In the August 1899 letter reproduced earlier, Hazrat Mirza makes it quite plain that 'one who receives news of the unseen from God' is only the root meaning of nabi, and that an actual prophet in Islamic terminology is in an entirely higher class than being merely a recipient of revelation.

Similarly, as may be seen from extracts given above, he has clearly described a muhaddas as receiving revelation and news of the unseen from God, and has claimed to be a muhaddas in these terms. For example, as quoted above, he says about a muhaddas that:

"...he has the privilege of communication with God, and matters of the unseen are disclosed to him, and his revelation, like the revelation of messengers and prophets, is also protected against interference by the devil." (Tauzih Maram, pp. 9-10)

See also the three quotations in Note 14, the first being as follows: "God says: 'He does not make His unseen known to anyone except a rasul whom He chooses'. The word rasul is general, and included within it are rasul, nabi and muhaddas" (A'inah Kamalat Islam, p. 332), which also show that a muhaddas receives knowledge of the unseen from God.

Similarly, he wrote:

"I am a muhaddas and Allah speaks to me as He speaks to those who are muhaddases. Allah knows that He has bestowed upon me this rank." (Hamamat al-Bushra, 1894, p. 79)

As regards this passage in Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala, the opening lines of the paragraph make the meaning clear. He writes:

" ... according to this sense I do not deny prophethood and messengership",

and

"it is in this sense that the Promised Messiah has been called nabi in Hadith".

And what is that sense? As shown in Notes 20 and 21, it is the root or linguistic sense of the word nabi, not the sense of prophet in the terminology of Islamic theology. He then adds:

"If one who receives news of the unseen from God is not to be called nabi",

that is, in terms of the linguistic meaning,

"tell us what he should be called?"

If the reply is given that he should be called muhaddas,

"I say that in no lexicon is the meaning of tahdees 'making known the unseen' ."

Here he is simply dealing with the linguistic meanings of the words nabi and muhaddas, and explaining that only the word nabi, and not the word muhaddas, has the linguistic, dictionary meaning of 'one who receives knowledge of the unseen from God'. He is neither denying that a muhaddas receives knowledge of the unseen from God, nor is he claiming to be a prophet rather than a muhaddas.

Confirmation by Qadianis

It is remarkable that, shortly before the Qadianis invented the doctrine that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be a prophet in Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala, one of them also wrote that Hazrat Mirza is here not denying being a muhaddas but is only discussing the literal meaning of this word.

In 1914 one Hafiz Raushan Ali, a Qadiani religious scholar, answered an objection from the opponents of the Ahmadiyya Movement as follows:

"Objection: In Tauzih Maram you [i.e. Hazrat Mirza] call yourself a muhaddas and say that a muhaddas too is a prophet in one sense. But now in this poster you write that 'my title cannot be muhaddas because in no lexicon does the word tahdees convey the meaning of disclosing the unseen'.

Answer: We say that there could only have been a contradiction between these two places if there was an affirmation of being a muhaddas in a certain sense, and then a denial made with regard to the same sense. But here the senses in the two places are different. Therefore, in accordance with the principle, lau l-al-i'tibaraat la-batal-al-hikma, your alleged contradiction disappears. In the poster [Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala], he has made the denial in the sense that in Arabic lexicology the meaning of tahdees is not that of disclosing the unseen. And in Tauzih Maram he has made the affirmation in terms of the technical meaning, despite having made it explicit there that a muhaddas is also a prophet in a sense.'' (Tashhiz al-Azhan, October 1914, vol. ix, no. 10)

Tashhiz al-Azhan was a magazine founded and edited by Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad, and the issue cited above dates from a few months after the split in the Ahmadiyya Movement, when he had become head of the Qadianis. The answer given here by a Qadiani scholar is the same as the explanation which we have given above, namely, that Hazrat Mirza is not changing his earlier view (as expressed in Tauzih Maram, for example) about what a muhaddas is, and now saying that he was not a muhaddas but a prophet. He is not discussing the Islamic concept of muhaddas (according to which he is a muhaddas), but the meaning of this word in Arabic.