Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908)
Born 1835 CE, died 1908 CE.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (13 February 1835 – 26 May 1908) was an Indian religious leader and the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam. He claimed to have been divinely appointed as initially the Mujaddid (centennial reviver) of the 14th Islamic century, followed by the claim to be both the promised Messiah and Mahdi, in regard to Islamic prophecies regarding the end times, as well as being Krishna, an Avatar of Vishnu, for the Hindus. Born to a family with aristocratic roots in Qadian, rural Punjab, Ahmad emerged as a writer and debater for Islam. When he was just over forty years of age, his father died and around that time he claimed that God began to communicate with him. In 1889, he took a pledge of allegiance from forty of his supporters at Ludhiana and formed a community of followers upon what he claimed was divine instruction, stipulating ten conditions of initiation, an event that marks the establishment of the Ahmadiyya movement. The mission of the movement, according to him, was the reinstatement of the absolute oneness of God, the revival of Islam through the moral reformation of society along Islamic ideals, and the global propagation of Islam in its pristine form.
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