Qadian was established in 1530 by
Mirza Hadi Baig, a religious scholar dedicated to Islam and the first
Qazi in the area. Mirza Hadi Baig was from a royal household of
Mirza of the
Mughal Empire. He migrated from
Samarkand and settled in Punjab where he was granted a vast tract of land comprising 80 villages by the emperor
Babur. Because of his religious beliefs, he named the center of the 80 villages
Islam Pur Qazi and governed from there. Over time, the name of the town changed to
Qazi Maji, then
Qadi, and eventually it became known as 'Qadian'. The term
Qadiani is used as a slur to refer to Ahmadi Muslims, primarily in Pakistan. Qadian and the surrounding areas later fell to the
Ramgarhia Sikhs under the leadership of
Jassa Singh Ramgarhia who offered the ruling Qazis, two villages which they refused. In 1834, during the rule of
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the region consisting of Qadian and five adjoining villages was given to
Mirza Ghulam Murtaza, father of Ghulam Ahmad in return for military support in
Kashmir, Mahadi, the
Kulu valley,
Peshawar and
Hazara. in Qadian.
Ahmadiyya Movement A remote and unknown town, Qadian emerged as a centre of religious learning in 1889, when
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad established the
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. It was historically a Muslim-majority town, a Muslim enclave within the wider
Gurdaspur District in British Punjab. In 1891 it became the venue for the community's annual gatherings. Qadian remained the administrative headquarters and capital of the
Ahmadiyya Caliphate until the
partition of India in 1947, when much of the Community migrated to Pakistan. Following the partition,
Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad, the second
Khalifa of the Community, carefully oversaw the safe migration of Ahmadis from Qadian to the newly founded state, instructing 313 men, including two of his own sons, to stay in Qadian and guard the sites holy to Ahmadis, conferring upon them the title
darveshān-i qādiyān (the dervishes of Qadian) and eventually moving the headquarters to
Rabwah, Pakistan. Qadian experienced extreme violence and bloodshed during and after the
partition of India, and many of its neighbouring areas and villages became devoid of Muslims, who were either lynched or displaced by militant Sikhs and Hindus backed by the
Indian Army at that time. Despite many Muslims deciding to remain in
India, in Qadian or its neighboring areas, they were, at a low, persecuted, or forthrightly killed. A curfew on Qadian was intermittent for several months after the partition. Many religious places were either forcibly occupied and converted, defaced, ransacked and or vandalised. At the height of violence during the partition, Qadian had become a makeshift refugee camp for over 50,000 displaced Muslims. ==Geography==