Hazrat Maulvi Nooruddin - Khalifatul-Masih I — Page 253
Hadrat Maulw i Nur-ud-D i n ra — Khalifatul Masih I FINAL ADMONITIONS 253 Hadrat Khalifatul Masih ra was asked by a non- Ahmad i Maulaw i : Was the Mirza Sahib as an erudite divine? His reply was: "He was not very learned in the scholastic sense. His father had appointed Gul ‘Al i Sh a h, a Shia Maulaw i of Bat a la, his tutor in his boyhood. But God Almighty had bestowed such erudition upon him that the great divines of India and Arabia were not able to produce the like of his Arabic books. He had great faith in prayer, and in answer to his prayers God had bestowed all requisite knowledge upon him. " 113 Hadrat Khalifatul Masih ra believed that the same would be the case with the promised son of Hadrat Mirza Sahib as , Sahibz a da Mirz a Bashir-ud-Din Ma h m u d Ahmad ra , who has given the following account of his learning from him: "I learnt the Holy Quran from Hadrat Khalifatul Masih ra I in six months’ time. As I had a delicate throat, he would not let me read out the text. He read it out himself and translated it, and I just listened. Thereafter he made an oral commentary on certain points and completed that in a month. I attended his public lessons on the Holy Quran, but that was all the personal tuition he gave me. Then he took me through Bukh a r i ’s compilation of Hadith in three months’ time. Ha fi z Raushan ‘Al i ra had joined me in the lesson. He was very intelligent and often sought explanations. Hadrat Khalifatul Masih ra furnished the explanations. On one or two occasions I also asked a question and received an answer. On the third occasion when I asked a question, he said: M i y an , Ha fi z Sahib is a Maulaw i type of