A Gift for An-Nadwah — Page v
v ِ ﺑِﺴْﻢِ اﻟﻠɟȹِ اﻟﺮَّمحْٰﻦِ اﻟﺮَّﺣِﻴْﻢ I NTRODUCTION A BOUT THE A UTHOR Born in 1835 in Qadian (India), Hadrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Promised Messiah and Mahdi as , devoted him- self to the study of the Holy Quran and to a life of prayer and contemplation. Finding Islam the constant target of theological attacks and the fortunes of the Muslims at a low ebb, he undertook the vindication and exposition of Islam. In his vast corpus of writings (including his Magnus Opus Barahin-e-Ahmadiyyah ), his lectures, discourses, reli- gious debates etc. , he argued that Islam was a living faith and the only religion capable of establishing a relationship between man and his creator. The teachings contained in the Holy Quran and the Law promulgated by Islam were designed to raise man to moral, intellectual and spiritual perfection. He announced that God had appointed him the Messiah and Mahdi as mentioned in the prophecies of the Bible, the Holy Quran and Hadith. In 1889 he began to ac- cept initiates into the Ahmadiyyah Jam a ‘at. The Jama'at which he founded is now established in almost two hun- dred countries. His eighty books are written mostly in Ur- du, but a significant proportion of his writings are also in Arabic and Persian. A BOUT THE B OOK By 1902, over two decades had elapsed since the Promised