Rozabal Shrine: The Tomb of Jesus

In the Khanyar area of Kashmir, India, in downtown Srinagar, there is an old shrine—a modest stone building with a traditional Kashmiri multi-tiered sloping roof and a green hexagonal dome. Known as Roza Bal— roza means tomb, the word bal mean place—the shrine is the burial site of Yuz Asaf, a medieval Muslim preacher and another Muslim holy man named Mir Sayyid Naseeruddin. But a growing number of people believe that it is in fact the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. Photo credit: Indrajit Das/Wikimedia Commons The idea that Jesus survived the crucifixion and migrated to India to live out the rest of his life in the verdant valley of Kashmir in the north of the country was first put forward by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement. Ahmad found rock carvings in the shrine which shows the feet of Yuz Asaf with wounds from crucifixion or some similar injuries. Ahmad believed that Yuz Asaf was none other than Jesus himself. He interpreted the name Yuz as Jesus and Asaf as the Hebrew for “gather”. Thus Yuz Asaf became “Jesus the gatherer.” Ahmad even found validation in the Quran itself. Referring to the Verse 23:50, which reads: “We...prepared an abode for them in an elevated part of the earth, being a place of quiet and security, and watered with running springs,” Ahmad said that the description very fittingly applied to the valley of Kashmir. In 1899, Ahmad wrote a treatise in Urdu titled Masīh Hindustān Meiń (Jesus in India), where he put forward his theory. This treatise posits that Jesus, having survived crucifixion, quietly departed from Roman jurisdiction, commencing his journey from Jerusalem and traversing through Nisibis and Persia. Eventually, he arrived in Afghanistan, where he encountered Israelite tribes who had settled there centuries earlier after escaping Nebuchadnezzar's grasp. Subsequently, he journeyed to Kashmir, where certain Israelite tribes had also established a community.