Intro
The majority of the data herein was taken from Nuzhat Haneef’s famous work on ahmadiyya wherein the she covered the topic of Meer Abbas better than anyone.
In 1883, in a letter to Mir Abbas, MGA began confessing to getting 3:55 (3:56 in the Kadiani Koran) as a revelation repeated so many times that Allah alone knows the count. Sometimes MGA received it continuously from mid-night till the Fajr time (must be over 50 times). This story also appeared in Hayat-e-Ahmad (1915) volume 2, number 2, page 72 (by Sheikh Ya‘qub ‘Ali ‘Irfani). It seems that MGA was slowly introducing this belief and hinting towards a change.
Mir ‘Abbas ‘Ali was a close companion of MGA from 1880 to 1891. He seems to have left Ahmadiyya 6-9 months after MGA made his claim of being the Messiah. MGA had even said that he received a verse from sura Ibrahim (14:25, see Tafsir Ibn Kathir)) about which speaks about paradise and connected it with Mir Abbas, also spelled Meer Abbas (see Izala Auham).
In Izala Auham, MGA received a revelation about Mir Abbas too, “””asluhaa thaabitunwwa far`uhaa fissamaa-e’ [her root is firm and her branches are in heaven]””. This was in fact a verse of the 14:25. Having made the shift in words in his Urdu translation, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad makes his first maneuver to obfuscate the meaning of the words of his reported revelation. He says about his revelation that it “does not have a clarification as to what thing he [Meer `Abbaas] is firm on, according to his real nature” [RK, v. 4, p. 343; 6th line from the top; page number is in bottom margin] (most of this is a direct quote from Nuzhat Haneef). So, according to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the words of his reported revelation tell us that Meer `Abbaas was firm but it does not tell us what he was firm on. Actually, however, the words do have a clear indication of what sort of thing the subject of the statement (Meer `Abbaas) is firm on. The indication is based on the part of the statement that tells us that his branches are in heaven. If the statement is expected to make sense then its two parts, the part about the roots and the part about the branches, must be related. In any case, the analogy relates them: the branches of a tree depend on its roots. Whatever is happening to the branches must have some relation to the roots.
Therefore, if Meer `Abbaas is reaching up to lofty heights then the thing on which he is firm, and where his roots are, could not just be some mundane quality; it must be that he is firm on something that is conducive to loftiness; it must be that he is rooted in goodness. Notwithstanding all this, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claims that the revelation statement does not inform us as to what thing Meer `Abbaas is firm on, according to his real nature. Mirza
Ghulam Ahmad implies that from the revelation statement we cannot infer that Meer `Abbaas was firm on any lofty qualities; all we know is that he is firm on some quality. Although he does use the term ‘khoobee’, meaning “good quality” or “virtue”, saying that each person has some virtue or another, he cleverly implies that these qualities are not necessarily of high merit: “Some [person is] a gold mine. … Some [person is] a brass/bronze mine” [RK, v. 4, p. 343; 11th line from top; page number is in bottom margin]. So, Meer `Abbaas was not necessarily gold; he might have been brass. Furthermore, according to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s explanation, any person who might have one of these virtues (that Meer `Abbaas might have been firm on) could easily move back and forth between Islaam and disbelief, so that these virtues, according to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s implication, are not particularly conducive to Islaamic faith. The only thing we know is that whatever virtue he had, he was firm on it, and it was unchanging.
The Ahmadiyya Urdu translation of the Quraanic verse uses the term ‘aasmaan kee bulandee’, that is, “the loftiness of the sky”, to convey the sense of loftiness and of heaven; the Ahmadiyya English translation of the Quranic verse uses the term “heaven”. Although heaven and sky have similar meanings, “heaven” has a connotation of spiritual elevation and loftiness. But Mirza Ghulam Ahmad has pretty much done away with this connotation in his Urdu translation.
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