ABSTRACT
The story of Abdul-Baha and Muhammad Abduh is part of the history of religious dissidence in the nineteenth-century Middle East. In Muslim historical experience, dissidence towards the religious and political establishment had messianic undertones. The revolt of al-Mukhtar in Kufa against the Umayyad caliph Yazid was fought in the name of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, a son of Ali, who was called al-Mahdi. The Abbasid revolution likewise exploited millenarian hopes for the return to a just and truly Islamic government established by an acceptable Hashimid candidate (al-rid.a¯ min a¯l Muh˙
ammad ) for the caliphate. The Safavid dynasty came to power in Iran as a messianic movement around the charismatic and divine authority of Shah Ismail.
