Born in 1835 in Qadian (India), Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Promised Messiah and Mahdi(as), devoted himself to the study of the Holy Quran and to a life of prayer and contemplation. Finding Islam the constant target of theological attacks and the fortunes of the Muslims at a low ebb, he undertook the vindication and exposition of Islam. In his vast corpus of writings (including his Magnus Opus Barahin-e-Ahmadiyyah), his lectures, discourses, religious debates etc., he argued that Islam was a living faith and the only religion capable of establishing a relationship between man and his creator. The teachings contained in the Holy Quran and the Law promulgated by Islam were designed to raise man to moral, intellectual and spiritual perfection. He announced that God had appointed him the Messiah and Mahdi as mentioned in the prophecies of the Bible, the Holy Quran and Hadith. In 1889 he began to accept initiates into the Ahmadiyyah Jama‘at. The Jama‘at which he founded is now established in almost two hundred countries. His eighty books are written mostly in Urdu, but a significant proportion of his writings are also in Arabic and Persian.