Shîʿitic influence, with eschatological conceptions formerly borrowed by Islâm from Christianity.
The orthodox Mahdî differs from that of the Shiʿah in many ways. He is not an imâm returning after centuries of disappearance, but a descendant of Mohammed, coming into the world in the ordinary way to fulfil the ideal of the Khalifate. He does not re-establish the legitimate line of successors of the Prophet; but he renews the glorious tradition of the Khalifate, which after the first thirty years was dragged into the general deterioration, common to all human beings. The prophecies concerning his appearance are sometimes of an equally supernatural kind as those of the Shîʿites, so that the period of his coming has passed more and more from the political sphere to which it originally belonged, into that of eschatology. Yet, naturally, it is easier for a popular leader to make himself regarded as the orthodox Mahdî than to play the part of the returned imâm. Mohammedan rulers have had more trouble than they cared for with candidates for the dignity of the Mahdî; and it is not surprising that in official Turkish circles there is a tendency to simplify the Messianic expectation by giving the fullest weight to this traditional saying of Mohammed: "There is no mahdî but Jesus," seeing that Jesus must come from the clouds, whereas other mahdîs may arise from human society.
In the orthodox expectation of the Mahdî the Moslim theory has most sharply expressed its
