A Critical Review of the Pamphlet, 'Fateh-e-Qadian' — Page 113
Signs of the advent of the Messiah and Mahdi 113 And the moon is eclipsed, and the sun and the moon are brought together. 59 This means the sun will also eclipse in the same month. Now, you can see how clearly the fulfilment of this sign tells us that this indeed is the time when the Mahdi must appear, because the sign of his appearance has been fulfilled. Some people raise the objection that this hadith has a gap in its chain of narrators and stops at Imam Muhammad B a qir (may Allah be pleased with him). Furthermore they say, it states that the lunar eclipse will occur on the first night of Ramadan and the solar eclipse in the middle of Ramadan, whereas the actual lunar eclipse occurred on the 13 th and the solar eclipse on the 28 th. The answer to this objection is that though this hadith is apparently mauq u f [i. e. the narrators of this hadith narrated up to Imam B a qir], but according to the verdict of the scholars of a ha d i th , infact, this report is marf u ‘ [attributed to the Holy Prophet sa ] You have also to consider who the narrator was. Was he not a shining jewel of the Holy Prophet’s family? Everyone knows it was a point of style for the Imams from the Holy Prophet’s family, in view of their dignity, that they did not consider it essential to link the chain of reporters by name to the Holy Prophet sa. This is their publicized and well known custom. In any case, we have not coined this hadith but it has existed for the last 1,300 years. The answer to the second objection is that it is against God’s practice and the law of nature for the lunar eclipse to occur on it’s 59 S u rah al-Qiy a mah 75:9–10