The Last Roman Emperor, the Mahdī, and Jerusalem

I suggest in this study that the Arabic-Islamic apocalyptic writings should be compared with their Christian precursors and contemporaries, especially those written in Syriac. Recent scholarship on early Islam has undergone an important paradigm shift, increasingly viewing Islam not as a full rupture; rather, Islam was a distinctive part of the late antique world of the Near East. This can also be seen in the genre of apocalyptic writing. Indeed, many of the motifs appearing in Christian apocalypses were taken over by the Muslims. I argue that eschatological speculation in late antiquity was marked by a shared expectation among Jews, Christians, and Muslims of a redeeming, this-worldly warrior-king. Apocalyptic speculation offered consolation during conflict, the most pressing concern in the seventh century CE being the war between the Byzantine empire and the Muslim caliphate. These tensions – Byzantine fears of further Muslim expansion, Muslim concerns over Byzantine reconquest, and the anxious observations of Near Eastern Jews and Christians – shaped a common apocalyptic imagination.