state, a suspension of presence in the world rather than
an absence, and it has lasted more than a thousand years
so far. The Mahdi will reveal himself again only on the
Day of Judgment, when he will return to herald a new
era of peace, justice, and victory over evil.
The day and month of his return are known: the tenth
of Muharram, the very day on which Hussein was killed
at Karbala. But the year remains unknown. And
precisely because it is unknown, it is always imminent,
and never more so than in times of turmoil.
One much-quoted eleventh-century treatise lists the
signs and portents leading up to the Mahdi’s return,
many of them familiar from Christian apocalyptic
visions. Nature behaves in strange and ominous ways:
lunar and solar eclipses within the same month, the sun
rising in the west and then standing still, a star in the
east as bright as the full moon, a black wind,
earthquakes, locusts. But the chaos and disorder of
nature are merely mirrors of chaos and disorder in
human affairs.
The power of the nonbelievers will spread. Fire will
drop from the sky and consume Kufa and Baghdad. False
mahdis will rise up and wage bloody battles against one
another. Muslims will take arms to throw oʃ the reins of
foreign occupation and regain control of their land.
There will be a great conflict in which the whole of Syria
will be destroyed.