The Promised Son — Page 1
His Parents The year 1835 occupies a unique place in the present era of human history for in that year a child, who was to be appointed by God as the Messiah and Mahdi, was born in a small village in northern India. The name of the child was Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as. He was Persian by ethnic descent and belonged to a noble Mughal family of the Punjab. The family had emigrated from Samarkand, in Central Asia, to India, during the reign of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India. The family settled at a place which they called Islampur and it came to be known as ‘Islampur Qaazi’. This was the resident town of the first ancestor of Ahmad who came to India and was appointed as the Qaazi or Magistrate over 70 villages around Islampur. Later, the town town came to be known as ‘Qadian’. For several generations the family held offices of respect- ability and honour under the Government, but when the Sikhs came into power, the family estate was reduced to a few villages. During the British Regime the properties were again confiscated. The family was left with rights over Qadian and a small number of villages in its vicinity.