Intellectually and emotionally, it filled his life and encompassed his conscience. He might have begun to entertain a delusion that God had prepared him for a great task of guiding people. Then this feeling began to develop within him until it became a conviction that he was the Mahdi who would establish justice and remove oppression. This conviction found validation in the hadiths he had read concerning the awaited Mahdi, heralding him as a manifestation of religion and an achiever of good. This would drive him to declare himself the Mahdi and spread this among his followers. Thus, the Mahdi-ship would be born of delusion, not of deceit, trickery, or obfuscation. Delusion is not contradictory to sincerity. While it shares with obfuscation the characteristic of falsehood, it differs from it in its lack of intent to deceive or to harm others.

As for what has been narrated of absurdities and methods of deception, if we contrast them with what we have described above regarding sincerity, then we must accept one of two possibilities: either the narrations are true, which would lead to the absence of sincerity and the presence of deceit and trickery, or they are fabrications by detractors and exaggerations by some historians, which would lead to the affirmation of sincerity and truthfulness.

It is not strange that the Mahdi would employ some stratagems and tricks to gain supporters, relying on his rhetorical brilliance and his ability to influence, exploiting the simplicity of the people and their tribal loyalties. However, for the matter to escalate to such a blatant and religiously unacceptable deception, we lean towards it being an exaggeration by the opponents of the Almohad movement and those who are hostile to it, in their effort to discredit it and attack its foundations. This is especially true since these slanders were only reported with affirmation by historians known for their opposition to the Almohad call, particularly Ibn Idhari, Ibn al-Athir, and Ibn Abi Zar', or by those who transmitted from them. It is not inconceivable that these individuals were lenient in transmitting them without subjecting them to scrutiny.

See: Julien: History of North Africa, 1/100. Abdullah Gunnun also subscribes to this view in "Moroccan Brilliance" (p. 21). Al-Marrakushi and Ibn Khaldun, whom we consider to be among the most moderate historians in their stance towards the Almohads, did not mention these events.