Are the Messiah and the Mahdi two people or one?

Many of us carry a familiar picture in our minds. In the last days Imam Mahdi will appear and lead the Muslims. Then one day, at the time of prayer, Jesus (as) will come down from the sky and pray standing behind the Mahdi.

That picture has two people in it. But read the hadith of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (sa) carefully and a different picture comes into view. In it the Messiah and the Mahdi are one man, with two names for two parts of his work.

“There is no Mahdi except Jesus”

Hazrat Anas ibn Malik (ra) reported that the Holy Prophet (sa), while describing the state of the last days, added one more sentence:

The statement is very simple. The one who is Jesus is the Mahdi. They are not two separate people.

Another narration places both titles on one person. Hazrat Abu Hurairah (ra) reported that the Holy Prophet (sa) said that whoever among you lives may meet Jesus son of Mary, who will be the Imam Mahdi and the just judge; he will break the cross and kill the swine (Musnad Ahmad bin Hanbal, vol. 2, p. 411).

“Your imam, from among you”

There is a well-known hadith in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. The Holy Prophet (sa) said:

Many say this speaks of two people: the son of Mary, and a separate imam. But Sahih Muslim itself has another version of this hadith, and it settles the question:

Here it is the son of Mary himself who leads the prayer. And he is “from among you”, that is, one of the Muslims. In the same narration the narrator Ibn Abi Dhi'b explains: he will lead you by the Book of your Lord and the Sunnah of your Prophet (sa).

So the one who is to come belongs to the Ummah of Muhammad (sa) and follows the Quran and the Sunnah. He is not a prophet of the Children of Israel arriving from outside.

Two descriptions of Jesus

Sahih Bukhari has two reports, side by side, in which the Holy Prophet (sa) saw Jesus (as). And the two descriptions do not match.

In the report of Hazrat Ibn Abbas (ra), the Holy Prophet (sa) says he saw Jesus, Moses and Abraham (peace be on them); Jesus (as) was of reddish complexion, with curly hair and a broad chest (Sahih Bukhari, Kitab Ahadith al-Anbiya, Hadith 3438). Here he appears alongside other prophets of the past.

But Hazrat Abdullah ibn Umar (ra) swore that the Holy Prophet (sa) did not describe Jesus as red. In a dream the Prophet (sa) saw himself circling the Ka‘bah, and he saw a man of brown complexion with straight hair; when he asked, he was told, this is the son of Mary. In that very same dream he also saw the Dajjal (Sahih Bukhari, Kitab Ahadith al-Anbiya, Hadith 3441).

A dream that includes the Dajjal is a scene from the last days. The son of Mary seen there looks different from the Jesus (as) seen among the prophets of the past. This shows that the one who is to come is not the Jesus (as) of old, but someone else who comes with his qualities.

A complaint in the Quran

The Quran seems to have told us in advance that people would make an uproar over this very matter:

The son of Mary is mentioned “as an instance”, as an example. In other words, the name “son of Mary” would come as a likeness, and at that time many among the Holy Prophet’s (sa) own people would raise objections. That is exactly what we see today.

Then why two names? The explanation of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is this: because his task is to carry the light of Islam to the Christian world, he is the Messiah, the son of Mary; and because his task is to light up the hearts of Muslims with pure Islam, he is the Mahdi. One man, two duties. Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) made both claims together.

Questions people ask

Isn’t the hadith “there is no Mahdi except Jesus” weak?

Yes, many hadith scholars have called its chain weak. But two things should be kept in mind. First, the Promised Messiah (as) showed in Haqiqatul Mahdi that this hadith is not found only in Ibn Majah; it is also narrated in Hakim’s Mustadrak through Anas ibn Malik (ra).

Second, its message does not stand alone. Sahih Bukhari says that with the son of Mary who is to come, “your imam is from among you”; Sahih Muslim says the son of Mary himself will lead the prayer, “from among you”. The two most trusted collections and Ibn Majah all point in the same direction. On the other side, there is not a single story in Bukhari or Muslim of a separate warrior Mahdi.

But one report says: I am at the start, Jesus at the end, and the Mahdi in the middle?

Mishkat carries such a report through Abu Nu‘aym: an Ummah that has me at its beginning, Jesus son of Mary at its end and the Mahdi in its middle cannot be destroyed. Notice that here the Mahdi is placed “in the middle”, not in the last days. At the end there is only the son of Mary.

In fact, the word “Mahdi” means “one who is guided”. The Holy Prophet (sa) also used this word as a description. For example, he said, “Hold fast to my Sunnah and the Sunnah of the rightly guided Khulafa” (Sunan Abu Dawud, Kitab al-Sunnah, Hadith 4607). Here all the Khulafa are “Mahdi”, guided ones. So the Mahdi in the middle could be a guided reformer from the middle of the Ummah’s history; the promised Mahdi of the last days is the very one who is the son of Mary.

Won’t Jesus (as) pray behind the Mahdi?

This picture is heard in many sermons. But the hadith in Bukhari and Muslim do not say this. In the Sahih Muslim report we saw above, it is the son of Mary himself who leads the prayer, and the narrator explains that he will lead by the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of the Prophet (sa). When the reliable reports name only one imam, there is no room to paint a picture of two.