The belief in the coming of the Mahdi is so entrenched that over the years, people claiming to be the Mahdi have appeared across the Muslim world – in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East – and throughout history since the birth of Islam (610 AD). For the sake of this article, we will call them pseudo-Mahdis or false claimants of Mahdi. In Islamic literature, the Mahdi is a Messianic figure...