The signs of the appearance of the Mahdi are the collection of events, according to Islamic eschatology, that will occur before the arrival of the Mahdi, The signs differ based on Sunni and Shiabranches of Islam.
Wild animals will communicate with humans, and humans will communicate with objects.[note 29][24]
Lightning and thunder will become more prevalent.[note 30]
There will be a special greeting for people of distinction.[note 22]
Trade will become so widespread that a woman will help her husband in business.[note 22]
No truly honest man will remain and no one will be trusted.[note 31][25]
Only the worst people will be left; they will not know any good nor forbid any evil (i.e. No one will say there is no god but Allah).[note 30]
Nations will call each other to destroy Islam by any and every means.[note 22]
Islamic knowledge will be passed on, but no one will follow it correctly.[note 32][26]
Muslim rulers will come who do not follow the guidance and tradition of the Sunnah. Some of their men will have the hearts of devils in a human body.[note 33][27]
Stinginess will become more widespread and honorable people will perish.[note 34]
A man will obey his wife and disobey his mother, and treat his friend kindly while shunning his father.[note 35][28]
Muslims shall fight against a nation who wear shoes made of hair and with faces like hammered shields, with red complexions and small eyes.[note 37][29]
Emergence of an army, from Yemen, that will make Islam dominant.[note 41][31]
An Arab king will die. There will be disagreement concerning succession. Then a man will emerge from Medina. He will hurry to Mecca, and the people of Mecca will come out to him and urge him and try to force him to accept the Bai'aa. One of the last of the lesser signs, and which will signal the coming of the 10 major signs is the appearance of the Mahdi.[note 42][32][33][34]
Lunar eclipse on the first night in the month of Ramadhan and solar eclipse in middle of it, with varying interpretations (1st/15th of Ramadhan) or (13th/28th of Ramadhan). It is largely accepted among past scholars.[35]
Successive wars and death of many people in the world[36]
Creation and development of science and knowledge in Qom[37]
Increasing injustice and corruption in the world[38]
People will fornicate on the roads "like donkeys".[citation needed]
A pleasant breeze will blow from the south that shall cause all believers to die peacefully.[citation needed]
Gabriel will shout loudly and it will be heard from the sky and in other interpretations it is stated to be that "...some of the people of Mecca will come to him, bring him out against his will and swear allegiance to him between the Corner and the Maqam...". Hence, that loud cry may be actually from the people present at the Kaaba on that particular day.
According to some narrations Sufyani, one of the descendants of Abu Sufyan, will arise before Mahdi's appearance.[40] He has been depicted as an outwardly devout man that will take care to remember Allah at all times. But in reality he will be the most wicked man in the world. He will upraise during the Rajab. After he realizes that Mahdi has appeared, he will send away an army to fight him. Some books say that the army of Sufyani before getting to the army of Mahdi will sink into the earth in the Bayda, a desert between Mecca and Medina.[41][42][43] The appearance of Sufyani is mentioned in both Shia and Sunni narrations.[42][44]
In some narrations, the appearance of Yamani is mentioned as one of the certain signs of twelfth Imam's reappearance.[40][45][46] The fifth Shia Imam, Muhammad al-Baqir, described Yamani in detail in a hadith:"... among these individuals (Sufyani, Yamani and Khorasani) the Yamani is the closest to guidance, for he calls the people to join the Mahdi. When he rises, the trading of weapons will be prohibited for every Muslim. When he rises, join him immediately, for his flag is the flag of guidance and prosperity and no Muslim should oppose it. Any one who does so will go to hell, because the Yamani calls to the right path."[41] Some sources mention that the Yamani and the Khurasani will be allied against the Sufyani.[47]
The third certain sign that is mentioned in the above narration is the loud cry in the sky.[40] According to tradition two cries will be heard. In the first of them Gabriel will call the name of Al-Qa'im and his father and say that truth is with Ali and his Shia. All people will hear Jibreel's cry in their own language.[48] In a tradition of Ja'far al-Sadiq that is narrated by Zurarah ibn A'yan, it is said that after this cry Shaitan will call certainly, so and so and their followers are victorious ones and his meaning is a man from Banu Umayya. He adds that the person who make the first cry says the truth.[49]
Al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah will be one of the descendants of Husayn ibn Ali.[40][50] He will be without any sin or crime; yet he will be murdered.[39] According to many narrations, he will be the envoy of Mahdi to Mecca before his reappearance. When he arrives in Mecca and delivers his message, the people of Mecca will slay him near the Kaaba.
The sinking of Sufyani's army into the earth is a certain sign of reappearance of Mahdi.[40] In addition to above-mentioned hadith of Ja'far Sadiq, in a hadith Ali ibn Abi Talib mentions that Sufyani's army will sink into the earth, and be swallowed up, in the land of Bayda.[51][52][39][40]
^Narrated with sound chains from Dhu Mikhbar al-Najashi by Abu Dawud, Ahmad, Ibn Majah, Ibn Hibban, and al-Hakim who declared it sahih and al-Dhahabi concurred. See Shaykh Shu`ayb Arna'ut's documentation of this hadith in his edition of Sahih Ibn Hibban (15:101–103 #6708–6709).
^Rowson, Everett K. (30 December 2012) [15 December 2004]. "HOMOSEXUALITY ii. IN ISLAMIC LAW". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. XII/4. New York: Columbia University. pp. 441–445. ISSN2330-4804. Archived from the original on 17 May 2013. Retrieved 13 April 2021. While there are no references to homosexuality in the hadith collections of Boḵāri and Moslem, and no hadith at all reporting an actual occasion in which the Prophet dealt with it in any way, the other "canonical" collections do record, in various forms, his condemnation of the "act of the people of Lot," usually in the form of a command to "Kill both the active and passive partner." Non-canonical hadith add little more, except for one labeling sexual relations between women (sehāq) a form of fornication (zenā) and another declaring that men marrying boys will be one of the signs of the eschaton. All the relevant hadith are conveniently brought together in a series of monographs attacking the sin of sodomy (ḏamm al-lewāt), the earliest of which is that of al-Hayṯam b. Ḵalaf Duri (d. 307/919) but which were still being produced as late as the eleventh/seventeenth century.
