ABDULRAHMAN AL YAMANI

Originally from Yemen, he spent half of his life in Saudi Arabia where he studied with the same scholars who had been Juhayman's and his bedouin brethren's teachers. When he met Juhayman personally and was struck by his charisma. Faithful to him and his teachings even when the group had to go underground after a split-up in the late 1970s, Yamani fully embraced Juhayman's apocalyptic vision: only the Mahdi (the Islamic Messiah) could bring the much needed renovation to the world that ultimately would lead to the creation of a new, pure Islamic State. After the siege, he became a scholar and has since then written many books on Islamic and Islam-related topics.