The Ramadan eclipses of 1894: a sign of the Mahdi?

March 1894. Qadian, a small village in the Punjab. It is the thirteenth of Ramadan. After sunset people look up and see a dark shadow sliding across the nearly full moon. A lunar eclipse.

Fifteen days later, on the twenty-eighth of the same Ramadan, a Friday morning, the shadow falls on the sun. Those who knew their hadith remembered an old prophecy. And in Qadian, at that very time, lived a man who had claimed a few years earlier that he was the Promised Messiah and Mahdi.

Written down a thousand years earlier

The famous hadith scholar Ali ibn Umar al-Daraqutni (rh), in the fourth century of the Hijrah, recorded a narration in his Sunan. Its narrator is Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (rh), a descendant of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (sa):

The Quran, too, mentions the eclipse of the moon and the sun as a sign of the last days:

Working out “the first night” and “the middle day”

Under the laws Allah has set for the movement of the moon and the sun, a lunar eclipse can happen only near the full moon, on the nights of the 13th, 14th or 15th of the lunar month. And a solar eclipse can happen only near the new moon, on the 27th, 28th or 29th.

So “the first night” of the lunar eclipse means the 13th, and “the middle day” of the solar eclipse means the 28th. The hadith uses the word qamar for the moon, not hilal. In Arabic dictionaries, the thin moon of the first two or three nights is called hilal; after that it is qamar. In other words, the word itself tells us this is not about the crescent of the first of Ramadan.

Now compare this with history. On the 13th of Ramadan 1311 AH (21 March 1894), in the evening, there was a lunar eclipse, and on the 28th (6 April 1894), on Friday morning, a solar eclipse. Both were visible from India. The Promised Messiah (as) and his companions watched these eclipses from Qadian. Newspapers of the time, Azad and the Civil and Military Gazette, reported them, and these dates also appear in Oppolzer’s famous table of eclipses.

The following year, in Ramadan 1312 AH (March 1895), the same two eclipses took place again on the same dates in the western hemisphere.

A sign announced in advance

The Promised Messiah (as) wrote a book in Arabic about this sign, called Nurul Haq. He showed that the words “first” and “middle” were fulfilled in two ways: in the dates, and in the timing too. The lunar eclipse came not only on the first night but at the start of the night; and the solar eclipse ended before noon, within the first half of the day.

In one sermon, the Fifth Khalifa of the Messiah (aba) quoted these words of the Promised Messiah (as): an eclipse happening after the claim of the awaited one is something no human being can arrange. Even where our leaflets have not reached, this eclipse of the moon and the sun has announced that the age of the awaited one has come.

More remarkable still, many years before this sign, a revelation of his had been published in Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya: “Say, I have a testimony from Allah, will you then accept?” Later he wrote, on oath, that this revelation was about this very sign of the eclipses (Tohfa-e-Golarhviyya, p. 53). In Haqiqatul Wahi he also wrote that Allah had told him of this sign before it appeared, and that it had been announced to hundreds of thousands of people (Haqiqatul Wahi, p. 195).

Questions people ask

Haven’t eclipses of the moon and sun happened in Ramadan many times before?

Yes, they have, and the Promised Messiah (as) never denied it. Read the hadith carefully: lam takuna, “two (signs) which have never appeared”. The verb is feminine, and in Arabic the word ayah (sign) is feminine too. In other words, it is saying that such eclipses had never before come as a sign of someone’s truth. He wrote that this prophecy has four parts: a lunar eclipse on the first night, a solar eclipse on the middle day, the month of Ramadan, and the presence of a claimant who is being rejected (Tohfa-e-Golarhviyya, p. 29).

He even offered a reward of one thousand rupees as a challenge: show from history that someone claimed to have come from Allah and that, in his time, the moon and the sun were eclipsed like this in Ramadan (Nurul Haq, part 2). No one was able to produce such an example.

But this hadith does not reach the Holy Prophet (sa); isn’t it the word of Imam Baqir?

The chain of this hadith goes back to Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (rh). But think about it: this is a precise piece of news about the unseen, giving the month, the dates and the events a thousand years ahead. No one can say such a thing from his own opinion. An imam of the Ahl al-Bayt said it, and it was recorded in many books of both the Sunni and Shia traditions.

Most importantly, the sky itself has testified that the hadith is true. The Quran says that Allah does not reveal His secrets to anyone, “Except to him whom He chooses, namely a Messenger of His” (Surah Al-Jinn 72:27-28). News that has been fulfilled exactly is the news of Allah’s Messenger. That is why the Promised Messiah (as) wrote that there is no doubt this hadith is from the Messenger of Allah (sa).

Doesn’t “first night” mean the 1st of Ramadan, and “middle” the 15th?

A lunar eclipse on the 1st of Ramadan is naturally impossible, because then the moon is almost on the same side as the sun; a solar eclipse on the 15th is also impossible. Read that way, the Holy Prophet’s (sa) news would rest on something that goes against the laws Allah Himself made. The Quran says, “The sun and the moon run their courses according to a fixed reckoning” (Surah Ar-Rahman 55:6). The word qamar in the hadith also rules out the thin moon of the first night. So the correct meaning is the first and the middle of the possible eclipse nights and days, and that is exactly what happened.