An Account of Exoneration
Kitab al-Bariyya
by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (English translation by Hazrat Ameer (IV) Prof. Dr. Asghar Hameed and Dr. Zahid Aziz)
Publisher’s Preface
This book is an English translation of the bulk of the Urdu book Kitab al-Bariyya written by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. We have already published, in 1996, the translation of a complete, self-contained section from Kitab al-Bariyya under the title A Brief Sketch of My Life, which is an account of his life and mission, constituting about thirty percent of the volume of the original book. Here we present the remainder, which is the bulk of the book dealing with the subject in the title Exoneration.
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad sets out full details of the criminal legal proceedings instituted against him on the basis of allegations made by certain Christian missionaries against him of conspiracy to murder, which ended with his entire exoneration and acquittal by the authorities. Before reproducing the record of the legal proceedings, Hazrat Mirza discusses at length his highly effective refutation of the doctrines of the Christian church which he carried out through his writings and debates. When the Christian missionaries found themselves utterly unable to repulse the arguments presented by Hazrat Mirza, some of them resorted to getting a false criminal case instituted against him, and in this they were joined by a Muslim religious leader along with some Hindu Arya Samaj members who were Hazrat Mirza’s inveterate foes.
The translation of this entire book was first prepared by a highly learned and scholarly, senior figure [Hazrat Ameer (IV) Prof. Dr. Asghar Hameed] in the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement in Lahore, Pakistan, who did the work most meticulously and with great accuracy. May Allah bless and reward him profusely for his labour! The typescript was then passed to me for revision, preparation for publication and typesetting. I regret to say that, primarily because of other engagements, this task took me an unduly long time.
In this translation we have tried to be as close and faithful to the original as possible, while also adhering to the important requirement of using simple, clear and modern English idiom.
In a few places where additional words were required in the translation to make clear the meaning of the original, these have been given within square brackets, thus: [ ]. In some cases, it was necessary to show the words of the original text as well as their translation and here we have used parentheses, thus: ( ), to enclose either the original text or the translation, as appropriate in a particular case.
When transcribing Arabic or Urdu terms in English letters, we have generally avoided using diacritical marks of transliteration (for example, as in a, i, h, or th). The use of diacritics is restricted to cases where it was felt necessary to spell out the original term exactly.
The numbering of all the chapters, and the division of the religious discussion into chapters 2 and 3 along with the insertion of sub-headings in these two chapters, has been done in this translation for the facility of the readers, and is not a feature of the original book.
All footnotes consisting of just references have also been added in this translation, these references not being provided in the original book. Any other short explanatory footnotes that have been added are indicated as Publisher’s Note. All other footnotes are by the author himself as in the original book.
Dr. Zahid Aziz
Nottingham
England
November 1999