The Dajjal

The Dajjal (Arabic al-Masih ad-Dajjal, "the false Messiah") is the central deceptive figure of Islamic eschatology, the counterpart to the Antichrist of Christian tradition. He appears among the major signs before the Hour, claims to be God, and leads many astray, until he is killed by the returned Isa (Jesus) at the gate of Ludd (near Jerusalem).

The description

The hadith literature gives the Dajjal a vivid, consistent portrait. He is a man, reddish, curly-haired, with one eye, described as if his eye were a floating grape or a protuberant defect; the Arabic letters k-f-r ("unbelief") are said to be written on his forehead, legible to every believer. He travels the earth with unmatched speed, accompanied by a mountain of bread (plenty) and a river of fire (ordeal), showing paradise from one hand and hell from the other. He can raise the dead and perform other wonders, all as deception.

The trial

The Dajjal's appearance is the great fitna, or trial, of the end times. He will mislead vast numbers, and the faithful are warned to resist him, even fleeing to the safety of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina, which he cannot enter. His reign is short in most accounts, forty days (the last of which is like a year), before the returned Isa descends and pursues him to the gate of Ludd, where he kills him with a spear.

Comparison with the Antichrist

The Dajjal and the Antichrist share the role of the end-times deceiver who mimics the divine and is defeated by the returning righteous one. They likely share a common background in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic figures (the "false christs" of the Gospels, the Antiochus Epiphanes type). But the Dajjal is more clearly a test than a cosmic rebel: his purpose is to separate the faithful from the deceived, and his defeat restores justice rather than ending the world. As with much of Islamic Eschatology, he is one figure in a sequence, not the climax.

Why he endures

The Dajjal remains a living figure in popular Muslim eschatology; in many periods and regions, political or religious opponents have been denounced as "the Dajjal" of their age. Like the Antichrist in Christianity, he is a flexible symbol for the ultimate deception, and his story keeps the tradition's end-times expectation tethered to a concrete, recognizable enemy of the faith.