It is declared in Islamic narrations that the definite signs of Imam Mahdi’s Appearance are restricted to the following five signs:
1) A celestial call from the heavens; 2) The Sufyānī’s rebellion; 3) The rise of Yamānī; 4) Swallowing up of the Sufyānī army in al-Baydā land; and 5) The murder of the Purified Soul (al-Nafs al-Zakīyyah).
Sufyānī is a man from the offspring of Abū Sufyān, who will revolt a little before the Imam’s advent. He is one of the evilest people of the time, who will pretend to be religious, deceive many groups of people, kill a lot in some Islamic countries, and deal with his opponents in a heinous way. According to some Hadiths, after taking control of Shām (present-day Syria), he will invade Iraq and its neighborhoods and commit a large-scale massacre there. However, he will rule for only nine months, and overall, it will not take more than 15 months from the beginning of his rebellion until his death.
Swallowing of the Sufyānī army in al-Baydā
"Al-Baydā" is the name of a land located between Mecca and Medina. According to Hadiths, Sufyānī will be informed that Imam Mahdi has moved from Medina to Mecca; so he will dispatch a fully-equipped army to Mecca to arrest or assassinate the Imam. They also decide to invade Mecca aiming to demolish the Kaˈbah and kill Mecca’s habitants; however, upon reaching al-Baydā, by the will of the Almighty God, the Earth will miraculously open its mouth to swallow them all except two or three of them who will survive to tell others about what happened to them.
Incorrect conformance to the signs of the Appearance
There are many Hadiths in Islamic Hadith sources that mention the indefinite signs of the appearance of Imam Mahdi, which most of them are uncertain signs and their exact quality and characteristics are not clear. So, from time to time, some people, as a matter of curiosity, seek to reconcile current events with some signs of the Imam’s advent and thereby consider the occurrence of that event as one of the signs of the imminence of his appearance. This misconception is also a serious harm that has always threatened the doctrine of Mahdism, which can result in despair and discouragement for some common populace. For example, if it is claimed that the Sufyāni mentioned in the Hadiths refers to a real person who now lives in a certain region, or if some baseless analyses and alleged comparisons are made about Dajjāl as a current specific person or system, or if it is said with certainty that a specific war or natural phenomena are the signs mentioned in the Hadiths about the signs of the appearance of Imam Mahdi, and following these wrong conformances, is given to everyone the good news of the appearance of the Imam in a very near time, which in turn leads to a false expectation, while after years the promised Mahdi may not appear. In this case, some may get caught in deviations and doubts and waver in their belief in Mahdism.
Derived from the book “The Promised Mahdi in the view of Shi’a, by Ḥamīd Saˈādat
