As 1999 came to a close, calamities were foretold. At the stroke of midnight on December 31, there would be havoc: banks would collapse, el...
As 1999 came to a close, calamities were foretold. At the stroke of midnight on December 31, there would be havoc: banks would collapse, electrical grids would fail and planes would fall out of the sky. The fear was that as the year ticked over from ’99 to ’00, computers would be unable to read the new date and would reset themselves, causing huge infrastructural collapse.
The anxieties of 1999 had a technological premise that, mercifully, turned out to be unfounded. But if computers and coding hadn’t existed, something else would have sparked dramatic predictions at that time. As the calendar moves from one millennium to the next, humans tend to expect major events, whether this takes the form of upheavals or miracles, the end of the world or the dawn of a new era.
It was just like that when 1592 was drawing near. This was the thousandth year in the Hijri calendar and for several years prior the Muslim world was gripped with expectation. Many believed a new Prophet would manifest himself in 1000 AH. As Azfar Moin describes in his book, The Millennial Sovereign, while most thought the mujaddid or Renewer would be a religious leader, some rulers were not above hinting that they were...
