Content Analysis of Mahdism Narrations in the Hadith School of Qom up to the Era of Shaykh Ṣadūq

Document Type : Research Article

Author
moslem kamyab
Mahdism Flowology Department, Mahdism and Future Studies Research Institute, Islamic Science and Culture Research Institute, Qom, Iran.
10.30497/qhs.2025.248394.4151
Abstract
The Hadith School of Qom is one of the important and influential scholarly centers of the Imami tradition, which has always attracted the attention of researchers. However, existing studies on Mahdism teachings within the Qom school suffer from certain shortcomings most notably, the lack of a school-centered perspective and insufficient content analysis of the related narrations. A careful examination of the Mahdist narrations from this school provides a clearer picture of its doctrinal teachings on the subject. Accordingly, the present study, employing a descriptive–analytical method and based on content analysis, extracts 358 narrations from the hadith heritage of Qom’s traditionists in order to analyze the Mahdist teachings of this school prior to the era of Shaykh Ṣadūq. Initially, based on existing sources, the greatest number of direct transmissions are found in the works of the late Kulaynī, particularly in his book "al-Ḥujjah". In intermediary sources, however, Shaykh Ṣadūq given his residence in that region played a significant role in transmitting and preserving the Mahdist legacy of the scholars of Qom. Based on the thematic analysis, from the collected narrations approximately 468 analytical units (including sentences, phrases, and hadith contents) were extracted. These were organized into four main categories: The personal characteristics of Imam Mahdī(PBUH),The period of occultation (ghaybah),The signs of appearance (ẓuhūr), andThe period of appearance itself. Among these, the themes of the Imam’s lineage, occultation, expectation (intiẓār), epistles (tawqī‘āt), and the Imam’s behavioral characteristics in the era of appearance had the highest frequency, reflecting the dominant discourse of the Hadith School of Qom. In contrast, topics such as the physical depiction of the Imam, Mahdist supplications, and signs of the appearance held relatively minor positions among Qom’s traditionists. The presence of certain extraordinary reports further indicates the text-centered and literalist orientation of the Hadith School of Qom.
Keywords
Imam Mahdi (PBUH)
Mahdism
Qom Hadith School
Quantitative Content Analysis
Qualitative Content Analysis
Subjects
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Quran and Hadith Studies‎
Volume 19, Issue 1 - Serial Number 37
September 2025
Pages 193-219