Mujaddid

A mujaddid (Arabic: مجدد) is an Islamic term for one who brings "renewal" (تجديد, tajdid) to the religion. According to the popular Muslim tradition, it refers to a person who appears at the turn of every century of the Islamic calendar to revitalizeIslam, cleansing it of extraneous elements and restoring it to its pristine purity. In contemporary times, a mujaddid is looked upon as the greatest Muslim of a century.

The concept is based on a hadith (a saying of Islamic prophet Muhammad), recorded by Abu Dawood, narrated by Abu Hurairah who mentioned that Muhammad said:

Allah will raise for this community at the end of every 100 years the one who will renovate its religion for it.

Ikhtilaf (disagreements) exist among different hadith viewers. Some scholars have interpreted that the term mujaddid can also be occasionally understood as plural.

Mujaddids can include prominent scholars and pious rulers. After the fall of the universal Abbasid Caliphate in 1258, the title of Mujaddid began to be claimed by secular rulers to assert the notion of a divinely appointed ruler and that they were given the right to rule by God. One of the first to do this was the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh (1405-1447), followed even more strongly by Uzun Hasan (1452-1478).