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The theory of Kashmiri descent from the lost tribes of Israel is a fringe theory which states that the Kashmiri people originally descended from the Ten Lost Tribes. Genetic testing and historical analysis have disproved this theory, though it maintains negligible support within the Ahmadiyya movement.
In 1899 [1] Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, theorized that Jesus had survived the crucifixion and traveled to Kashmir to find and preach to the lost tribes of Israel. Ahmad claimed that Jesus lived in Kashmir, had children, died aged 120, [2] and was buried in Srinagar. [3] [4] [5]
The theory is essentially based on the purported similarities between Kashmir place names and Hebrew words and phrases by Ahmadiyya scholars.
Some examples include
Using genome-wide genotyping and admixture detection methods, it was determined there are no significant or substantial signs of Jewish admixture, among 16 Sephardi and/or Ashkenazi Jewish populations surveyed, in modern-day Kashmiris. [8]
Ashkenazi Jews constitute a Jewish diaspora population that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language that originated in the 9th century, and largely migrated towards northern and eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages due to persecution. Hebrew was primarily used as a literary and sacred language until its 20th-century revival as a common language in Israel.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was an Indian religious leader and the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam. He claimed to have been divinely appointed as the promised Messiah and Mahdī—which is the metaphorical second-coming of Jesus (mathīl-iʿIsā), in fulfillment of the Islamic prophecies regarding the end times, as well as the Mujaddid of the 14th Islamic century.
Ahmadiyya considers Jesus (ʿĪsā) as a mortal man, entirely human, and a prophet of God born to the Virgin Mary (Maryam). Jesus is understood to have survived the crucifixion based on the account of the canonical Gospels, the Qurʾān, hadith literature, and revelations to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Having delivered his message to the Israelites in Judea, Jesus is understood to have emigrated eastward to escape persecution from Judea and to have further spread his message to the Lost Tribes of Israel. In Ahmadiyya Islam, Jesus is thought to have died a natural death in India. Jesus lived to old age and later died in Srinagar, Kashmir, and his tomb is presently located at the Roza Bal shrine.
The tomb of Jesus is the place where Jesus was entombed after his death. According to the gospel accounts, the tomb originally belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man who, believing Jesus was the Messiah, offered his own sepulcher for the burial of Jesus.
Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's Jewish population. Although "Jewish" is considered an ethnicity itself, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.
The Thirteenth Tribe is a 1976 book by Arthur Koestler advocating the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, the thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the historical Judeans and Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a Turkic people who allegedly mass-converted to Judaism. Koestler hypothesized that the Khazars after their conversion in the 8th century migrated westwards into Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries when the Khazar Empire was collapsing.
The Roza Bal, Rouza Bal, or Rozabal is a shrine located in the Khanyar quarter in downtown area of Srinagar in Kashmir, India. The word roza means tomb, the word bal means place. Locals believe a sage is buried here, Yuz Asaf, alongside another Muslim holy man, Mir Sayyid Naseeruddin.
The biblical account of the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus (ʿĪsā) recorded in the Christian New Testament is traditionally rejected by the major branches of Islam, but like Christians they believe that Jesus ascended to heaven and he will, according to Islamic literary sources, return before the end of time. The various sects of Islam have different views regarding this topic; traditionally, mainstream Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified but was bodily raised up to heaven by God, while Ahmadi Muslims reject this belief and instead contend that Jesus survived the crucifixion, was taken off the cross alive and continued to preach in India until his natural death.
The Ten Lost Tribes were those from the Twelve Tribes of Israel that were said to have been exiled from the Kingdom of Israel after it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE. They were the following: Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, and Ephraim—all but Judah and Benjamin, both of which were based in the neighbouring Kingdom of Judah and therefore survived until the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. Alongside Judah and Benjamin was part of the Tribe of Levi, which was not allowed land tenure, but received dedicated cities. The exile of Israel's population, known as the Assyrian captivity, occurred in line with long-standing Assyrian deportation policy, which was practiced in many subjugated territories.
Berber Jews are the Jewish communities of the Maghreb, in North Africa, who historically spoke Berber languages. Between 1950 and 1970 most emigrated to France, the United States, or Israel.
All India Kashmir Committee was set up by Muslim leaders of British India, mainly British Punjab, to fight for the rights of Muslims in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. a number of other leaders were invited by Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad to form the committee in order to gain political support and Spread their ideology which was opposed by majority of Muslims.
Youza Asaf, Youza Asaph, Youza Asouph, Yuz Asaf, Yuzu Asaf, Yuzu Asif, or Yuzasaf, are Arabic and Urdu variations of the name Josaphat, and are primarily connected with Christianized and Islamized versions of the life of the Buddha found in the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat.
The Rozabal Line is a thriller fiction novel by Ashwin Sanghi written under the pseudonym "Shawn Haigins". It follows the alternate religious history of Jesus having survived the crucifixion and settled down in India. The title refers to the Rozabal shrine in Srinagar in Kashmir, which some have asserted is the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. The historical basis is derived from several other books on the subject including Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten and The Unknown Life of Jesus by Nicolas Notovich.
Jesus in India is a treatise written by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement in 1889. The treatise, which was then published as a book, puts forward the view that Jesus survived crucifixion, left Judea and migrated eastward in order to continue his mission to the 'Lost Tribes of Israel', traveling through Persia and Afghanistan and eventually dying a natural and honourable death in Kashmir at an old age. The book also makes references to several lost Jewish tribes. Ghulam Ahmad applied textual analysis of both the Gospels and Islamic sources – the Quran and hadith – and also drew upon medical and historical material, including what he claimed were ancient Buddhist records, to argue his case. Some modern scholars such as Norbert Klatt (1988) have rejected Ghulam Ahmad's use of these latter sources as misreadings of material unrelated to Jesus.
Genetic studies of Jews are part of the population genetics discipline and are used to analyze the ancestry of Jewish populations, complementing research in other fields such as history, linguistics, archaeology, and paleontology. These studies investigate the origins of various Jewish ethnic divisions. In particular, they examine whether there is a common genetic heritage among them. The medical genetics of Jews are studied for population-specific diseases.
Ahmadiyya, officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ) is an Islamic messianic movement originating in British India in the late 19th century. It was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who said he had been divinely appointed as both the Promised Mahdi and Messiah expected by Muslims to appear towards the end times and bring about, by peaceful means, the final triumph of Islam; as well as to embody, in this capacity, the expected eschatological figure of other major religious traditions. Adherents of the Ahmadiyya—a term adopted expressly in reference to Muhammad's alternative name Ahmad—are known as Ahmadi Muslims or simply Ahmadis.
The Japanese-Jewish common ancestry theory is a fringe theory that appeared in the 17th century as a hypothesis which claimed the Japanese people were the main part of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. A later version portrayed them as descendants of a tribe of Central Asian Jewish converts to Nestorian Christianity. Some versions of the theory applied to the whole population, but others only claimed that a specific group within the Japanese people had descended from Jews.
Khwaja Nazir Ahmad was an Ahmadiyya writer. After experiments with Hinduism and Christianity he converted back to Islam in 1919 and in 1923, aged 25, became imam of Woking's mosque. He returned to become a Senior Advocate of the Federal Court of Pakistan and an Advocate of His Majesty's High Court of Judicature at Lahore.
The Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, often called the Khazar myth by its critics, is a largely abandoned historical hypothesis that postulated that Ashkenazi Jews were primarily, or to a large extent, descended from Khazars, a multi-ethnic conglomerate of mostly Turkic peoples who formed a semi-nomadic khanate in and around the northern and central Caucasus and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. The hypothesis also postulated that after collapse of the Khazar empire, the Khazars fled to Eastern Europe and made up a large part of the Jews there. The hypothesis draws on medieval sources such as the Khazar Correspondence, according to which at some point in the 8th–9th centuries, a small number of Khazars were said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism. The scope of the conversion within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain, but the evidence used to tie the subsequent Ashkenazi communities to the Khazars is meager and subject to conflicting interpretations.
The Ahmadiyya branch in Islam has relationships with a number of other religions. Ahmadiyya consider themselves to be Muslim, but are not regarded as Muslim by mainstream Islam. Mainstream Muslim branches refer to the Ahmadiyya branch by the religious slur Qadiani, and to their beliefs as Qadianism a name based on Qadian, the small town in India's Punjab region where the founder of Ahmadiyya, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was born.