208 Claudia Preckel
propagated that the Muslim community had begun to decline in gen-
eral, including morally, culturally, and economically, with the death
of the Prophet Muḥammad and that this would continue to the end
of the world. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan even went so far as to predict “the great
hour” (al-sāʿa al-kubrā)^147 for the beginning of the Muslim year 1300
(1882/1883). The approach of the Hour was the central subject of 17
books written by Ṣiddīq Ḥasan. In these books he focused on the
signs that portended the approaching end of the world. These signs
could be categorised as major, middle or small. For example, the
appearance of the “the rightly guided one” (al-mahdī), the promised
messiah (al-masīḥ al-mawʿūd) or the Anti-Christ (al-dajjāl)^148 defi-
nitely belonged to the major signs. For the Ahl-i Ḥadīth, the mahdī
and the masīḥ are two different persons, whereas the members of
the Aḥmadiyya movement consider their founder, Ghulām Aḥmad
(d. 1908), to be both in one person. The Yemenite scholar Ḥusayn
against Innovations (Kutub al-bidʿa), in: Der Islam 69 (1992), pp. 204–246;
Lohlker, Rüdiger: „Unstatthafte Neuerungen“ oder das Feld der religiösen
Diskussion im Islam, in: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesell-
schaft 149 (1999), pp. 221–244. For the discussion on bidʿa in the South Asian
context, see Masud, Muhammad Khalid: The Definition of bid’a in the South
Asian fatāwā Literature, in: Annales Islamologiques 27 (1993), pp. 55–75. It is
noteworthy that technical innovations (e. g. the printing press) are not gener-
ally considered unlawful innovations.
147 See Rubin, Uri: Sāʿa, in: EI^1 , vol. 8 (1995), pp. 656–658.
148 On the mahdī see Madelung, Wilfried: al-Mahdī, in: EI^2 , vol. 5 (1986),
pp. 1230–1238; on the messias see Bosworth, Clifford Edmund: al-Masīḥ, in:
EI2, vol. 6 (1991), p. 726. On the dajjāl see Abel, Armand: al-Dadjdjāl, in: EI^2 ,
vol. 2 (1960–65), pp. 76–77. The dajjāl (the great deceiver) is said to have the
Arabic word k-f-r (kufr) on his forehead, meaning disbelief. It is important
to note that the Ahl-i Ḥadīth never considered the British to be the dajjāl,
whereas the Sudanese Mahdists believed the colonial power to be identical
with the dajjāl. See Boddy, Janice Patricia: Civilizing Women. British Cru-
sades in Colonial Sudan, Princeton 2007, p. 55. It is further important to say
that Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān did not acknowledge the Sudanese mahdī’s claims,
although the British stated otherwise. See Preckel, Islamische Bildungsnetz-
werke, pp. 383–385. Since 2008, the “best selling book 2008 from Bangladesh”
(cover page) by Mohammed Bayazeed Khan Panni is flourishing throughout
Asia and beyond and can be downloaded from the internet in several languag-
es. As it can be seen from the title, the author identifies the “Judeo-Christan
‘Civilizaton’” as the dajjāl. See Bayazeed Khan Panni, Mohammed: Dajjal.
The Judeo-Christan ‘Civilization’, translated from Bangla by Ummut Tijah
Makhduma Panni, Dhaka 2008.
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