Mahdi

The Mahdi () is a messianic figure in Islamic apocalyptic literature. He is comparable to the Christian idea of the return of Jesus and the Mashiach ben David in Judaism. He is believed to appear at the End of Times to rid the world of evil and injustice. He is said to be a descendant of Muhammad and will appear shortly before Jesus.

The Mahdi is mentioned in several compilations of hadith, but absent from the Quran and the two most-revered Sunni hadith collections (''Sahih al-Bukhari'' and ''Sahih Muslim''). As such, he plays only a marginal role in Sunni Islam and some Sunni theologians have rejected the concept of the Mahdi altogether. However, the Mahdi plays a significant role among Twelver Shias, who believe that the Mahdi is Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, the twelfth Imam, son of the eleventh Imam Hasan al-Askari (), who is said to be in occultation () by divine will.

The idea of the Mahdi seems to have been popularized during unrest of the religious and political upheavals of the first and second centuries of Islam. Some of the first references to the Mahdi appear in the late 7th century, when the revolutionary Mukhtar al-Thaqafi declared Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, a son of Caliph Ali (), to be the Mahdi. Although the concept of a Mahdi is not an essential doctrine in Islam, it is popular among Muslims. Over centuries, there have been a vast number of Mahdi claimants, including Qasim Khuwabi, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and others. Provided by Wikipedia