Ghulam Ahmad's teachers

Anyone familiar with the life of the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) knows he never studied under a teacher. Everything he knew came straight from Allah. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad clearly saw the significance of this, because he tried to claim the very same thing about himself. He even swore on oath that nobody could ever prove he'd had a single lesson in the Quran or Hadith from another person. Here is how he put it:

View Urdu Transliteration

"Is ki tafseel yeh hai ke hamare Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam ne aur nabiyon ki tarah zahiri ilm kisi ustad se nahin parha tha magar Hazrat Isa aur Hazrat Musa maktabon mein baithe the aur Hazrat Isa ne ek Yahudi ustad se tamam Taurat parhi thi. Gharz isi lihaaz se ke hamare Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam ne kisi ustad se nahin parha Khuda aap hi ustad hua aur pehle pehal Khuda ne hi aap ko 'Iqra' kaha. Yani parh. Aur kisi ne nahin kaha is liye aap ne khaas Khuda ke zer-e-tarbiyat tamam deeni hidayat payi aur doosre nabiyon ke deeni maloomat insanon ke zariye se bhi hue. So aane wale ka naam jo Mahdi rakha gaya so is mein yeh ishara hai ke woh aane wala ilm-e-deen Khuda se hi hasil kare ga aur Quran aur Hadith mein kisi ustad ka shagird nahin hoga. So main halafan keh sakta hoon ke mera haal yahi haal hai koi sabit nahin kar sakta ke main ne kisi insan se Quran ya Hadith ya Tafseer ka ek sabaq bhi parha hai ya kisi mufassir ya muhaddis ki shagirdi ikhtiyar ki hai."

Translation:
"The detail of this is that our Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), unlike other prophets, had not studied apparent knowledge from any teacher, but Hazrat Isa (Jesus) and Hazrat Musa (Moses) had sat in schools, and Hazrat Isa had read the entire Torah from a Jewish teacher. In short, from this perspective that our Prophet (pbuh) did not study from any teacher, God Himself became the teacher, and initially, God Himself said 'Iqra' to him. That is, read. And no one else said this, therefore you received all religious guidance under the special training of God, and the religious knowledge of other prophets also occurred through humans. So, the name of the coming one which was kept as 'Mahdi', there is an indication in this that the coming one will acquire religious knowledge only from God and will not be a pupil of any teacher in [the matters of] Quran and Hadith. So I can say on oath that my condition is this very condition; no one can prove that I have read even a single lesson of Quran or Hadith or Tafseer (Exegesis) from any human, or have adopted the pupilage of any Mufassir (Exegete) or Muhaddis (Hadith scholar)."

- (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 14, p. 394, Ayaam-us-Sulh)

If you read that carefully, he's really making two separate claims. The first is about earlier prophets: he says Moses and Jesus learned the Torah by going to school, and he goes as far as saying Jesus was taught by a Jewish teacher. The second is about himself: he insists he never took even one Quran lesson from another human being. Neither claim survives a closer look. 

Let's start with the first. The Quran tells a very different story about how these prophets were taught. When the angels gave Maryam the news of her son, they said of Jesus:

"And He will teach him writing and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel" (Surah Ali 'Imran 3:48, Sahih International).

Allah later reminds Jesus of this same favour directly:

"O Jesus, Son of Mary, remember My favor upon you and upon your mother... when I taught you writing and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel" (Surah Al-Ma'idah 5:110, Sahih International).

So the Quran is clear that it was Allah who taught Jesus the Torah. There's no mention of a Jewish teacher anywhere. The same is true of Moses. Allah tells him:

"[Allah] said, 'O Moses, I have chosen you over the people by My messages and My words...'" (Surah Al-A'raf 7:144, Sahih International).

And in the very next verse, Allah describes how that guidance was given to him:

"And We wrote for him on the tablets [something] of all things - instruction and explanation for all things..." (Surah Al-A'raf 7:145, Sahih International).

Moses received the Torah from Allah on the tablets, not from a classroom. In other words, to make his own claim look more special, Ghulam Ahmad had to downplay the way Allah describes teaching His own prophets.

His second claim falls apart even more easily, and this time the evidence comes from his own pen. In Kitab-ul-Bariyyah, he looks back on his childhood and describes exactly how he was educated:

View Urdu Transliteration

"Bachpan ke zamana mein meri ta'leem is tarah par hui ke jab main chhe saat saal ka tha to ek farsi khwan mu'allim mere liye naukar rakha gaya. Jinhon ne Quran Shareef aur chand farsi kitabein mujhe parhain aur is buzurg ka naam Fazl-e-Ilahi tha."

Translation:
"My education during the period of childhood occurred in this manner that when I was six or seven years old, a Persian-reading teacher was employed for me. Who taught me the Holy Quran and a few Persian books, and the name of this respected elder was Fazl-e-Ilahi."

- (Ruhani Khazain, Vol. 13, pp. 179-180, Kitab al-Bariyyah)

This isn't a hostile source or a disputed translation either. The Ahmadiyya community's own official English publication says exactly the same thing:

"I received my elementary education at home. When I was 6 or 7 years old, a teacher who was learned in Persian was employed as my tutor. He taught me the Holy Qur’an and a few Persian books. His name was Fadl Ilahi."

- (The Essence of Islam, Vol. 4, p. 9)

Put the two passages side by side and the problem is obvious. In Kitab-ul-Bariyyah, published in 1898, he names Fazl-e-Ilahi as the tutor hired to teach him the Quran as a child. Just a year later, in Ayyam-us-Sulh (1899), he swears on oath that no one can prove he ever had a human Quran teacher. On top of that, he backed his claim by saying Moses and Jesus learned from human teachers, when the Quran says Allah taught them. You can't claim to have been taught by God alone when your own writings tell us who your tutor was.