Mahdi

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Mahdi

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From Arabic مَهْدِيّ (mahdiyy, “guided one”).

Mahdi

(Sunni Islam) A leader who, according to Sunni eschatology, will appear and restore peace and justice before the end of the world. [from 17th c.]
Ahmadis consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmed to be the Mahdi.
- 1965, Frank Herbert, Dune‎^[1] (Fiction), →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, pages 100–101:
  "Of course, my Lord. You asked what they were shouting, though. It was Mahdi! They directed the term at the young master. When they-"
  "At Paul?"
  "Yes, my Lord. They've a legend here, a prophecy, that a leader will come to them, a child of a Bene Gesserit, to lead them to true freedom. It follows the familiar messiah pattern."
- 2012, Piers Brendon, ‘Beginning the Dissent’, Literary Review, volume 401:
  Al-Afghani was a polyglot Persian who became an international agitator, aspiring [...] to unify the Muslim masses behind the Caliph (or even the Mahdi) and to become himself the Luther of an Islamic reformation.
(Twelver Shiite Islam) Muhammad b. Hasan al-Mahdi, the last of the Twelve Imams, born in 868 AD but believed alive and present in this world in a state of occultation; officially the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Iran; similarly to Sunni belief he will reappear before the end of time.

a leader in Islamic eschatology who will appear and restore peace and justice before the end of the world