zama@midway.uchicago.edu (iftikhar uz zaman) (05/21/91)
(This has always been a favorite topic of mine--though for the
last half a dozen years I haven't had much time to continue my study
of it. So most of what I write is from memory; however, if you are
interested enough in pursuing it, please email me and I would be quite
happy to brush up my memory by looking up anything that needs
elaboration...)
There is much parrallelism (and difference, of course) between
the Bible (Book of Revelations,I think?) and the Islamic beliefs on the
various signs of the approach of the Apocalypse ('alaamaat al-sa'ah).
And this is to be expected: after all both Books are originally from
the same Source!
The Quran, as with many other things, contains only *reference*
to some of these things--many of these references are even incomprehensible
unless one adds to them information from the hadiths ("reports of things
the Prophet said").
There is a lot more detail in hadiths about these "signs";
on the other hand, except for various major events predicted, the
chronology is not clearly established. In secondary works which
try to sort out these hadiths often the author relies on his own
interpretation and understanding both to establish the chronology,
and (often) to try to interpret these hadiths by tying them in to
"current events". The only treatment in English which I have seen
on this subject is called "Israel and the Prophecies of the Holy
Quran". As you can guess from the title, the author is quite
interested in tying in these hadiths to current events. On the
other hand, he *does* provide the texts of the original hadiths,
so one is free to agree or disagree with his interpretations....
The aspect of his imposing his interpretation which is a little
more veiled is the manner in which he establishes a chronology for
the hadiths--it can escape one's notice that he establishes a very
clear chronology, where the hadiths themselves contain little or
no evidence for much of his intepretation (...just a word of
caution...).
Basically, the thing here is that much of the interpretation
and understanding of these hadiths is done in a metaphorical way:
eg it is said that dajjal (antichrist) will have an ass which has
30 foot long ears and which will travel from one end of the earth
to the other in seconds....The temptation to interpret this as
a description of an aeroplane is practically irresistible! On
the other hand, this is clearly a metaphorical understanding...
And, those who are familiar with Nostradamus would agree, I think,
that metaphorical understanding can allow one to read anything as
anything!
Another aspect one has to watch out for is that this genre of
hadith--"predictions of the coming of the apocalypse"--was a favorite
genre within which one could caste one's political tastes in the early
period...Thus, there *are* many fabricated hadiths; so, if you
disapproved of a certain act of the government etc., and you didn't
have compunctions about fabricating hadiths, it was easy to say "when
x happens, know that the end of time is at hand." This was a *very*
powerful and attractive genre of hadith to forge: (1) it established a
miracle for the Prophet ("he knew of this many years ago"), so if
someone tried to deny it you could really corner him, by accusing him
of denying a miracle of the Prophet! (2) it was tempting to "pious but
foolish" people to forge a hadith with good intentions with a text,
for example, that near the end of time such and such a sin will
flourish....such individuals could forge a hadith, attribute it to the
Prophet and still feel good about what they were doing.
Despite all this, I think there are sufficient very strong
hadiths which indicate that the Prophet did indeed make such prophecies
about the end of time--one has to be careful with them, check the
isnads (or if one does not have the ability to check for oneself,
one relies on judgements of the scholars regarding these hadiths),
but that does not mean that one must "throw the baby out with the
bathwater." For an example of a work in which all sorts of material,
clearly forged to probably authentic, is mixed is the "Kitab al-fitan"
of Nu'aym ibn Hammad. Some of the weakest hadiths are mixed in with
very reliable ones in this book.
One of the signs of the end of time is that Jesus will descend
from the heavens to fight and kill the Antichrist (dajjal). In India,
in the first decades of this century, there was an individual by the
name of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad who claimed himself to be Jesus.... A
marginal benefit of his claim was that a number of scholars chose to
refute his claim by collecting various hadiths about the second coming
of Jesus and other general "signs of the end of time" (I'll just say
"signs" from now on) ; sifting through them and picking out the
most reliable ones. One of the best collections we have on the issue,
then, grew out of this controversy. This is the book (hmmm... name
slips my mind...but I believe it is by Anwar Shah Kashmiri, and
Abdul Fattah Abu Ghudda has an excellent marginal commentary on it
which analyzes all the hadiths mentioned in the text along with
providing great bibliographic references to the other literature
on the subject. I think that should be enough to locate the book
in a good library. If you still can't find it e-mail me...)
In any case. So much for caveats and bibliography.
The "signs" are usually divided into two kinds: the "smaller"
signs (al alamaat al sughra) and the "larger" signs (al alamaat al
kubra). The things that are supposed to happen before the actual
appearance of Dajjal (antichrist) are the smaller ones, and those
that occur after his appearance are the larger ones.
As I have already stressed: the chronology is not entirely'
reliable. But what I gather from various authors is that the smaller
signs are all various evidences of moral decline which would precede
the actual appearance of dajjal. Promiscuity, strange hitherto
unheard of diseases, excessive wealth are among the things mentioned.
That music would become widespread is also mentioned (this is
particularly interesting since, if you think about it, until this
century, music was something rather elaborate: you had to have the
physical presence of musicians to hear music...). Women who would be
"dressed but undressed" (al-aariyat al-kaasiyat) have been mentioned:
again, perhaps this could be understood as a reference to the very
fine types of fabrics that are available today--the term "dressed but
undressed" must have been puzzling at that time, and, to some degree,
remains puzzling..."baraka" will be removed from things: i.e. it
will take more materials (time, money, food etc) to perform tasks
for which less had previously been adequate...There's a long list,
but I'll leave it at that.
These were "general" things. Some of the more specific things
are a hadith which mentions that "black gold" (!) will be found in
a direction to which the Prophet pointed (I believe the hadith states
something to the effect--"and the Prophet pointed towards Yaman")...
and that none of you should touch any of it! (Again, one would
want to look at the chains of narration of this hadith).
Let me just present a composite "picture" of things mentioned in
various hadiths--again, the chronology is uncertain, and the specifics
*do* need to be studied carefully. This is just a quick run down of
various hadiths which I have come across (I do believe most of these
are reliable, but I *definitely* would want to check before I made any
specific claims)... There seems to be some evidence for the
chronological sequencing of each of the following "frames" *within*
themselves* but there is a rough overlap between the various
frames; i.e. the hadith doesn't provide a clear indication of the
order of events in one frame relative to the next...
Frame One (dajjal's career):
Dajjal will appear. His "right eye" will be blind (perhaps a
metaphor? Side note: guess what went through the minds of Muslims when
Moshe Dayan was still alive!). He will have "unbeliever" written on
his forehead--any true believer will be able to see it, but others
won't be able to. He will have heaven in one hand and hell in the
other. He will offer nations his heaven and if they accept it will be
as if they are in heaven--their needs will be fulfilled. Those that
refuse him will fall into his "hell" and they will indeed appear to be
in great suffering--but the true believer will know the difference!
The world will be made subservient to him. Until finally he will
approach Mecca and Medina. He will actually conquer Mecca and
overturn the Ka'ba--but when he approaches Medina he will find twelve
doors to it all guarded by angels, so he will lay seige to it. (oops:
before the seige of Medina, there will be three earthquakes--90,000
(?) hypocrites will leave Medina...then, this "cleaned" Medina will be
beseiged).
The seige will last for a long time but will finally be broken
by a "man of God" (not specified who: though some speculate about it)
who will... (oops: meanwhile dajjal will have been given all sorts of
power: he will command the earth to spit forth its wealth and it will;
he will command the clouds to rain and they will; etc. Finally he
will make the claim to power over life and death and he *will* be
given this. Thus, he will kill a person and bring him back to life...
In this setting: in walks above mentioned "man of God"). He will
challenge dajjal...Dajjal will threaten him with death and demand
that he acknowledge him as God. The man will refuse. Dajjal will
kill him, saw his body in two and walk between the severed parts and
then bring him back to life. Then he will ask "NOW do you believe
I am God?" And the man will refuse and say, "now I am even more
certain that you are not God! Our Prophet told us about your coming--
you are dajjal." At this point Dajjal will try to kill him but
God will take this power away from him...This will be the beginning
of the end for dajjal, the turning point in his career.
Frame Two (the plight of the Muslims)
Probably a little before the siege of Medina the Mahdi ("the
rightly guided one") will be recognized by people as he
circumambulates the Ka'ba... (The Mahdi is not the same as Jesus the
Messiah--he is definitely a different character). Again, many hadiths
provide various descriptive hints about the Mahdi (and, already, many
people in Islamic history have claimed to be the Mahdi). So he will
be circumambulating the Ka'ba when a group of Muslims will approach
him. He will deny that he is the Mahdi but they will insist and
finally convince him. The Muslims will take an oath of allegiance to
him....
Frame Three (also, in the meantime...):
Somewhere along the line there will be three jihads in
"hind"...The Muslims will lose in the first two, in the third
they will win but there will be no joy in victory: there will be
a funeral in every house. In addition, it is said that the
army in this third jihad will be exceedingly sinful, but God will
forgive them their sins. This victorious army will, then, go
towards Damascus where (skipping ahead in the story here...) they
will join the army of Jesus to fight the final battle against
dajjal.
Frame Four (also, elsewhere...but moving a few steps ahead in time)
The Messiah will descend directly from the sky to a minaret
(east minaret, I believe) on the mosque of Jerusalem. From there he
will ask for a ladder (interpreted as indicating that he will have
left the realm of the supernatural and now will have to follow
normal "mortal" rules) and descend. The Mahdi will be leading the
prayers (I have never been able to figure out how the Mahdi makes
it to Jerusalem when Medina is beseiged...) and will step aside
for him...but the Messiah will say, that no, this time I come
not as a Prophet but as one of the umma of the Final Prophet...
Frame Five (the confrontation)
The Jews, the Christians and hypocritical Muslims will have
joined behind dajjal. The final confrontation is seemingly in
Syria. The Messiah will join battle and the enemy will fall away
from him...He will be the only one to be able to confront the
antichrist who will melt in front of him as salt melts in water...
The place of dajjal's death is identified--I am told there is
an airport there these days....
Jesus dies somewhere along here (after the final battle)...
I believe the way it goes from here is that the Mahdi will barely
have had time to recover from the battle that he will be informed
that a menace is about to come upon them which they will simply not
be able to face: Gog and Magog. Thus, they will be commanded to
take refuge in the mountains (I think Jabal al-Tur is specified;
Mount Sinai?).
Gog and Magog are actually mentioned in the Quran. Again
hadiths describe them... They are short, have flat faces...
this has led many to suggest that these are the Russians or
the Chinese. The Quranic verse "min kulla hadabin yansilun"
("they will 'roll forth' from high places") has led some
to suggest Chinese. In addition they are mentioned as being
numerous beyond count--they will drink up whole lakes...
In any case, they will ravage the earth and no one will
be able to oppose them. After (40?) years their arrogance will
come to the point that they will "fire an arrow" skywards with
the intention of "killing God" and God will send the arrow
back to them bloodied--thus they will think they have succeeded...
Meanwhile, in the mountains the Muslims will be having
a terrible time with famine and hunger. Finally, the Mahdi will
pray to God for relief. So God will send down a terrible disease
which will kill them all and there bodies will lie their rotting
with no one even to pick them up. The stench will be so bad that
even then, no one will be able to descend from the mountain. So,
the Mahdi will pray again and God will send rain down to clean
the earth and the Mahdi will come down with his people.
Then there will be a period of incredible peace in which
"children will play with snakes"... Then a slow decline will begin
until finally only very few will remain who are obedient to God. God
will send a breeze which will leave the believers with something like
a cold...they will sneeze and die. This will leave only the
disobedient.... Then the "sur" (conch shell) will be blown...
The first person to hear this will be tying his horse (or feeding
it?) and in any case, whoever hears it will die and as they die
this conch shell will be blown again and the people will be raised
from the dead and gathered towards the Plain of Judgement...May
Allah look with favor upon us all on that day....Wa lahu al-hamd
wa al-kibraya...