Library Islam Islam: Faith, Practice & History Part I: Beliefs Lesson 18 3. Belief in the Mahdi & Sunni Authorities
3. Belief in the Mahdi & Sunni Authorities
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3. Belief in the Mahdi & Sunni Authorities
In this subject, the scholars in the Sunni school have related many hadiths from the Prophet of Islam through trustworthy narrators. From among them are ahadith which say that the Imams are twelve persons and that they are all from the Quraysh.
Al-Mahdi, the promised one, is from the family of the Prophet and a descendent of Imam ‘Ali and Fatimah az-Zahra, and in many ahadith it is mentioned that he is from the line of Imam Husayn. The Sunnis have mentioned and recorded hundreds of ahadith about the Mahdi in more than seventy books through their own authorities of which we shall just mention a few examples:
Al-Musnad of Ahmad bin Hanbal (d. 241 AH).
Sahih of al-BukhÄri (d. 256 AH).
Sahih of al-Muslim (d. 261 AH).
Sunan of Abu DÄwud as-SajistÄni (d. 275 AH).
Sahih of at-Tirmidhi (d. 279 AH).
The authors of the above books are among the most authoritative books of the Sunnis and, more interestingly, all died either before the birth of the Twelfth Imam (255 AH) or shortly after his birth.
