The Concept of the Mahdi Among Ahl al-Sunna

The Mahdi, “the guided one”, has been popularly awaited throughout Islamic history as a just and pious leader who would be extremely successful during his reign over the Muslims. This study, based on the author's original PhD thesis written in 1991, aims to investigate the concept of the Mahdi among Ahl al-Sunna according to the methodology of the traditionists. It includes the analysis of over one hundred narrations, mostly found in the Kitab al-Fitan, by Nuʿaim b. Ḥammād (which, in 1991 was only available in manuscript form). Both Sunni and Shi’a literature throng with extensive descriptions of this Mahdi, the concept of which has prompted a great number of people to claim this title throughout the fourteen centuries of Islam, in different parts of the Muslim lands. The attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, led by a Mahdi claimant, during the year 1980 rekindled the debate on the authenticity of this belief. The scholars of Islam were divided on this issue: some rejected the idea completely by labelling all those Aḥādīth that speak of the Mahdi as spurious, while others supported this belief vehemently but rejected the claimant on the grounds that he did not fulfil the criterion laid down in the texts for the true Mahdi. The incident also moved the writer of these lines as well to seek the oldest Sunni source on the Mahdi. About the Author: Shaykh Dr Suhaib Hasan comes from a family of prestigious scholars. His father Shaykh AbdulGhaffar Hasan remained teacher of Hadith in the Islamic University of Medina for many years and a number of leading scholars around the world benefited from him. Shaykh Suhaib Hasan’s great grandfather Shaykh AbdulJabbar Umarpuri was among the students of Shaykh Nazir Hussain Dehlwi, the leading scholar of Hadith of his era. Shaykh Suhaib Hasan himself graduated from the Islamic University of Medina and had the privilege of studying with many great scholars of his era such as Hafiz Muhammad Gondalwi, Shaykh AbdulAziz ibn Baz, Shaykh Nasirudin Albani, Shaykh Ameen Shanqiti, Shaykh Abu Bakr Al-Jazairi, Shaykh Ibrahim Shaqrah, Shaykh AbdulMuhsin Abbad and many others. The shaykh moved to East Africa after graduating and taught for a decade before resettling in Britain were he currently resides; he has recognised as a leading scholar of Markaz Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, the founder of Masjid Tawheed in Leyton, London, and he is currently the chairman of the Sharia Council in Leyton, London.