Introduction

The murder of the last ʿAbbasid Caliph by the invading Mongols was followed by “the deeply messianic” centuries in the Persianate world. The longue durée of the spiritual interregnum that followed this portentous murder increasingly reinforced apocalyptic fears for the looming end of the first Islamic millennium (1591 AD). There emerged millenarian movements that commonly expected the advent of a wholly new dispensation, which is foretold to be inaugurated through the universal rule of the awaited messiah. The messianism of the age was intertwined with other currents such as Sufism and ʿAlīdism, and several messianic claimants to religio-political supremacy appeared intermittently. The Safavid Sufi network, nourished from this millenarian soil, transformed from a moderate Sufi order into a militant messianic movement in the mid-fifteenth century, culminating in the young Shaykh Ismāʿīl's establishment of the Safavid state with the help of armed followers in 907/1501. Although the foundation of the Safavid state is commonly regarded as the most successful product of this Zeitgeist, recent studies have revealed that neighbouring states, such as the Ottomans and Mughals, were similarly drawn into the millenarian tendency.

The Mahdist movement of Sayyid Muḥammad al-Mushaʿshaʿ (d. 870/1466), one of the self-proclaimed Mahdīs in the middle fifteenth century, successfully established the Mushaʿshaʿid dynasty in Khūzistān province by gathering supporters from nomadic Arabs in ʿIrāq-i ʿArab. This success obliged him to restrain the irrepressible force of the very messianism that had conferred upon him authority over the region while striving to maintain his own charismatic authority.