Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

by Kim Ghattas

The group of three hundred believed another messenger had come—the Mahdi. Sunni beliefs also allowed for an apocalyptic redeemer whose arrival by the Ka’aba, alongside Jesus, signaled the end of times before the age of righteousness. But unlike Shias, Sunnis did not hold this as a central tenet, nor did they believe the Mahdi been born centuries ago and gone into occultation. He would instead reveal himself as a man from the people with particular attributes spelled out in the hadiths, the records of prophet Muhammad’s sayings and actions, written after his death. The truth of this Mahdi’s presence had been revealed to the leader of the group in a dream, while he had been out in the desert: the Mahdi was one of his own companions, soon to be his brother-in-law, Mohammad ibn Abdallah al-Qahtani. His name and physical appearance matched what the hadiths had predicted. The Mahdi was meant to be a descendant of the prophet through his daughter Fatima, and a story was concocted to explain how al-Qahtani, who came from a different tribe and area, did in fact have the right ancestry. Soon, many in the group were having dreams confirming that Qahtani was the Mahdi.