God’s Chronography and Dissipative Time: Vaticinium ex Eventu in Classical and Medieval Muslim Apocalyptic Traditions

The following study discusses the structure of time in apocalyptic discourse, taking as an example apocalyptic traditions of mainstream Sunni traditionalism in the classical age of Islam and the Islamic Middle Ages. The main material is drawn from the repertoire of traditions assembled in Baghdad by Nu‘aym b. zammad in A.D. 833-838, the first comprehensive collection of such traditions, and from eschatological history of al-Barazan -, completed in Mecca in A.D. 1665. This was a tradition of political quietism, but not unlike activist Muslim messianism, it provides a reading of past events and of events to come—the history of the future—as so many signs of the end of time in a perspective of salvation history.