The Twelver Shi`i messianic figure known as the Hidden Imam is alleged to have entered a period of concealment in the late ninth century that continues to the present day. In the last one hundred and fifty years, an initial reticence for anyone to contact the Imam during his “occultation” has given way to an explosion of stories and accounts detailing encounters between the Imam and many of his followers (mostly from the ranks of the clergy). This controversial topic is one that scholars of Shi`i Islam have only begun to properly explore. As a contribution to filling the existing lacuna, this paper will speculate on the main reasons for this shift, by examining the work of the prolific scholar, ‘Ali-Akbar Nahavandi (d. 1950). The little-known Nahavandi lived at a time in which many of the messianic and eschatological tensions regarding the Hidden Imam – tensions that had remained unresolved since the period of the Lesser Occultation – exploded onto the religious landscape. This paper will introduce Nahavandi and his massive magnum opus, al-‘Abqari al-hisan fi ahwal sahib al-zaman [the Fine Wonders of Beauty concerning the Circumstances of the Lord of the (Final) Age]. This important work—the largest of its kind written in Persian—contains over 220 stories and accounts of individuals (including many prominent ulama) who have encountered the Hidden Imam, and has been cited repeatedly in subsequent books on the Shi`i messianic figure in Persian and Arabic. Yet other than two passing references by Henry Corbin and Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi, the book and its author have not been mentioned by any western scholars. Special attention will be paid in this presentation to Nahavandi’s motives for writing the Fine Wonders of Beauty as reflected in the work’s highly charged chapter excoriating “heretical movements.” In doing so, this paper will suggest that the Nahavandi's work is central to understanding a critical messianic turn in modern Twelver Shi`i Islam that has reinvented the role and function of the Hidden Imam.