Imagining the End: Visions of

fitna

 and

of  the 

malahim

: ‘Woe to the Arab after the year 



.’

65

 Nor are the traditions

that tell of  the turn in power of  the House of  'Abbas

66

 in substance ana-

chronistic. Traditions that show the Abbasid leaders assumed the messianic

titles of  Saffah, Mansur and Mahdi abound,

67

 and are supported by both

literary and epigraphic evidence of  the assumption of  the title of  the Mahdi

by the first Abbasid caliph, Abu'l-'Abbas.

68

 There is also evidence that he

claimed to be the Qa'im, even though this evidence has been generally over-

looked.

69

 'Abd Allah b. 'Ali, the winner of  the decisive battle of  Zab and the

destroyer of  Marwan II and the Umayyads, was the original bearer of  the

title al-Saffah,

70

 which was later anachronistically assumed to be the regnal

title of  the first Abbasid caliph.

The twelve kings of  the fifth vision of  Ezra (

 

Ezra 



:

 

), a remarkable

text in political apocalypticism as the sequel to Daniel’s vision of  the fall of

empires, was the likely source of  inspiration for the particular tradition of  the

apocalyptic war (

malhama

) against the twelve kings, the least of  whom is the

king of  Rome,

71

 and more generally, for the expectation that the Umayyad

---

116

Judaism, Christianity and Islam

ruler after Yazid III would be the last. This expectation finds expression in a

large number of  traditions concerning ‘the Twelve Caliphs from the Quraysh’,

which were evidently first circulated by those who hoped there would be no

more caliphs from the Quraysh. This political oracle survived the Abbasid

revolution as an autonomous cultural form in the repertoire of  Muslim

apocalyptic traditions. It served as a source of  speculation for many groups

and, as we shall see, later helped the Imami Shi'ites fix the number of  their

Imams at twelve.

It should be noted that some very valuable information about the Khuras-

anian partisans of  the Abbasid revolution who fought under the messianic

black banners is supplied by the apocalyptic traditions in the form of  

ex

eventu

 prophecies. ‘They have long hair, villages [and not tribes] are their

genealogy, and their names are their surnames (

kunya

).’

72

 And they spoke

Persian, in some rare traditions: ‘Their slogan is “

bokosh, bokosh

”!’ (Kill,

kill!)

73

 Their leader, Abu Muslim, ‘a man from the 

mawali

 who rises in Marw’

74

is the subject of  several pejorative traditions: ‘Scoundrel son of  scoundrel

[

laka' b. laka'

] will conquer the world’. ‘The Hour will not rise until scoun-

drel son of  scoundrel is the happiest of  the people.’

75

 These traditions place

Khurasan firmly and conspicuously in the Islamic apocalyptic topography.

76

The culmination of  the revolutionary apocalypticism of  the period for the

'Alids was the uprising, in 



, of  Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah, al-nasf  al-zakiyya

(the Pure Soul), the namesake of  the Prophet foretold in the above-mentioned

Mahdist tradition whom the Abbasids themselves had accepted as the Qa'im

and the Mahdi of  the House of  Muhammad before coming to power. 'Abd

Allah, the father of  the Mahdi and the head of  the Hasanid descendants of

'Ali, claimed to be in possession of  the sword and the armour of  the Prophet

which would evidently be put at the disposal of  his son as the Lord of  the

Sword. The long-delayed rebellion of  the Mahdi of  the House of  Muhammad

in Arabia in 



 was followed by that of  his brother, Ibrahim, who assumed

the title of  Hadi, in Iraq. The wide following of  the Hasanid Mahdi included

an ‘extremist’ group, the Mughiriyya, who considered him the Qa'im-Mahdi

and with whom he had been in hiding in the mountain of  Tamiyya before his

uprising. After his death and the suppression of  his uprising, the Mughiriyya

claimed that he was alive and immortal, and was residing in the same moun-

tain.

77

 Furthermore,