of Doomsday being vague, so they assumed a stance of always awaiting the world’s appointed hour and worked seriously for the hereafter. God’s Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) repeatedly used to say: “Expect Doomsday. Wait for it” which was prophetic guidance arising from this wisdom, not a pronouncement of Revelation concerning the specific time of its occurrence, thus being far from the truth. The cause or occasion is one thing and the wisdom or underlying purpose is another. This sort of utterance of the Prophet (UWBP) was related to the wisdom in inexplicit and ambiguous statements.

It is also due to this mystery that the persons who will come at the end of time like the Mahdi and Sufyan were expected long beforehand, even in the time of the generation succeeding the Prophet (UWBP), and the people hoped to live long enough to see them. Some of the saints, even, said that they had passed. Divine wisdom requires that the times of these persons are not specified, as with the end of the world. For every age is in need of the Mahdi’s significance, for he strengthens morale and saves the people from despair. Every century needs a share of this. Moreover, every century the fearsome persons who appear to lead strife should be shrunk from and feared, so that people do not heedlessly follow evil nor indifferently let free the reins of the soul. If such persons had been specified, the benefits of general guidance would have been lost.

Now, the difference in the narrations about persons like the Mahdi, and their meaning, is this: the expounders of Hadiths applied the Hadith texts to their own interpretations and commentaries. For example, at that time Damascus and Medina were the centres of power, so they imagined that the events connected with the Mahdi and Sufyan would occur in places like Basra, Kufa, and Syria, which were in the region of those centres, and expounded them accordingly. Moreover, they imagined the mighty works belonging to the collective identity or community which those figures represent, to belong to their persons and they expounded them thus. They therefore ascribed those extraordinary individuals a form to them whereby when appear, everyone will recognize them. However, as we said, this world is the arena of trial. The door is opened to the reason, but the will is not taken from the hand. So, when those persons, even the terrible Dajjal, appear, to start with many people and Dajjal himself even will not know that he is the Dajjal. Those figures of the end of time will be known through the insight and light of belief.

It is narrated in a Hadith about the Dajjal, who is one of the signs of the end of time: “His first day is like a year, his second day like a month, his third day like a week, and his fourth day like other days. When he appears