The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

messianism

Messianic ideas have played significant roles in Islamic political history in different forms. The traditional account of Muhammad’s life represents him as a preordained messianic deliverer leading a community to political and military triumph. From early on in Islamic history, Muslim groups evolved distinctive doctrines of future messianic figures known under such terms as mahdī (rightly guided), qā’im (one who rises up), and mujaddid (renewer). Over the centuries, Muslims of many different persuasions have claimed messianic functions for themselves and led widespread movements, and messianic ideas have formed part of the imperial visions of major Islamic dynasties. In the modern period, messianic claimants have advocated activist struggles as well as political and socioreligious reform in the face of Western hegemony over Muslim communities.

The Qur’an does not evoke the notion of a future messianic deliverer. This is understandable since in its internal perspective, the scripture is the fulfillment of prior messianic prophecies through the figure of Muhammad. The traditional story of Muhammad’s life, which acquired its contours in the first Islamic century, can be read as the first fully articulated messianic narrative in Islam. Muslims in this period were caught in a paradox: their great worldly successes, built on the foundations of Muhammad’s religious message, had also precipitated severe internal dissension that included numerous wars and shocking massacres such as that of Muhammad’s grandson Husayn at Karbala in 680. This situation generated new messianic paradigms in which the careers of Muhammad and some of his early Companions, regarded as heroes, became models for the hope of future messiahs.

Islamic messianism has from its origins consisted of a variety of doctrines. Among Sunni Muslims, views vary between complete denial of the idea of a future messiah, to the notion that the messiah is simply Jesus in his future Second Coming, to the expectation of a man who would lead Muslims to a worldwide religiopolitical triumph shortly before the world undergoes its final apocalypse and destruction. Among Shi‘is, the messiah is a particular descendant of Muhammad, and he is either expected to be born in the future or is one of the imams of the past. The doctrinal structure of Twelver Shi‘ism combines these two possibilities since it is centrally focused on the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who, it is believed, was born in 869 and went into occultation (ghayba) in 874. He is expected to come back and, together with Jesus, lead the Twelver community to a triumph shortly before the end of time.

Throughout history, individuals from Sunni as well as Shi‘i backgrounds have attempted to enact theological doctrines by proclaiming themselves messiahs. Generally speaking, messiahs rising from Sunni backgrounds tend to highlight the notion of renewal of Islamic law and the reestablishment of a righteous Muslim community in the image of the time of Muhammad and his early successors, the Rightly Guided Caliphs. Prominent examples include Muhammad b. Tumart (d. 1130) in North Africa, Sayyid Muhammad of Jawnpur in India (d. 1505), Muhammad Ahmad b. ‘Abdallah of the Sudan (d. 1885), Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d. 1908) in British India, Shehu Usman dan Fodio (d. 1817) in northern Nigeria, and a number of later West African figures. In contrast, Shi‘i messiahs are likely to see themselves as harbingers of altogether new religious dispensations since, from a Shi‘i perspective, early Islamic history is not a golden era but a tragedy marked by the usurpation of the rights of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib and his descendants. Prominent examples of Shi‘i messiahs include ‘Abdallah (or ‘Ubaydallah) al-Mahdi (d. 934), the founder of the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa, who presented himself as a messianic savior and was justified as such in later Isma‘ili scholarship. Among the later Nizari Isma‘ilis was the imam Hasan ‘ala dhikrihi al-salam (d. 1166), who enacted a dramatic festival meant to represent the raising of the dead after the cosmic apocalypse (qiyāma) at the fortress of Alamut in Iran in 1164 and saw himself as fulfilling messianic expectations. In a Twelver Shi‘i context, the fact that a particular person from the past, the Twelfth Imam, is seen as the messiah requires a claimant to the mantle to justify a seeming impossibility. Messiahs who have risen from Twelver contexts—for example, Muhammad b. Falah Musha‘sha‘ (d. 1462), Muhammad Nurbakhsh (d. 1464), and Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad Bab (d. 1850)—have done so through innovative doctrines in which they claim themselves to be messiahs based on the idea that the Twelfth Imam’s spirit has been transferred to their own bodies.

In the central Islamic lands from 1200 onward, Sufi ideas have overlapped with messianic doctrines of various provenances. This amalgamation stems from some Sufis’ investment in a paramount living human figure—called the pole (quṭb), the perfect human being (insān kāmil), or the seal of God’s friendship (khātam al-walāya)—who is supposed to mediate between earthly and heavenly realms. Over the past eight centuries, concrete messianic claims have very often been justified through a combination of sectarian and Sufi doctrines. While messianism is a political doctrine by definition, Muslim claimants are split between activists and quietists. Some have seen themselves as divinely appointed agents charged with reforming society by force, while others have espoused a religiously revolutionary function accompanied by a shunning of the political sphere.

The earliest connection between messianism and Islamic imperial doctrines can be seen in the origins of the Abbasid caliphate (750–1258). As a group opposed to the ruling Umayyads, Abbasid propagandists relied on nascent messianic doctrines to lead a revolutionary movement. Once triumphant, they co-opted the political potential of messianic ideas through acts such as the caliph Abu Ja‘far al-Mansur (d. 775) giving his successor Muhammad b. al-Mansur (d. 785) the title Mahdi, which had acquired a distinctly messianic connotation by this time. In later history, ruling houses that wished to portray themselves as direct religious agents (instead of solely being supporters and protectors of law and religious scholars) appealed to messianic ideas. An example is the imperial myth surrounding Tamerlane (d. 1405) in which the conqueror is referred to by the messianic title the ṣāḥib-qirān (Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction). The Safavid dynasty of Iran (1501–1722) rose to power and ruled on the basis of a messianic claim that interweaves Twelver Shi‘i and Sufi ideas. The Ottomans and the Mughals, contemporaries to the Safavids in their origins, also incorporated messianic functions in their imperial self-presentations.

In the modern period, the three most prominent movements stemming from messianic claims are Babism in Iran (which later evolved into a new religion, the Baha’í Faith), the Ahmadiyya led by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadiyan in South Asia, and the Nation of Islam led by Elijah Muhammad in the United States. All three reflect the evolution of Islamic messianic doctrines in the face of modern intellectual and sociopolitical challenges and the imperative to respond to European Christianity. Adherents of these movements have often faced repression and persecution by ruling authorities as well as the societies in which they have been influential.