“The Hour will come, there is no doubt!” In many Druze shrines in Lebanon, calligraphies of this Qur'anic verse (Q 40:59) are found hanging on the walls and seem to be pointing out that something massive is going to happen. Not immediately obvious, in the Druze understanding, this pronouncement does not refer to the coming of Judgment Day in its common Islamic sense, but to the triumphant return of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amri llah who in Druze thinking was the final manifestation to humankind of God’s human aspect (nasut). Most dramatically, this second coming and triumphant return is imagined in a specific kind of millenarian Druze poetry which mostly seems to date from the 17th–19th century CE. These poems imagine how gigantic armies, led by the human manifestations of the five hypostases (hudud) of Druze cosmogony, will come marching in from the Far East, paving the way for the second appearance of al-Hakim, overthrowing an order which is perceived to be unjust, setting things right, taking revenge, and making justice prevail. Reflecting the centrality of these massive armies in the unfolding events, these poems are often referred to as 'Askariyyat, derived from Arabic 'askar “army.” This presentation seeks to achieve several goals: (1) Based on research on Druze manuscripts, it will offer a brief introduction to this relatively unknown kind of poetry and its relation to Druze theological thinking; (2) it will contend that, far from being of merely niche philological interest, knowledge of the imagery and the events figured in these poems (knowledge accessible only through hard and painstaking philological work) allows to understand pervasive elements of popular Druze iconography that would otherwise remain obscure; (3) it will, in the form of two concrete examples, show how this knowledge furthermore can render intelligible situations arising during the course of anthropological fieldwork; (4) finally, this presentation will insist on the importance of an interdisciplinary outlook, suggesting that experiences made and questions arising during philological research can be valuable with regard to anthropological research.