The concept of the millennium was transformed in the Islamic world under the influence of remnants of Central Eastern and Judeo-Christian mythology into a type of Messianism known as Mahdism.

In Turkish history, from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, there were a number of Mahdist uprisings, two of which, the Bābāʾī revolt in 1240 in the Seljuk period and the Shaykh Badr al-Dīn revolt in 1416 in the Ottoman period, were of particular importance as regards both their immediate and subsequent effects. Apart from these…