Life of Ahmad — Page 409
as LITERARY MIRACLE 409 compositions, he also proclaimed that if the books written by them were adjudged to be superior compositions to his own, then they would be at liberty to impose upon him any penalty they pleased and he gave them leave to write books individually or collectively and to call to their aid the divines of Arabia and Syria whose mother-tongue was Arabic. 94 The magnitude of this challenge may be judged thus. Suppose, a Russian who had never visited England, America or any other English-speaking country, nor lived in the society of English-speaking people, nor studied English at any university or academy, were to write books in excellent English and were to challenge English-speaking people to produce the like of them, either individually or collectively, 94 On the death of Pandit Lekhr a m, Ahmad as warned those who opposed him that they were in reality at war with God. He invited them to test his claim and believe in him. He offered them a fresh sign. He wrote a book in Arabic, which he began on March 17th, 1897, and completed on May 26th, 1897, and asked his opponents, particularly Abdul H aq Ghaznavi and Shaikh Najf i , a Shia (both had written abusive letters to Ahmad as and declared that he did not know Arabic) to produce the like of it in the same number of days. He allowed them to appoint any professor of Arabic to act as judge provided he gave his award under solemn oath. Ahmad as said that if the adjudicator declared that the work of his opponents was superior to his, he would pray to God. If the judge was not then overtaken by the wrath of God within a period of 41 days, he would burn all his books and stand condemned. But no one accepted his challenge. This book of Ahmad’s as was entitled H ujjatullah ( D i a ’ul-Islam Press, Qadian). In it Ahmad as spoke of the various signs which God had shown in his favour. He also pointed out the error of his Shia opponents. In a graphic and eloquent manner he explained that the Shia beliefs were not right because, according to them, Ali ra appeared to be an abject hypocrite and not the great saint that he actually was.