Youza Asaf, Youza Asaph, Youza Asouph, Yuz Asaf, Yuzu Asaf, Yuzu Asif, or Yuzasaf, are Arabic and Urdu variations of the name Josaphat, and are primarily connected with Christianized and Islamized versions of the life of the Buddha found in the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat. According to Ahmadiyya thought the name Yuz Asaf is of Buddhist derivation, and possibly from Yusu or Yehoshua and Asaf. =Overview= Local Kashmiri traditions state that the Yuz Asaf was a prophet of Ahle-Kitab whose real name was Isa – the Quranic name for Jesus. The prophet Yuz Asaf came to Kashmir from the West during the reign of Raja Gopdatta according to the ancient documents held by the current custodian of the tomb. According to Tarikh-i-Kashmir, a history of Kashmir written between 1579–1620, Yuzu Asaf was a Prophet of God who travelled to Kashmir from a foreign land. In 1747, a local Srinagar Sufi writer, Khwaja Muhammad Azam Didamari, stated that the Roza Bal is a shrine to a foreign prophet and prince, Youza Asouph.
Having stumbled upon research by Russian explorer Nicolas Notovitch, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, identified Yuz Asaf as the name that Jesus of Nazareth may have assumed following his crucifixion and migration from Israel. Ahmad further identified that the Roza Bal shrine located in Srinagar, Kashmir is the tomb of Jesus. These beliefs are discussed in the book Jesus in India, written by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. In these publications he proposed the belief that the tomb of Yuz Asaf in the Roza Bal shrine, located in the Khanyar district of Srinagar, Kashmir - was that of Jesus of Nazareth. Drawing on some Kashmiri oral traditions, as well as the Qur'an, Hadith, and accounts by explorers, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed that Jesus travelled eastwards to Srinagar, where he settled and married a woman called Maryam, and that Maryam bore Yuza Asif children, before he died aged 120 years. Ahmadiyya writers claim that Jesus' mother, Mary, is buried in the townMurree in Pakistan. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's use of various Hindu and Islamic sources have been found to be misunderstandings or distortions by various independent scholars of Buddhism including the Swedish scholar Per Beskow in Jesus in Kashmir: Historien om en legend, the German indologist Günter Grönbold, in Jesus in Indien - Das Ende einer Legende and Norbert Klatt, in Lebte Jesus in Indien?: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Klärung.
Islamic views
These views are considered to be blasphemous by the majority Sunni Islamic scholars and authorities who assert that Jesus is presently alive in Heaven. Local Muslim residents at the shrine believe Yuz Asaf was a Sufi saint. Indologist Günter Grönbold in his Jesus in Indien assesses that the shrine was previously Hindu, before the Islamization of Kashmir and is possibly the grave of a Buddhist or Hindu saint rather than a Sufi, but either way has no connection with Jesus or with Christianity.
