lives, however, is debatable since the vast majority
of Muslim women in South Asia have rarely prayed
outside their homes. His son DùdùMiyàn (1819–
62) organized his father’s movement further by
sending out agents into the Bengali countryside,
where their protest frequently merged with resent-
ment against richer landowners who tended to be
Hindus, endowing it with an element of class con-
flict. All the same, these reformers laid special
emphasis on eradicating particular rituals, such as
forbidding drums and dancing girls at the mar-
riages of villagers’ daughters. Likewise, a short-
lived rebellion in Bengal in the early 1830s, led by
TìtùMìr, who may have been a disciple of Sayyid
A™mad Sha™ìd, targeted landowners who, to
restrain his activities, had imposed a tax on the
beards of his followers, a distinguishing mark
among Muslims and hence a very provocative
move. In the official court records that document
the trial of TìtùMìr’s followers in 1832–3, there is
no evidence of active involvement on the part of
women, though the imprisonment and exile of
male family members must undoubtedly have had
had a significant effect on their lives.
One further development that exhibited millena-
rian-style affinities in South Asia was the A™madì
movement, which emerged at the end of the nine-
teenth century. While it is generally accepted that it
arose as a protest against the success of Christian
proselytization, as well as in response to the per-
ceived decadence of prevailing Islamic mores,
its founder, MìrzàGhulàm A™mad (1839–1908)
claimed to have received a revelation at the start of
the fourteenth century A.H. authorizing him to
receive allegiance as the promised Messiah and
Imàm Mahdì, that is, the apocalyptic savior who
according to Muslim tradition will appear at the
Day of Judgment. His claims earned the persistent
enmity of the general Muslim community, which
branded him a heretic and labeled members of the
A™madìmovement as non-Muslims. However, the
involvement of middle-class urban supporters, who
formed the nucleus of the so-called Lahore branch
when the movement split around 1914, meant that
this section became noted for its liberal, moderniz-
ing tendencies. This was reflected in the emphasis
that was placed on educating women and setting up
schools for girls, constituting a fairly radical move
in the context of early twentieth-century Muslim
South Asia. On the other hand, the so-called
Qadian section remained more traditional, strictly
enforcing purdah and encouraging polygamy. The
A™madìmovement remains, to this day, character-
ized by these apparently contradictory trends with
respect to the lives of its female members.622 political-social movements: millenarian
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93–114.Sarah AnsariTurkeyThe concept of the millennium was transformed
in the Islamic world under the influence of remnants
of Central Eastern and Judeo-Christian mythology
into a type of Messianism known as Mahdism.
In Turkish history, from the thirteenth to the
twentieth centuries, there were a number of Mah-
dist uprisings, two of which, the Bàbà±ìrevolt in
1240 in the Seljuk period and the Shaykh Badr al-
Dìn revolt in 1416 in the Ottoman period, were of
particular importance as regards both their imme-
diate and subsequent effects. Apart from these two
revolts there were also other Mahdist uprisings on
a smaller scale. The Timurtash revolt in 1321 dur-
ing the Seljuk period, the growth of underground
opposition to the Ottoman government among the
BayramìMelàmìs in the sixteenth century, the
Shahqulu (1511), Nur ≠AlìKhalìfa (1512), Bozoklu
Djalàl or Shàh Walì(1520), and Shàh Qalandar
(1527) revolts, some of which had links with the