Youza Asaf () are Arabic and Urdu variations of the name Josaphat, and are primarily connected with Christianized and later Arabized versions of the life of the

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),* * * was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was ...

found in the legend of ''

Barlaam and Josaphat Barlaam and Josaphat, also known as Bilawhar and Budhasaf, are Christian saints. Their story tells of the conversion of Josaphat to Christianity. According to tradition, an Indian king persecuted the Christian Church in his realm. After ast ...

''.

Overview

According to Ahmadiyya theology, the Youza Asaf was prophet Isa,the Quranic name for

Jesus Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...

. The prophet Youza Asaf came to Kashmir from the West (Holy Land) during the reign of Raja Gopadatta ((49-109 AD). Indologist Günter Grönbold in his '' Jesus in Indien'' assesses that the shrine was previously Hindu, before the Islamization of Kashmir and is possibly the grave of a Buddhist or Hindu saint rather than a Sufi, but, in any case, has no connection with Jesus or Christianity. According to '' Tarikh-i-Kashmir'', a history of Kashmir written between 1579 and 1620, Yuzu Asaf was a Prophet of God who travelled to Kashmir from a foreign land. In 1747, a local Srinagar Sufi writer, Khwaja Muhammad Azam Didamari, stated that the

Roza Bal 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, alon ...

is a shrine to a foreign prophet and prince, Youza Asaf. Bashir Ahmad Orchard in his work, THE REVIEW of RELIGIONS compared the name Youza Asaf and name Youdha Asaf (Budhasaf/Josephat), which is of christianized budhist folklore of life of Gautham Budha.

Ghulam Ahmad and Ahmadiyya belief

Having stumbled upon research by Russian explorer

Nicolas Notovitch Shulim or Nikolai Aleksandrovich Notovich (; August 13, 1858 – after 1934), known in the West as Nicolas Notovitch, was a Crimean Jewish adventurer who claimed to be a Russian aristocrat, spy and journalist. Notovitch is known for his 1894 boo ...

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad 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 the promised Messiah and '' Mahdī'', in fulfillment of th ...

, the founder of the

Ahmadiyya 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 a ...

movement, identified Youza Asaf as a name that

of Nazareth may have assumed following his crucifixion and migration from Palestine. Ahmad further identified the

shrine located in

Srinagar Srinagar (; ) is a city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region.The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of the Kashmir dispute is supported by the tertiary ...

Kashmir Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir P ...

as the tomb of Jesus. Drawing on Kashmiri oral traditions, as well as the

Qur'an The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...

Hadith Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account f an event and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle ...

and accounts by

explorers Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some expectation of discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organisms capable of directed locomotion and the abilit ...

, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad postulated that Jesus travelled to

, where he settled and married a woman called Maryam (Mary), and that Maryam bore Yuz Asaf children, before he died aged 120 years. He discusses this belief in the book ''

Jesus in India The unknown years of Jesus (also called his silent years, lost years, or missing years) generally refers to the period of Jesus's life between his childhood and the beginning of his ministry, a period not described in the New Testament. The "l ...

''. More recent Ahmadiyya writers assert that the tomb of Mary, the mother of Jesus is in

Murree Murree () is a mountain resort city in the northernmost region of the Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab province of Pakistan. Lying in the Galyat region of the Pir Panjal Range under the western Himalayas, it forms the outskirts of the Islamabad–Rawal ...

, Pakistan. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's use of various Hindu and Islamic sources have been deemed to be misunderstandings or distortions by various scholars of Buddhism including the Swedish scholar Per Beskow in ''Jesus in Kashmir: Historien om en legend'' (1981), the German indologist Günter Grönbold, in '' Jesus in Indien - Das Ende einer Legende'' (1985) and

Norbert Klatt Norbert Klatt (24 December 1949 – 1 October 2015) was a German scholar of Buddhism and Christianity and publisher; he was the founder of Norbert Klatt Verlag, Göttingen. Klatt proposed Buddhist influence on some New Testament narratives (1982), ...

, in ''Lebte Jesus in Indien?: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Klärung'' (1988). His views are considered heretical by the majority Sunni Islamic scholars, who assert that Jesus is alive in heaven. Muslims living near the shrine believe Yuz Asaf was a

Sufi saint The term ''wali'' is most commonly used by Muslims to refer to a saint, or literally a "friend of God in Islam, God".John Renard, ''Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and Servanthood'' (Berkeley: University of California Press ...

References

;Sources {{DEFAULTSORT:Asaf, Yuz Year of birth missing Year of death missing Srinagar Kashmiri Sufi saints Ahmadiyya Prophets in Ahmadiyya Swoon hypothesis Jesus in Islam Indian Sufi saints

Overview

Ghulam Ahmad and Ahmadiyya belief

See also

References