In the letter from Maulvi Abdullah to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Maulvi Abdullah mentioned that near the tomb of Yuz Asaf there existed a sculpted representation of the feet of Yuz Asaph that had been carved by some sculptor. The letter of Maulvi Abdullah was published November 30, 1898 in the book, Raz-i-Haqiqat ('Secret of the Truth'), as we learned in the section on Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

Because of the fact that there exist various theories of how crucifixion victims were nailed to the cross, the position of the nail wounds on the carved footprints inside the Roza Bal would be disputed by some, since they show “nail” marks on the tops of the feet. For instance, the year1968 gave us the discovery of the first known actual remains of a crucifixion victim, whose name, from epigraphists’ reading of his ossuary’s inscription, had been Jehohanan. Dr Nicu Haas, of the Anatomy School at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, deduced that Jehohanan’s feet had been nailed through the heels. In 1856 a graffiti representation of a crucifixion victim was found on the wall of the Domus Gelotiana, a palace of the Emperor Nero’s time (54-68 A.D.) on the Palatine Hill in Rome. This graffiti image also seemed to indicate that the victim in question had had his feet nailed through the heels.

Although the Shroud of Turin is variously believed to be a fake or genuine, depending on the scientist interpreting its markings, some say that it is obviously a good depiction—fake or not—of a crucifixion victim; meaning that even if the Shroud had been manufactured by an artist, he had an excellent understanding of the anatomy of a crucifixion [yet, recall our Shroud of Turin discussion, though, where it was shown that it would have been impossible for the Shroud to have been created by an artist in such a perfect manner, because no artist from the Middle-Ages would have had such expert understanding of human anatomy and physiology]. From the Shroud markings, two different opinions have been drawn with regard to the feet. One opinion states that the nail wound in the Man of the Shroud’s right foot can be seen as a slightly darker patch between his tarsal or toe bones. The other opinion states that the frontal image of the Shroud shows that the flow of blood at the victim’s feet appears to originate from the heel area.

But, as Ian Wilson stated in his 1998 book, The Blood and the Shroud:

“What cannot be emphasized enough is that all of the above interpretations are based on evidence that is far too fluid and ambiguous for anyone, whether Zias and Sekeles, Dr. Victor Webster, or myself, to claim that they represent the last word on the subject.”

Therefore, it is quite possible that the “nail” marks shown on the carved footprints of Yuz Asaf in the Roza Bal are correct for his particular crucifixion. And what may be more important than the precise location of the nail marks on the carving is the fact that the sculptor was trying to indicate that the Man of the Tomb had suffered an injury of some type to his feet.

But could some Islamic enemy of Christianity have created the carving? Here again it must be stated that it is absolutely impossible that Muslims sculpted these footprints for the purpose of creating a hoax in order to harm Christianity. Any Muslim claiming that Jesus was dead and buried in the Roza Bal would likely have been severely reprimanded by his Muslim brethren, if not punished or even killed. This is no exaggeration. To this day, members of the heterodox Ahmadiyya community, which believes that Jesus Christ lies dead and buried in the Roza Bal, are severely persecuted in Pakistan for this and other beliefs, as has been reported by the U.S. State Department. We reproduce an excerpt of that report to emphasize the seriousness with which many orthodox Muslims take this matter, and to show that we are not exaggerating when we state that non-orthodox teachings about Jesus or Muhammad or other issues of Islam can sometimes warrant death within the orthodox Islamic world:

“For example, according to the HRCP, in one case prior to 1999, Muhammad Akram was threatened with death by an influential local religious organization after he joined the Ahmadiyya community, whose members are regarded as non-Muslims under the Constitution. The threat was published on the organization's own letterhead, but no legal action has been taken against the group.”

As we saw in the Islam link, the idea that Jesus Christ might have survived the crucifixion is anathema to orthodox Muslims because of the fact that they believe that Jesus Christ is alive in heaven, waiting to return in the last days to establish Islam on this earth. As such, no Muslim would dare violate this orthodox teaching by perpetrating a hoax, because those teachings, as we saw earlier, are deeply embedded. So, whoever the sculptor was, he was sculpting exactly what he knew about the Man of the Tomb: that this man had been wounded in the feet. Dr. Hassnain states the following:

“It was in 1975 that I happened to visit the tomb of Yuzu Asaph along with a colleague of mine, Professor Ghulam Mohi-ud-din. We quietly entered the wooden sarcophagus through a side window...I also found a stone in a corner carved out with a niche to keep a lamp. In another corner was a stone slab fixed in the floor, covered with mud.

“We cleaned it, and to our astonishment the slab had foot impressions with traces of raised wound marks...Next day I took Mr. Bhan, curator of the state museum, with me, and he prepared a plaster cast of the slab. The result was marvelous. It was clear that whoever had chiseled this impression had seen Yuzu Asaph with these wound marks. Jesus had been put on the cross with nails stuck in his feet. Both Yuzu Asaph and Jesus had one thing in common: wound marks on their feet.”

“...The carving had been extraordinary, because on the one hand, raised wound marks were depicted, and secondly, two pads inside the soles of the feet were also shown. It came to light, many years later, that these pads were a clear proof of the genuineness of these feet impressions.

“A German scholar [Gunter Hoffmann], who had come to critically examine these foot-impressions, informed me that these pads [probably] had a special significance in relation to Jesus. During his travels he could have put pads under his soles so that the raised wounds would not irritate his feet. This extraordinary depiction of raised soles showed that the carver was genuine and his carving of the feet- wounds was real and genuine. He saw that there were wounds that had swollen the feet and deformed them. As such, he shows deformed feet, one foot a little different from the other. “Secondly, in one foot there is a little cavity or hole, which showed that one nail was stuck on both feet, placed over one another...”

Hassnain goes on to reproduce a letter that he had received from Kurt Berna of Ludwigsburg, Germany. Berna had taken an interest in the Shroud of Turin. When he heard about the stone carvings of the feet of Yuz Asaph, he wrote to Dr. Hassnain and asked him to send pictures. After Berna examined the pictures, he wrote Hassnain the following:

“'In this case, while it is very interesting to find the nail-wound reproduction of the left foot near the toes, the nail-wound reproduction of the right foot is exactly at the place where the classic view said it should be. This means [that] this man [Yuz Asaph] has been crucified with the left foot over the right foot and only one nail was going through the feet.

“'These are not necessarily the real foot-prints of the man in the tomb. Yet the imprint-maker gave prominence to the signs that the man underneath the tombstone had been crucified, and he did have such marks at these places on the soles of the feet, distinguishing marks!

“'Fact: a crucified man is in the tomb, but if we look on the Holy Shroud of Christ in Turin, we find that the left foot was nailed over the right foot on the cross, because the left knee inside the shroud was more bowed and stiff than the right leg. [This is] A further indication that the man from the Turin Shroud and the person under the Srinagar tomb are the same!”

Dr. Hassnain's 1975 account of these footprints verifies Maulvi Abdullah's 1898 report.