These are two great harms. People often believed in direct contact with the Mahdi and receiving his teachings, such as what Al-Sha'rani narrated about spiritual Sufi gatherings, and that he was a member of this association. He was a friend of Al-Sha'rani named Sheikh Hassan Al-Iraqi, who confided in him that in his youth he lived in Damascus and that the Mahdi stayed with him for a week. He learned from him the methods of remembrance and asceticism, and that he would ask the Mahdi about anything that was unclear to him. This contact caused him to live a long life, as Al-Iraqi was 127 years old when he told this story.

He later traveled to India and China, then returned to Egypt, but they prevented him from entering. There are many stories about contact with the Mahdi and the hidden Imams. This idea filled people's minds until Ibn Hajar Al-Haythami investigated it. The question revolved around whether he was asked about a group of people who believed that a man who had died forty years ago was the awaited Mahdi whose appearance was promised at the end of time, and they believed that whoever denied his Mahdiship was an infidel. What was his opinion on that? This was caused by him writing a book on the hadiths of the Mahdi and Mahdiship, which he called "The Concise Statement on