[kayti]

Thousand+ years ago. The al-Mahdi is suppose to be the 12th Imam, coming to the Muslims before the end of the world.

http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/abudawud/036.sat.html

These are some of the characteristics of the awaited one.

http://www.mahdiwatch.org has a lot of information. It is the website where I found the translation of O Ba Ma in Persian = he is with us.

[Carry_Okie]

Thousand+ years ago. The al-Mahdi is suppose to be the 12th Imam, coming to the Muslims before the end of the world.

Knew that; I was looking for more depth on the origins, particularly the date of the writings, for which the link helped a bit. As I understand it, Dajjal is Sunni where the 12th Imam is Shiite.

[Carry_Okie]

The life span of the editor places the date:

Sunan Abu-Dawud (full name Abu-Dawud Sulaiman bin Al-Aash'ath Al-Azdi as-Sijistani) was born in 202 A.H. and died in 275 A.H.

Given that the Hajj was in 622 AD, that places the recording of these verses somewhere between 844-897 AD. So much for the hunch.