Signs of the advent of Imam Mahdi (as) at the end of time
Shiites believe that Imam Mahdi (as), the twelfth Imam of the Shiites, is a descendant of the Prophet of Islam and the only child of Imam Hassan Askari (as), which is now the holy shrine of Imam Hassan Askari in the city of Samarra in Iraq.
Shiites believe that after the death of the Prophet, for various reasons, which are also mentioned in the biography of Imam Ali (AS) on this site, the real successor of the Prophet Imam Ali and then his eldest son Imam Hassan, then his brother Imam Hussein. The people of Kufa started their revolutionary movement to save the Muslim Ummah, but they and their Ahl al-Bayt and their allies were killed and captured in a very tragic way.
Because God had willed that the Imamate and succession of the Prophet remain in his family. Therefore, the middle son of the Imam, known as Ali, was ill in the desert of Karbala and was unable to fight and jihad, so God saved his life. He worshiped Zayn al-Abidin or because he prostrated a lot, he was known as Imam Sajjad.
“It is narrated that Imam Sajjad, forty years after the Karbala incident, whenever he saw water or slaughtered an animal, the scene of Karbala was associated with him and he cried.”
In any case, after the Karbala incident, none of the Imams took any action to take back the caliphate of the Prophet, given the current situation and the danger of repeating the Karbala incident. And because of the love they had in the hearts of the believers, the rulers of the time always closely monitored them and finally martyred each of them in some way. The Imams became known as Asgaris, because the rulers of Bani Abbas had heard that there were 12 Imams, and the last of them was a rebel against oppression. Therefore, this pressure was more on Imam Hassan Asgari (AS), who is the father of Imam Mahdi, and maybe during his 6 years of Imamate, he was mainly in prison or confinement.
The rulers of Bani Abbas were careful to see who the Imam’s wife would be in order to monitor his child and possibly kill him. But God willed that the Imam, at his father’s command, marry a slave girl bought from Roman captives who was the grandson of the Roman emperor. Imam Mahdi may not have been the child of a slave girl, so because Imam Hassan Asgari (AS) did not have a free wife, they explicitly denied the existence of a child for her. However, the birth of that great Imam also had a special fate that the Abbasid rulers denied the existence of a child for him. Finally, when Imam Mahdi was still 5 years old, they decided to kill his noble father at the age of 28.
Shiites believe that Imam Mahdi has two types absences which are known as minor absence and cobra absence . Soghra’s(minor) absence lasted for 70 years, with the Imam directly communicating only with people he trusted, and four people known as the four deputies, who were the Imam’s liaison with the people to solve the Shiite problem and answer religious questions. After 70 years, the Imam informs his fourth deputy, Mohammad Samri, that the death of his deputy is imminent, and that he does not appoint anyone as his successor to communicate with the Imam. Because the absence of cobra (big) has begun and its duration is determined by God. And no one else can claim his relationship and his deputy, and whoever makes such a claim is a liar.
