Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad (مرزا بشیر الدین محمود احمد; 12 January 1889 – 8 November 1965) was the second caliph (Arabic: خليفة المسيح الثاني, khalīfatul masīh al-thāni), leader of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the eldest son of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad from his second wife, Nusrat Jahan Begum.

[1] Mahmood Ahmad's election as second caliph saw a secession within the movement in which a party refrained from pledging allegiance to him on account of certain differences over succession and theology; and possibly owing to a clash of personalities.

Following the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, he carefully oversaw the safe migration of Ahmadis from Qadian to the newly found state, eventually building a town on a tract of arid and mountainous land bought by the Community in 1948 which now became its new headquarters and was named Rabwah.

During his youth, he remained an active member in the service of the Movement by founding a journal entitled Tash'heezul Az'haan and accompanied his father on many of his journeys.

After the passing of his father, Mahmood Ahmad continued to study the Quran, Sahih Bukhari, the Masnavi and some medicine under the tutelage of Noor-ud-Din, with whom he developed a close friendship.

[6] The following day, Noor-ud-Din's will which had been entrusted to Muhammad Ali Khan, a prominent member of the Community, was read aloud in Noor Mosque after Asr prayer.

During his tenure, he established 46 foreign missions and founded the Anjuman Tehrik-e-Jadīd, which collected the funds from the members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community for the training of missionaries and had them posted to various countries.

[7] Soon after Hakim Nur-ud-Din's death in 1914, pre-existing ideological and administrative differences between Mahmood Ahmad and other prominent Ahmadi figures came to a head.

[15][13] In contrast, Mahmood Ahmad posited that Ghulam Ahmad's messianic claim and role were qualitatively distinct from the claims of the saints preceding him in Islam[16] and that his prophetic status, though completely subservient to Muhammad, being a mere reflection of his own prophethood and not legislating anything new, still made him technically a prophet irrespective of the type of prophethood or the adjectives added to qualify it.

[20][21] The former could not in any sense be termed disbelievers (kafirs) while the latter were guilty only of rejecting a particular commandment of the Islamic faith—namely that pertaining to belief in the promised Messiah—which would render them fasiqun (those who depart from the right path) in distinction to disbelief in a basic element of the faith which would have excluded them from the Muslim community (Ummah).

[35] No individual had the power to revoke the decisions reached by the majority of the Council that would remain paramount and binding,[36] something which they believed was in keeping with Ghulam Ahmad's instructions for the movement's administration after his death.

Further, according to them, since leadership of the movement was no longer divinely appointed after Ghulam Ahmad's death, the obligation to pledge allegiance to his successor had also lapsed and had become a voluntary act.

[37] As opposed to the foregoing approach, Mahmood Ahmad, who assumed the movement's leadership as the second successor the day after Nur-ud-Din's death, held that Ghulam Ahmad had envisioned a system of divinely ordained caliphate to succeed him, similar to that believed to have commenced following the death of Muhammad, under whose authority the council was to operate.

[36] This, he contended, was clearly indicated in The Will as well as Ghulam Ahmad's other works and was an arrangement which, according to him, had existed throughout the period of Nur-ud-Din's leadership who not only spoke of himself as the khalīfat al-masīh (caliph; lit.

[36] The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, accordingly, vests its religious and organisational authority in the caliph as Ghulam Ahmad's divinely chosen successor.

[40] Mahmood Ahmad became an important political figure in pre-independence India, and had close contacts with the leadership of All-India Muslim League.

The Majlis consists of elected representatives from various parts of the community who gather once a year and offer counsel and opinion on matters presented to them.

Its main purpose is to advise the caliph on important matters such as finance, projects, education and other issues relating to members of the Community.

[45] In the early Twenties the Arya Samāj (a Hindu reformist Movement) started the Shuddhi missionary campaign to revert to Hinduism, those who had converted to other faiths (in most cases to Islam), particularly the Malkanas, a group of Rajputs.

In the latter part of the Twenties and early Thirties, under Mahmood Ahmad's directives various gatherings and meetings were held across the Indian subcontinent commemorating the life of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad known as (Jalsa Seeratun-Nabi) attended by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, a practice which is still carried out by Ahmadis today.

[citation needed] Upon arrival in London he proceeded directly to Ludgate to fulfill a prophetic Hadith which refers to the Bāb al-Lud (the gate of Lud)[52] and led some 300 Muslims in a lengthy prayer outside the entrance of St Paul's Cathedral.

The Ahrar alleged that the formation of the committee took place by the Ahmadiyya in order to spread its teachings and strongly opposed the leadership of Mahmood Ahmad.

These were followed by incidents of severe persecution against Ahmadis, many of whom were reported to have been attacked, beaten, stoned, looted and their mosques occupied in a number of places.

[59] Mahmood Ahmad advised all Ahmadis not to retaliate, instructed concentration on prayer and explained that passing through periods of persecution was inevitable for the Community.

Hence you too will have to pass through fire and other such dangers on the path to success.In 1934 Mahmood Ahmad claimed to have been divinely inspired to launch a twofold scheme for the establishment of foreign missions and the moral upbringing of Ahmadis.

Addressing the Ahrari opposition Mahmood said: In order to expand the propagation of Islam I have urged the youth to come forward and dedicate their lives for the service of religion.

[62] With the expansion of the Community's numbers and work, Mahmood Ahmad established separate auxiliary organisations based on age and gender.

Mahmood Ahmad's main objective in doing so was for the Community to maintain the highest level of activity, both in terms of the religious and moral training of its members and in the propagation of Islam.

According to this method 2008 CE corresponds to 1387 Hijri-Shamsi (abbreviated as HS), i.e. 1,387 years have passed since the migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina.

[64] Each month of the Solar-Hegira calendar is based on an important event of early Islamic History: In a series of public gatherings across India in 1944, he made the claim that he was the 'Promised Son' foretold by his father Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.