Mai Mari da Ashtan

In Ahmadi Muslim belief, the Mai Mari da Ashtan is the burial place of the Mary, mother of Jesus, at one extremity of Muree in Pakistan. Combining local oral and written accounts of one Yuz Asaf with the Acts of Thomas, they hold that Jesus (identified with Yuz Asaf), Thomas the Apostle (held to be Jesus' twin brother), and their mother Mary travelled to India, with Mary dying en route from Taxila at Muree and being buried at Pindi Point there.

The name "Mai Mari da Ashtan" means, literally, the "resting place of Mother Mary", and the site was venerated by Hindus, Muslims, and Christians locally; so much that when the British tried to have the tomb demolished in 1916, to stop people visiting it (because at the time it was next to a defence post built in 1898), public protest caused them to not proceed with the demolition. The tomb itself was renovated in the 1950s through the efforts of Khwaja Nazir Ahmad, author of Jesus in Heaven and Earth who also documented this belief. The defence post no longer exists, and instead a television transmitter station, constructed for Pakistan Television Corporation in 1968, stands on the point.

Nazir Ahmad also states that the very name of the town, Muree, named Mari in the 19th century, is derived from the name Mary. However, mountaineer and local historian Farakh Ahmed Khan disputed this in his history of Muree, stating that the name "Mari" was simply the word for an enclosure of land, a dwelling area, akin to the similar Bengali word.