An Investigation on Mahdism Records of Seyyed Hashem Bahrani with the Focus on the Book of “Halyat al-Abrar”

The book “Hilyat al-Abrar”, about the life of the infallibles (A.S) is written by Seyyed Hashem Bahrani, the narrator of hadiths at 11th and 12th century after hijrat. Due to its great resemblance to the book “Bahar al-Anwar” in the life history section of the Imams, this book has a similar position. The final part of the book in volume 5 contains Mahdism traditions. Although Bahrani has written three independent books, Hailyat al-Abrar has had unparalleled comprehensiveness in various subjects of Mahdism. The study of Mahdism writings of Bahrani brings about more awareness of the Mahdism thoughts of Akhbarian in the Safavid period- the era of the revival of Akhbarism-. Moreover, it results in identifying the characteristics of Bahraini hadithism. In addition, the other important aspects include the discussion of the existence of many Mahdism traditions in public sources, acquaintance with the sources that are currently missing, but the author mentioned them, and how the political conditions of the Safavid period affected Shiite Mahdism. A review with regard to the document and text of the book indicates the maximum of Ahkbarism approach to convey the contents of his book. The descriptive-analytic research method is accompanied with the historical, authority-related, and hadithi approaches.