Syria’s Dabiq central to Daesh vision of final, apocalyptic battle

BEIRUT: Syrian rebels said they captured the village of Dabiq on Sunday, forcing Daesh from a stronghold where it had promised to fight a final, apocalyptic battle with the West.
The town in Aleppo province has little military value but it has become a byword among Daesh supporters for the struggle against the West and its allies.
Daesh has also named its online magazine after the town.
The Dabiq prophesy, mentioned in canonical sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is told in several different versions, but all feature a great battle between a Muslim army and the forces of “Rome,” a reference to the Christian west.
Daesh supporters have taken a wide range of recent events as further evidence of its truth.
Some have kept a close count of the US-led coalition’s members — now at 64 countries — in anticipation of when the prophecy’s “80 banners” are reached.
Others have seen Turkish participation in the fight against Daesh as proof of the prophecy, which says Muslim victory in Dabiq will be followed by an assault on Constantinople, the former capital of the Christian Byzantines and present-day Istanbul.
Situated 38 kilometers (28 miles) north of Aleppo and close to the border with Turkey, Dabiq is a small rural town of low brick houses, surrounded by flat agricultural land.
The area was the site of a key battle in 1516 between the Ottoman Sultan Selim — also known as Selim the Grim — and the Mamluks who ruled Egypt.
Selim’s forces smashed a Mamluk army there and went on to conquer much of the Middle East.
In August, Turkey launched an unprecedented operation inside Syria to fight Daesh, 500 years to the day after Selim’s forces beat the Mamluks.
Earlier this week, Daesh downplayed the importance of the rebel advance on the town.
“These hit-and-run battles in Dabiq and its outskirts — the lesser Dabiq battle — will end in the greater Dabiq epic,” it said in a pamphlet published online Thursday.
The group’s propaganda videos frequently use an audio clip from a speech by slain Jordanian militants Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, whose Al-Qaeda in Iraq evolved into the Daesh group.
“The spark has been ignited in Iraq, and its flames will grow, God willing, until they burn the Crusader armies in Dabiq,” he is heard saying.