Life of Ahmad — Page 230
CLAIMS TO BE THE MESSIAH as as 230 understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist' (Matth. 17:10-13). About his own coming Jesus as says to his disciples: 'Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord' ( Matth. 23:39). Here he clearly tells his disciples that he will not reappear himself, but another person will appear in his name. The word Mahdi means literally 'the guided one,' and, as all guidance is from Allah, it has come to mean the divinely guided one. 'It is applied especially, as a name, to the Mahdi of whom the Prophet gave good tidings that he would come in the End of Time' (Ency. of Islam). Ibn-e-Khaladun (d. 808 A. H. 1406 A. D. ) in his Muqaddama gives 24 traditions bearing upon the Mahdi and adds six variants, but he criticizes the authenticity of them all. In the Tadhikira of Al- Qurtub i there is a further mass of luxuriant detail which Ibn-e-Khaladun has evidently disdained to incorporate. Nawab S idd i q Hasan Khan of Bhopal, an eminent theologian of the Ahl-e-Hadith sect, took great pains to 'collect all the traditions regarding the advent of the Mahdi and published his work H ijajul Kir a mah in 1291 A. H. (Sh a hjah a n i Press, Bhopal). He says on page 365: