Ahmad, Mirza Ghulam (Late 1830s–1908)
AHMAD, MIRZA GHULAM (LATE 1830s–1908)
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was born into a landowning Sunni family at Qadiyan in Gurdaspur district, Punjab, northwest India. He initiated disciples into his Ahmadiyya movement in 1889, after announcing that messages received in visions designated him the mujaddid (renewer of Islam) for the age. He also claimed to be the masih-i maw˓ud (promised Messiah), and the mahdi (rightly guided one), and to have powers of miracle and prophecy. Most Sunni Muslims deemed such a denial of khatm al-nubuwwa (finality of Muhammad's prophethood) heretical, but his movement grew to nearly twenty thousand adherents in his lifetime. He was succeeded in 1908 by the first khalifa of the Ahmadiyya movement, Maulawi Nur al-Din.
See alsoAhmadiyya .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahmad, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam. Islami usul ki filasafi. (1896). Translated by Muhammad Zafrulla Khan as The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam. Tilford, Surrey, U.K.: Islam International Publications Ltd., 1996.
Friedmann, Yohanan. Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of AhmadiReligious Thought and its Medieval Background. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1989.
Avril A. Powell