after Armageddon. The Dajjal will be the fountainhead of unbelief, error, and strife, performing miracles and eventually claiming divinity for himself. Besides Jews, his devotees will number devils, Christians, batinis ("esotericists," a term historically used to refer to Isma'ili Shï ites) and women. He will roam the earth for 40 days or 40 years but, despite his powers, be prohibited by God from entering four sanctuaries of the faithful: Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Mt. Sinai. Jesus, perhaps assisted by the Mahdi, will finally kill him.

It is in the view of the Dajjal that the anti-Shï i and anti-Iranian predilec­tions of some Sunni Mahdists come to the fore. One scenario, then, postulates that Iranian President Muhammad Khatami might very well be the Dajjal, since the Shï i clerical hierarchy of sayyid, hujatollah, and ayatollah can easily be adapted to a claim of divinity (one step above ayatollah, pre­sumably), which the Dajjal will make. In this scenario Khatami will reveal his Dajjalate at an Islamic conference in Tehran in the not-too distant future, after which he will lead the Shïa Iranians in a nuclear attack on Bahrain and the eastern Gulf emirates, commencing the End Time events.This would certainly seem to be, among other things, a good Sunni Mahdist argument supporting the U.S. nonproliferation stance toward the Islamic Republic.

The other, lesser eschatological figures are given much shorter shrift by Mahdist writers, no doubt because they are mere ancillaries to the big three of the Mahdi, Jesus, and the Dajjal. The Dabbah is acknowledged, and Mahdists largely follow the hadith accounts of it: emerging from somewhere in the Arabian desert the same day that the sun rises in the West, it will travel to Mecca and then proceed to roam the earth; and like the Dajjal, it will have k-f-r, the Arabic consonantal root for "unbeliever," inscribed on its forehead.

As for Yajuj and Majuj, there are a few more creative pro-Mahdist glosses applied than with the Dabbah. These groups are said, for example, to be post-Deluge descendents of Japheth, son of Noah. As time passed, the Japhethites somehow transmogrified into those hordes that Alexander the Great penned up, pending the Last Days. Modern Mahdist writers tend to identify these hordes as the modern Russians or Chinese that will, sometime after Jesus slays the Dajjal, stream forth across Eurasia until God, at Jesus' request, destroys them.

Finally, the Sufyani is warned about by some Mahdists in that he will take over the Middle East prior to the Mahdi's coming; he will probably come from Jordan. It is sometimes speculated that he will have lieutenants identified as al-Abga, "the speckled/spotted," and al-Ashab, "the reddish"; the former was supposed to have been Yassir Arafat (d. 2004) while the latter will be an as-yet undertermined Jordanian.

Finally, a book entitled "Al Mahdi, Jesus and Moshaikh [the Anti-Christ]," allegedly by the "late Grand Muhaddathi of Morocco, Shaykh Abdullah ben Sadek, Ph.D. (d. 1993), states that prophet Jesus rather than the Mahdi will "receive the caliphate," and it explicitly claims that Israel was reestablished by Allah in order to provide a base of operations for the Dajjal prior to his defeat.

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