Intro
You can read this study herein. My commentary will be published soon, Insha Allah. In the meantime, you can read about the Yuz Asaf theory herein.
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Between Myth, Memory and History: Persian Texts and the Making of the ‘Tomb of Jesus’ in Kashmir: South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol 0, No 0 – Get Access
Abstract
The site of Rozabal in Srinagar, Kashmir, locally called the burial place of a nabīʼ (prophet), is famously known as the Tomb of Jesus. This paper analyses portrayals of the site in two well-known Persian texts from Kashmir, Azam Dedmari’s mid eighteenth century Wāqiʻāt-i Kashmir (Events of Kashmir) and Hassan Khuihami’s late nineteenth century Asrār-ul Aḵẖyār (Secrets of the Pious). We seek to demonstrate how the bringing together of the oral and textual narratives into a genre of historical chronicles by the two authors played a critical role in mapping the site of Rozabal onto the larger canvas of what Nile Green has termed as a ‘sacred geography’ of the region. We argue that the making of Rozabal as an Islamic shrine presents a perfect case of the Persian texts creating sacred geographies at the intersection of myth, memory and history. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s claims about Jesus’s burial in the shrine and the subsequent undying debates between his proponents and opponents revolved around reinterpretations of Wāqiʻāt and Asrār’s textual descriptions of the site, demonstrating the renewed lives of these texts in modern contexts.
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Notes
1. Ruhani Khazain: The Writing of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani, Vol. 14 (Islam International Publications, 2021): 172.
2. See Yohanan Friedman, Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Ahmadi Religious Thought and Its Medieval Background (Oxford University Press, 2023).
3. Nile Green, Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India (Oxford University Press, 2012); Nile Green, ‘Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space in South Asian Islam’, Contemporary South Asia 12, no. 4 (2011): 493–509.
4. Green, Making Space, 122.
5. Chitralekha Zutshi, Kashmir’s Contested Pasts: Narratives, Sacred Geographies, and the Historical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2014): 130–83.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.; for the taẕkira mode of historiography, also see Marcia K. Hermansen and Bruce B. Lawrence, ‘Indo-Persian Tazkiras as Memorative Communications’, in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, ed. David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (University Press of Florida, 2000): 149–75.
8. Ibid.; for Islam as widespread Islam in sixteenth century Kashmir, see Muhammad Ashraf Wani, Islam in Kashmir: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century (Oriental Publishing House, 2004).
9. Berenice Guyot-Rechard and Elisabeth Leake, South Asia Unbound: New International Histories of the Subcontinent (Leiden University Press, 2023); for a summary of recent debates, see Amanda Lanzillo, ‘How Should We Define a Southasian 20th Century?’, Himal Southasian, March 26, 2024, accessed December 3, 2024, https://www.himalmag.com/politics/southasia-20th-century-history-scholarship-partition-regional-local-diaspora-politics.
10. Ron Geaves, ‘Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and the Ahmadiyya Movement’, in Islam and Britain: Muslim Mission in an Age of Empire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018): 31–42.
11. Arif Khan, ‘Rozabal: The Tomb of Jesus Christ (As)?’, The Review of Religions, December 19, 2010, accessed December 3, 2024, https://www.reviewofreligions.org/2727/rozabal-–-the-tomb-of-jesus-christas/.
12. Muhammad Yusuf Taing, Kashir Encyclopedia, Vol. 2 (Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, 1989): 9.
13. Ibid., 80.
14. Zutshi, Kashmir’s Contested Pasts, 7–9.
15. Khwaja Nazir Ahmad, Jesus in Heaven on Earth (Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam, 1952): 401–3. This claim was later supported by another Kashmiri author, Fida Muhammad Hassnain: see Fida Mohammad Hassnain, Jesus in Kashmir (Dasthir Publication Trust, 2012): 261. Hassnain also provides the text of four ‘lost’ inscriptions on the Shankaracharya temple: for his text of the inscriptions, see Hassnain, Jesus in Kashmir, 262–63.
16. Aejaz Ahmad Rather, ‘Sacred Spaces as Markers of Disputes: Ahmadiyya Claims on Rozabal Shrine and Political Intervention in Kashmir’, Social Scientist 49, no. 3/4 (2021): 574–75.
17. Spencer Lavan, The Ahmadiyah Movement: A History and Perspective (Manohar Book Services, 1974): 49–50.
18. This is, of course, besides an earlier account in Mulla Ahmad’s fifteenth century chronicle. The text is non-extant, even as Khuihami’s Asrār refers to its account of Rozabal.
19. Muhammad Azam Dedmari, Wāqiʻāt-i Kashmir, trans. Shamsuddin Ahmad (Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Research Centre, 2000): 4–5.
20. This comparison is made by Shamsuddin Ahmad, the translator of Wāqiʻāt: see Dedmari, Wāqiʻāt, 6.
21. Abdul Rahman Kondoo ‘Ta’aruf’, in Dedmari, Wāqiʻāt, trans. Ahmad, xlv–xlvi.
22. Muhammad Azam Dedmari, Tarikh-i Kashmir Azami (Ghulam Muhammad Nur Muhammad Tajiran-i Kutb, n.d.): 82.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Dedmari, Wāqiʻāt, 82.
29. For the Quranic phrase, see Muhammad Taqi-ud Din Hilali and Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, Translation of the Meanings of the Noble Qur’an in the English Language (King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur’an, n.d.), 67:26.
30. Some have argued that Ahmad was Sultan Zayn’s court historian and that his work was a translation of an earlier Sanskrit work: see Pandit Anand Koul, ‘History of Kashmir’, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 9, no. 5 (1918): 195–219; Zutshi, Kashmir’s Contested Pasts, 130–83.
31. Pir Hassan Shah Khuihami, Tarikh-i Hassan: Tazkira-e Auliya-i Kashmir Asrār-ul Akhyār (Director of Libraries, Research and Publications, Jammu and Kashmir, 1997): 49–50.
32. Khuihami, Asrār, 45. 
33. Ibid., 50.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 51.
37. Shahabadi, Bāg̠ẖ-i Sulaimān, quoted in Fida Hassnain and Dahan Levi, The Fifth Gospel (Dastgir Publications, 1988): 221–22. 
38. Molvi Muhammad Shah, Ḥālāt-i Yuz Asaf (National Printing Press, undated): 7. In the 1940s, Abdullah Kashmiri subsequently distanced himself from his position and alleged tampering with his letter in his two short works titled Me’yar-e Risalat and Sh’ulat-al Nar. For his Sh’ulat-al Nar, see Abdul Rahman Kundu, Īsá ki Qabar Kashmir mīn Nahī (Islamic Research Centers and Publishers Srinagar, Kashmir, 1991): 264–80.
39. For a recent analysis, see Adeel Hussain, Revenge, Politics and Blasphemy in Pakistan (Oxford University Press, 2022): 13–34; also see Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Jesus in India: Jesus’ Deliverance from the Cross & Journey to India (Islam International Publications, 2003): 14–102.
40. Zutshi notes this in the case of Sanskrit texts from Kashmir: see Chitralekha Zutshi, ‘Past as Tradition, Past as History: The Rajatarangini Narratives in Kashmir’s Persian Historical Tradition’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 50, no. 2 (2013): 201–19.
41. Aejaz Ahmad Rather, ‘Ahmadiyyas: The Making of an Identity in Colonial Punjab’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2021): 29–47; for the role of print in religious contestations in India, see Francis Robinson, ‘Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print’, Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 1 (1993): 229–51.
42. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Izala-i Auham (Riyad-i Hind Press, 1891); Ahmad, Raz-i Haqiqat, 2.
43. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Messiah Hindustan Mein (Islam International Publications, 1944).
44. Rather, ‘Sacred Spaces’, 57.
45. Andrew Faber Kaiser, Jesus Died in Kashmir (Gordon & Cremonesi, 1977): 103.
46. These include Holger Kersten, Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life before and after the Crucifixion (Penguin, 2001); Aziz Kashmiri, Christ in Kashmir (Roshni Publications, 1988); Mark Mason, In Search of the Loving God: Resolving the Past Traumas of Christianity, and Bringing to Light Its Healing Spirit (Dwapara Press, 1997).
47. Per Beskow, Strange Tales about Jesus: A Survey of Unfamiliar Gospels (Fortress Press, 1983): 63.
48. Paul C. Pappas, Jesus Tomb in India: A Debate on His Death and Resurrection (Asian Humanities Press, 1991): 154–55.
49. Joseph Macchio, The Orthodox Christian Conspiracy: How Church Fathers Suppressed Original Gnostic Christianity (Infinity Publishing, 2010).
50. Shah, Ḥālāt, 7.
51. Ibid.
52. Zutshi, Kashmir’s Contested Pasts, 120–21.
53. Qazi Zahoor ul Hassan, Nigarīstan-i Kashmir (Gulshan Publisher, 2002): 338–419.
54. Muzaffar Ahmad Khan, Kashmiri Muslims: An Historical Outline (Humanizer Publications, 2012): 241–51.
55. Zutshi, Kashmir’s Contested Pasts, 1–20.
56. Walter Lawrence, The Valley of Kashmir (Gulshan Publishers, 2005): 286–88.
57. Mohammad Ishaq Khan, ‘The Rishi Tradition and the Construction of Kashmiriyat’, in Kashmiriyat: Through the Ages, ed. Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld (Routledge, 2017): 61–82. 
58. Based on his argument that ‘Īsá (Jesus) and Buddha had similar teachings, Nazir Ahmad notes that the Rozabal structure was originally a Buddhist sacred site and identifies the person buried there as a Buddhist monk. The author does not however add any references to his claim: Khwaja Nazir Ahmad, Jesus in Heaven on Earth (Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam, 1953): 388.
59. Dedmari, Wāqiʻāt, 82.
60. Hassan, Nigarīstan-i Kashmir, 398–99.
61. Paul C. Pappas to the Director of Tourism Srinagar, letter, May 16, 1988, Pappas, Jesus Tomb, 179. 
62. Director of Tourism Srinagar, letter, April 6, 1988, quoted in Pappas, Jesus Tomb, 180. 
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Links and Related Essay’s
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2024.2429967
Who is Yuz Asaf? – ahmadiyyafactcheckblog
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#ahmadiyya #ahmadiyyafactcheckblog #messiahhascome #ahmadiyyat #trueislam #ahmadianswers #mirzaghulamahmad #qadiani #qadianism
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