Many Happy Returns, Twelfth Imam!

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About 65 miles south of Tehran, there lies Jamkaran, a tiny, run-down mosque which in the past 20 years has been designated as the spot the Mahdi went into concealment. Pious Iranians, with government help, have transformed the site into a massive devotional center for the Mahdi, and on weekends tens of thousands of Iranian pilgrims peer down the well where legend says he is hiding. Some visitors claim to have seen the Mahdi there, and report things he allegedly said to them. More commonly, people write him letters asking for blessing, and drop them down the well (on the male or female side). Caretakers fish the letters out regularly, and burn them nearby. If you happen to be walking through the area, it's common to find half-scorched fragments of letters to the Mahdi in the grass. On the occasion of the Mahdi's birthday this year, the government installed 60 new payphones at Jamkaran, and extended Iran's mobile network coverage to the site.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad adores the Twelfth Imam, and has dedicated much of his public speeches to pleading for his return, and expounding on the importance of preparing for it. He invokes the Mahdi so frequently, is so suggestive of his own divine guidance, that the ordinary, devout Iranian could be easily made to think the two enjoy a special connection. These religious tendencies irritate many clerics in Iran's theological center, Qom, and serious religious scholars, who feel the president is using the Mahdi mythology to expand his own power, and in the process conflating the Mahdi's attributes with those of God.

But as abstract as it may sound, Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic need the Twelfth Imam. Iran's system of absolute rule by the clergy is vested in the Mahdi's disappearance, for in his absence the ayatullahs function as his deputies on earth. The legitimacy of the Islamic system and the credibility of the establishment clergy are founded on the Twelfth Imam. Which is why the President mentions him at every opportunity, why the Jamkaran pilgrimage site is becoming a small city. And of course, why his birthday is celebrated with unparalleled passion, at high volume.