Summary Article: Imam Al-Mahdi in the Narrations of Imam Al-Sajad: an Interpretive Study
Hakim Al-Keraity, Ph.D.
Translated by: Mujtaba Al-Helu
The Issue of Imam Al-Mahdi has been one of the greatest concerns since the beginning of Islam after the Prophet had talked about it extensively. Therefore, several interpretation schools have emerged in this respect, yet all agreeing upon the issue of the Debut. Ahlulbait, on the other hand, worked on this specific field comprehensively to overcome all the misunderstandings, as long as this issue of Imamate is one of the fundamental issues of the Islamic thought. The Occultation of Imam Al-Mahdi is crucial to one’s belief, because he is required to wait for the concealed Imam. God has appointed this Occulation of the Imam as a trial for the believers.
This study investigates the issue of the Occultation of Imam Al-Mahdi through a linguistic analysis of the narrations from Imam Al-Sajad.
The method of analysis followed here is that of semantic and pragmatic interpretation to extract the historical contextual meaning of those narrations. This does not mean that this paper neglects other methods of interpretation, because it aims at acquiring a comprehensive understanding of this field of study.
