The Essence of Islam – Volume I — Page xxi
INTRODUCTION Hadrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmadas was born on 20 February 1835 in Qādiān, an outlying small town about 70 miles to the north east of Lahore. His family was of Persian origin and had been settled at Samarqand in Central Asia. In the first half of the 16th century, his ancestor, Mirzā Hādī Beg, moved from Samarqand into India together with a couple of hundred retainers and settled in the Eastern Punjab, where he founded the township which eventually became known as Qādiān. As Mirzā Hādī Beg was, at third or fourth remove, a cousin of Emperor Bābar, he was appointed Judge (Qādī) and administrator of a size- able tract of land which comprised over 100 villages around Qādiān. The town was named Islāmpūr Qādī. In course of time, Islāmpūr was dropped and Qādī, by easy transition, became Qādiān. The descendants of Mirzā Hādī Beg continued to flourish at Qadian, and maintained a semi-royal state under the Moghul emperors. The decline of the Moghul imperial authority, which started towards the middle of the 18th century, began to affect the fortunes of the chieftains of Qādiān also. Mirzā Gul Muhammad, the great- grandfather of Hadrat Mirza Ghulām Ahmad, was an enlightened personage, learned and pious, who made Qādiān a centre of learning and resort for scholarly di- vines. He had a very generous disposition and gave away several villages to smaller Muslim chieftains who had lost their own estates to the Sikhs whose power was on the increase at the cost of the central Moghul authority. Mirzā Gul Muhammad was succeeded by his son, Mirzā 'Atā Muhammad, during whose time Sikh depredations