Mokanna

Mokanna (i.e. the Concealed) is the name of a Mohammedan prophet who flourished about A.D. 778. He was so called because, as the Mohammedans say, "he shrouded from his followers the excessive glory of his human face divine with a golden mask." He was the first who introduced into Islamism the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Mokanna taught that God had assumed a human form, had commanded the angels to adore the first man, and from that time the divine nature had descended from prophet to prophet to Abu Moslem, the founder of the Abassides, and finally to himself. He -afterwards added the Indian dogma of the incarnation of the human and divine nature, as well as the metempsychosis adopted by the Ghullats. See Madden, Hist. of the Turkish Empire, 2:169. SEE MOHAMMEDAN SECTS.