Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part V — Page 533
Reply to the doubts raised by rashĪd a H mad gangohĪ 533 Prophets, from which it is deduced that Hebrew people must have lived in this land at some point in time. For example, there is a moun- tain in Kashmir by the name of Solomon, the Prophet. To prove this point, I have already published in some of my books a list of Hebrew words and names of Israelite Prophets that are in use in Kashmir to this day. It is also learnt, in great detail, from books on Kashmiri his- tory, which I have collected with much labour and which I have in my possession, that at one time—roughly 2,000 years ago according to our reckoning—an Israelite Prophet came to Kashmir. He was from the Israelites and was known as ‘Sh a hz a dah Nab i ’ [‘Prince Prophet’]. His tomb is present in Mohalla Khanyar, and is known widely as the Tomb of Yuz Asaf. Now, it is obvious that these books were published in Kashmir long before my birth, so how can anyone imagine that the Kashmiris wrote these books by way of fabrication. Why did those people need this fabrication and what was their objective for which they perpetrated such a fabrication? What is even more peculiar is that these people, in their utter simplicity, believe, like other Muslims, that Hadrat ‘ I s a had ascended to Heaven with his physical body. In spite of this belief, they know with full conviction that an Israelite Prophet did come to Kashmir and that he introduced himself as the ‘Prince Prophet’. Their books relate that, on the basis of calculation, a little more than 1,900 years have elapsed since that time. The simplicity of the Kashmiris has here benefited us, for had they known who that ‘Prince Prophet’ from among the Israelites was, and who the Prophet was who lived some 1,900 years ago, they would never have shown these books to us. This is why I say that we have benefited greatly from their simplicity. Besides, they say that the name of the Prince Prophet was ‘Yuz Asaf ’. This word clearly appears to be the distortion of ‘Yasu Asaf ’. In Hebrew, ‘Asaf ’ refers to a person who is in search of his peo- ple. Since Hadrat ‘ I s a had arrived in Kashmir in search of his people who were the missing tribes of Jews, he called himself ‘Yasu Asaf ’. Further, it is written clearly in the scripture of Yuz Asaf that the Inj il [Gospel] had been revealed to him by God. Thus, in the presence of