SIGNIFICATION OF THE WORD “MAHDI.”

Dunstan Times, Issue 1216, 19 June 1885, Page 3

SIGNIFICATION OF THE WORD “MAHDI.”

Mahdi, or Mahadi, as M, D’Herbelot spelled it, is an ancient title in-the Modem world, which at first signified simply director of the faithful. But in the comae of Moslem history, and especially Moslem history in Africa, it came to have another signification related to an accepted prophecy of Mahommed. It necessarily refers to the African part of Arabic history. By this secondary signification of the word the Mahdi is a certain ancient leader come again. His appearance is the “ second advent ”of a proph't who lived in the old days, and who in all the meantime had been with the immortals. Mahommed, the twelfth Imam, and the twelfth in descent from Ali, is the real original. He is the Mahdi who comes every now and agai". He was hidden from the wend at an early age, and communed only with his disciples through his lifetime, and finally did not die, but “went up” with the fixed inten tion of returning to revive the glories of Moslem.

As in the Christian theory, and even In

''he history of several monarchies this legend of a prince who is to return has afforded a favorite pretext for no end of impostors, so it did in I dam. The most famous of these in past ages was Abu caasein Mohammed Ben Abdallah, the founder of the Fatiuite dynasty in Africa, Mahommed had prophesied that in 300 years the sun would rise m the west, and as Abduloassem’s glory was in 296 of the Hegira, it was held that the prophecy referred to him, and since then the idea of the M ihadi has commonly had a relation to the revival of the glories of Islam in that western world of Mos lemism, the provinces of Africa held by the Arabs.