Ahmed al-Hasan
First Mahdi
Ahmed al-Hasan (Arabic: أحمد الحسن, romanized: ʾAḥmad al-Ḥasan) is an Iraqi Shia Muslim religious leader. He has been called the most prominent of figures claiming to be the pre-messianic al-Yamani, in the upheaval following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. In Twelver Shi'ism Islam, the majority religion of Iraq, al-Yamani is "the deputy of the Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, and a precursor to his Reappearance" and to End Times.
Ahmed al-Hasan, who was born in Iraq, started his call in 1999 and began a public "religious call" in 2002. He was last seen, photographed, and interviewed in 2007, and is presumed to have gone into hiding following the Battle of Najaf sometime in 2008. An office in Najaf claims to exclusively speak for him through various social media platforms including Facebook and Telegram, which his followers believe to be managed by Ahmed al-Hasan himself.
Life
Ahmed al-Hasan was born in Basra, Iraq. He is the son of Ismael, son of Saleh, son of Hussain, son of Salman, who Ahmed claims to be son of Muhammad al-Mahdi. His uncle, Muhsin ibn Saleh, claims that the family tree traces back to Muhammad al-Mahdi. Along with two tribal Sheikhs among others, Sheikh Idaan Khizaawi Muhammad and Sheikh Shayaa' Ismail, who testify that the family tree traces back to Muhammad al-Mahdi.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ahmed al-Hasan” as first Mahdi. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as first Mahdi. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2903026. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2003, 1999, 2002 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ahmed al-Hasan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.