CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Galamb, János Mihály |
|---|---|
| Title | South Arabian Messiahs: A Motif in Legends, History, and Eschatology in the Early Islamic Period (from ca. 650 to ca. 850) |
| Summary | This thesis aims to contribute to the study of early Islamic eschatology through the analysis of the figure of the future Yemenite ruler. The study of Islamic eschatology gained momentum in the last three decades of the 20th century that was brought about by a shift of scholars’ attention to non-canonical sources. During this upsurge of scholarly works about Islamic eschatology the particular figure, an expected ruler of Yemenite lineage, received less attention than some other eschatological figures, such as the ubiquitous Mahdī and Sufyānī. However, this is one of the few eschatological figures who appears in some of most central texts of Sunni Islam. The vision of a future Yemenite ruler also appears in wide array of literary, historical, encyclopaedic, and religious works. However, scholars may have not exploited this plurality to its fullest potential so far and have rarely compared the multiplicity of forms in which predictions about this figure were represented in roughly the same period. This characteristic of the earlier scholarship necessitated a synthetic approach to the subject; hence I combine the examination of various original sources with the findings of secondary literature on them. Through this synthetic approach, I aim to present a coherent picture about the variations and modalities by which expectations about this figure were formulated. I examine three types of sources in this work. I discuss historico-legendary books on Ancient South Arabia, historical and encyclopaedic texts mentioning Umayyad age rebels, and the historico-mantic segments of collections containing Islamic eschatological lore. My general aim is to uncover the variety readings of this figure and the notions associated with him. These readings and associated notions do not always warrant the understanding of this figure as messianic. Instead, two chief tasks were expected to be executed by this figure. First, he was expected to return the hegemony the pre-Islamic South Arabians over the world– a widespread notion among Muslims and Arabs in the first Islamic centuries. Second, he was also a token of the eventual end of the rule of the Qurayš – the tribe of the Prophet Muḥammmad. |
| Supervisor | Al-Azmeh, Aziz |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/galamb_janos.pdf |
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