The Great Reformer

All praise is due to Allah who enabled me to complete the translation of Mujaddid Azam Volume 3. I thank Allah that He made it possible for me to participate in making all three volumes of this monumental work, Mujaddid Azam, available to the English-speaking public. The author of Mujaddid Azam died soon after completing the manuscript of Volume 3, and did not get a chance to edit or fine tune his work during the proofreading phase, as is done by most authors. For this reason, I have taken more liberties with the translation of Volume 3 than heretofore. I have done some minor editing and rearranging of the material to improve the transitioning of the topics but at the same time, I have tried to make sure that the essential character and flavor of the book remains unchanged.

A work of this magnitude is never done alone and there are many who help along the way. For this third volume, I am particularly indebted to Dr. Zahid Aziz who always pointed me in the right direction when I asked him for help; Dr. Zainib Ahmad and her sister Sarah Ahmad for letting me use some of their translation from an earlier manuscript of Volume 3 which they had translated, and Sister Safia Saeed for helping with the translation of some Persian poems of Hazrat Mirza Sahib. May Allah reward them amply for their help.

Translation Notes

The terms “Ahmadiyya Movement,” “Ahmadiyya Organization” or simply “the Organization” used in the text refer to the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam (Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam). For clarity, note that the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam, Lahore (the Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam, based in the city of Lahore) is the extant organization founded by one of Hazrat Mirza Sahib’s closest disciples, Maulana Muhammad Ali Sahib. This missionary organization was established in the year 1914, subsequent to the demise of Maulana Nur-ud-Din Sahib, who served as the president of the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam in Qadian after Hazrat Mirza Sahib. Refer to Maulana Muhammad Ali’s book, The Split in the Ahmadiyya Movement, for further details regarding the events that led to the formation of the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam Lahore.

To the fullest extent possible, the chapter and verse numbers of Holy Quran quotations have been added, which will enable readers to further explore the themes that are mentioned in the biography. As an example, (56:79) refers to the seventy-ninth verse in the fifty-sixth Quranic chapter.

Finally, throughout this volume, all words and phrases that might be unknown to unilingual English readers are italicized. Further, through parenthetical notes, brief definitions of such words and phrases are offered to provide context.

This translation is dedicated to the memory of my mother,

Begum Hamida Rahman bint Basharat Ahmad.

Hamid Rahman