Life of Ahmad — Page 418
SUN AND MOON DARKENED as 418 D a r Qu t n i , a most eminent and recognised authotity, records a saying of the Holy Prophet sa : 'For our Mahdi there shall be two signs which have never happened for anyone else since the creation of the heavens and the earth: At his advent there shall occur an eclipse of the moon in the first of its appointed nights and an eclipse of the sun on the middle one of its appointed dates and both will occur in the month of Ramadan. ' The prophecy does not mean that the occurrence of the eclipse would in itself be unique and unprecedented. The eclipse is an ordinary phenomenon of nature and scientists have formulated certain laws and cycles of the recurrence of the eclipses. These cycles are known to be determined principally by the motion of the moon’s node and the revolutions of the earth round the sun and the moon round the earth. It is said that successive eclipses occur very nearly in the same order as they did 18 years and 11 days before. This period of recurrence has been known from remote antiquity and is called the Saros. There are various other laws which govern the phenomenon. But the prophecy predicted thirteen hundred years beforehand that two of the signs of the true Mahdi would be that the sun and the moon would be eclipsed in the manner indicated. Eclipses have no doubt occurred before but never as a sign of the advent of a heavenly reformer; because there has never been in the history of the world a claimant of