70 senior Ahmadis take oath that
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad did not change his claim

In March 1915, shortly after the Split, the assertion was first made by the Qadianis that, in the pamphlet Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala (‘Correction of an error’) published in November 1901, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had announced that he claimed to be a prophet and that his previous denials of such a claim were now abrogated. See the book Haqiqat-un-Nubuwwat by Mirza Mahmud Ahmad, pages 120–124 (contained in the collection of his writings published as Anwar-ul-'Ulum, see vol. 2, pages 443–447). He wrote:

1. “It is definitely found that in 1901 the Promised Messiah certainly made a change in his belief, that is to say, previously he considered his prophethood as being sainthood (muhaddas) but afterwards he only called it prophethood.” (p. 444)

2. “The issue of prophethood became clear to him in 1900 or 1901, and as Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala was published in 1901, in which he has proclaimed his prophethood most forcefully, it shows that he made a change in his belief in 1901.” (p. 444)

To refute this assertion of a change in Hazrat Mirza's position in November 1901, seventy of his prominent followers who had taken the pledge to join the Movement before that date, issued the following sworn public statement:

“We, the undersigned, declare on oath that when Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, announced in 1891, that the prophet Jesus was dead according to the Holy Quran, and that the ‘son of Mary’ whose advent among the Muslims was spoken of in Hadith was he [Hazrat Mirza] himself, he did not lay claim to prophethood. However, the Maulvis misled the public, and issued a fatwa of kufr against him by alleging that he claimed prophethood. After this, the Promised Messiah declared time after time in plain words, as his writings show, that to ascribe to him a claim of prophethood was a fabrication against him, that he considered prophethood to have come to a close with the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and that he looked upon a claimant to prophethood, after the Holy Prophet, as a liar and a kafir. And that the words mursal, rasul, and nabi which had occurred in some of his revelations, or the word nabi which had been used about the coming Messiah in Hadith, do not denote a prophet in actual fact, but rather a metaphorical, partial or zilli prophet who is known as a muhaddas. After the Khatam an-nabiyyin, the Holy Prophet Muhammad, no prophet can come, neither new nor old.

We also declare on oath that we entered into the pledge of the Promised Messiah before November 1901, and that the statements of Mirza Mahmud Ahmad, the head of the Qadian section, that though in the beginning Hazrat Mirza Sahib did not claim prophethood, but that he changed his claim in November 1901, and laid claim to prophethood on that date, and that his previous writings of ten or eleven years denying prophethood are abrogated — all this is entirely wrong and absolutely opposed to facts. We do swear by Allah that the idea never even entered our minds that the Promised Messiah made a change in his claim in 1901 or that his previous writings, which are full of denials of a claim to prophethood, were ever abrogated; nor, to our knowledge, did we ever hear such words from the mouth of even a single person until Mirza Mahmud Ahmad sahib made these statements.

Allah is witness to what we have stated.”

Note that this oath is not a declaration about their beliefs but about actual events. The first part is uncontested by the Qadianis, that when Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be the Promised Messiah in 1891 he did not claim to be a prophet. The second part is an oath, as regards the alleged change in 1901, that while being Ahmadis at the time they never heard from anyone in 1901 or afterwards that he had changed his claim until Mirza Mahmud Ahmad announced this idea in 1914 or 1915.

The Lahore Ahmadiyya Jama‘at then issued a challenge to members of the Qadiani Jama‘at to make a counter declaration by testifying on oath that in November 1901 while being members of the Ahmadiyya Movement they came to know that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, by publishing Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala, was retracting his previous statements, of the ten-year period 1891 to 1901, in which he had clearly denied claiming prophethood and, as against this denial, claimed to be a muhaddas. No one, not even one person who was an Ahmadi in November 1901, was ever able to make this counter declaration.

Urdu text of the sworn statement

Shown below is an image of the hand-written declaration with some of the signatures under it, taken from the book Mujahid-i Kabir, the Urdu biography of Maulana Muhammad Ali, p. 131–132.

Shown below is the text of the above declaration in printed Urdu text.

This declaration was first published as a tract shortly after the publication of Mirza Mahmud Ahmad’s book Haqiqat-un-Nubuwwat. Later it was included in the following publications:

• The second edition of Maulana Muhammad Ali’s voluminous Urdu book An-Nubuwwat fil-Islam.
• Number 3 of the series Itmam-i Hujjat  by Maulana Muhammad Ali, dated 16 January 1922.
• Dr Basharat Ahmad’s biography of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Mujaddid-i Azam (see vol. 2, pages 817–820).
• In English it was included in the tract Two Sections of the Ahmadiyya Movement  by Maulana Muhammad Ali, published in 1944.
• The image of the hand-written declaration was published in the Urdu biography of Maulana Muhammad Ali, entitled Mujahid-i Kabir (by Muhammad Ahmad and Mumtaz Ahmad Faruqui), published in 1962 (see pages 131–132).

List of signatories to the sworn statement:

1. (Maulvi) Sayyid Muhammad Ahsan Amrohi
2. (Maulvi) Muhammad Abdullah Khan Patialvi
3. (Maulvi) Muhammad Mubarak Ali (Sialkoti)
4. (Maulvi) Ghulam Hasan, sub-registrar, Peshawar
5. (Maulvi Hakim) Mirza Khuda Bakhsh, author of Asal Musaffa
6. (Maulvi) Muhammad Ali (Lahore)
7. (Maulvi) Muhammad Yahya (Debgaran)
8. (Maulvi) Muhammad Yaqub (Debgaran)
9. (Shaikh) Rahmatullah (Merchant, Lahore)
10. Dr. Mirza Yaqub Beg (Lahore)
11. Shaikh Ziaullah (former headmaster, Taleem-ul-Islam School, Qadian)
12. (Maulvi) Muhammad Hasan Quraishi, Qiladar
13. (Baba) Hidayatullah (poet Punjabi, Lahore)
14. (Mian) Nabi Bakhsh (Government Pensioner, Lahore)
15. Dr. Sayyid Tufail Husain (Lahore)
16. Mirza Jamal-ud-din, copyist (Lahore)
17. Shaikh Din Muhammad (Lahore)
18. (Master) Faqirullah (Lahore)
19. Dr. Nabi Bakhsh (Bhati Gate, Lahore)
20. Hafiz Fazl Ahmad (presently Badomalhi)
21. Hafiz Ghulam Rasul (Trader, Wazirabad)
22. Chaudhry Ghulam Hasan (former Station Master, resident of Lowairiwala)
23. Shaikh Ghulam Husain Siddiqi Ahmadi (Sialkot)
24. Shaikh Muhammad Jan (Merchant, Wazirabad)
25. Shaikh Abdur Rahman (Wazirabad)
26. (Maulvi) Aziz Bakhsh, B.A. (Dera Ghazi Khan)
27. Wali Muhammad, court reader (Dera Ghazi Khan)
28. (Master) Ghulam Muhammad, B.A. (Headmaster, Rawalpindi)
29. Hakim Sardar Khan (brother of the late Hakim Shah Nawaz, Rawalpindi)
30. (Seth) Ahmad-ud-din (former Municipal Commissioner, Jhelum)
31. Shaikh Qamar-ud-din (optician, Jhelum)
32. Mistri Abdus Sattar (Jhelum)
33. Shaikh Ghulam Muhayy-ud-din (appeal recorder, Jhelum)
34. (Maulvi) Muhammad Ibrahim (Imam mosque, Jhelum)
35. Dr. Hayat Muhammad (Tooth-maker, Rawalpindi)
36. Babu Allah Bakhsh (Officers' Clerk, Jhelum)
37. Babu Abdul Haq (Clerk, Canal Department, Jhelum)
38. (Mistri) Abdul Sattar (Jhelum)
39. (Mistri) Yaqub Ali (Jammu)
40. Master Muhammad Ramzan (Jammu)
41. Malik Sher Muhammad Khan (B.A., Personal Assistant, Jammu)
42. Mufti Fazl Ahmad (Jammu)
43. (Mistri) Shahab-ud-din (Jammu)
44. Muhammad Shah (Jammu)
45. Nawab Khan (Jammu)
46. Sayyid Masud Shah (Teacher, Jammu)
47. (Mistri) Nizam-ud-din (Jammu)
48. Sayyid Amir Ali Shah (Pensioner sub-Inspector)
49. Shaikh Hidayatullah (Peshawar)
50. Ramzan Ali (Peshawar)
51. Mian Muhammad Makki (Peshawar)
52. Sayyid Lal Shah Barq (Peshawar)
53. Shaikh Fazl Karim (Peshawar)
54. (Munshi) Nawab Khan (sub-Inspector Police, Gujranwala)
55. Shaikh Maula Bakhsh (Sialkot)
56. Hakim Shams-ud-din (Sialkot)
57. Mian Boora (Sialkot)
58. Allah Din (Sialkot)
59. Shaikh Muhammad Jan (Trader, Sialkot Cantonment)
60. Babu Ata Muhammad (Engineer, Sialkot)
61. Mirza Hakim Beg (Sialkot)
62. Mistri Muhammad Akbar (Contractor, Sialkot)
63. Mistri Abdullah (Sialkot)
64. Muhammad-ud-din (Sialkot)
65. Haji Fazl-ud-din (Sialkot)
66. Sayyid Amjad Ali (Court Inspector)
67. (Dr.) Hasan Ali
68. Muhammad Sarfraz Khan (numberdar, Badomalhi)
69. Shaikh Muhammad Naseeb (former Head Clerk, Qadian)
70. Abdul Haq (Rawalpindi)

Declaration by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din

Shortly before the above declaration, Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din had published a similar declaration on his own behalf, dated 4 July 1915. He included this in an article in Paigham Sulh (Urdu journal of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement), dated 11 July 1915, which was headed: An Appeal to certain elders of the Ahmadiyya Community to give sworn testimony. In this article he proposed that certain prominent members from both the Qadian and the Lahore sides, should make a sworn declaration, in the name of Allah, of their beliefs on the issues of controversy. He gave a list of names of the persons from both sides whom he was addressing and he emphasised to them that their oaths should not be about the beliefs which they hold now, but what their beliefs were at the death of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

He ended by taking his own oath, which covered all the points of controversy. We translate below the section relating to the alleged change of claim in 1901.

“I testify on oath that not only till the death of Hazrat [Mirza Ghulam Ahmad] sahib but also till last February the idea never occurred to me, nor did I hear from anyone, that the belief of Hazrat Mirza sahib regarding his prophethood was different before 1901 from what it was afterwards, that is to say, his belief about his prophethood changed in 1901. The poster of 1901, Ayk Ghalati Ka Izala, according to my knowledge and certainty, was published to correct the error of people, not that Mirza sahib had himself been in error, and he was correcting his own error. I state on oath that, till the death of the Hazrat, I never held the belief, nor thought nor heard, that the writings of the holy Hazrat Mirza sahib up to the year 1901 on the issue of prophethood were abrogated. I write, making Allah as my Witness, that my statement above is true and correct.

This statement will be sent by post to the senior members whose names are listed above, and the receipt of posting will be obtained from the Post Office. I shall wait two to three weeks from the date of posting to receive their oaths. It does not matter where I am located. Replies should be sent to me by registered post to the address at the bottom. Later I shall publish them all exactly as they are, so that it is of use to future generations, and if Allah wills, to the present generations — Ameen.

If I do not receive these oaths within three weeks I will conclude that the belief of these people is the same as my belief, and they are avoiding taking the oath only because they have taken the bai‘at [of Mirza Mahmud Ahmad]. It is a matter between them and Almighty God.

— 4 July 1915
Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din
Aziz Manzil, Lahore

Show below is the Urdu text of the above declaration:

Qadiani Jama‘at response

The only response received from the Qadiani Jama‘at was the following brief notice in their organ Al-Fazl:

Important Notification

Our friends should not send individual replies to Khwaja sahib

Regarding the sworn testimonies about the prophethood of the Promised Messiah which Khwaja sahib has demanded these days from Ahmadi brethren and senior figures of the community, there is no need to publish these individually. A combined response on behalf of everyone sent from the centre of the Movement and the seat of the Khilafat will be sufficient and satisfactory, inshallah. It is hoped to publish this soon, Allah allowing. For the information of friends, it has been considered necessary to announce these few lines. Those who see this announcement should make other brethren aware of it as well.
Wasalaam
(Editor Al-Fazl)

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The image of this announcement from Al-Fazl, 20 July 1915, front page, column 1, is shown below:

No sworn testimony was ever issued by any member of the Qadiani Jama‘at individually or their members collectively to declare that, by the time of the death of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, they had come to know and believe that he had changed his claim in 1901 to that of prophet and had declared his pre-1901 writings on this issue to be abrogated.