Did Buddha foretell a Messiah in the Maitreya?

Yes. Buddha foretold a future Buddha who would come from a foreign people. This prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus (as), and a second time in the Promised Messiah of the latter days.

Buddha spoke of a future Buddha called Maitreya. The name sounds almost like the word Messiah. Buddha also said that this coming Buddha would not belong to his own people but would come from abroad. When he foretold this, Jesus (as) had not yet been born for a long time to come.

According to the Holy Qur’an, Jesus (as) did not die on the cross. God saved him, and he was taken down from the cross gravely wounded but alive. The New Testament itself contains hints of this. Ointments of herbs were prepared for his wounds, and no one treats the wounds of a dead man. Later he showed himself to his disciples with the same wounds and told them that he was not a spirit.

After that he set out in search of the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This meant the tribes of Israel that had been driven from their homeland long before him. Much suggests that descendants of these tribes settled in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Names of places, tribes and mountains there still recall ancient Israel today.

Old Hindu annals report that a king in Kashmir met a pious man dressed in white. Asked who he was, the man replied that he was the Messiah. He said he was a prophet of God whom his own people had tried to kill but whom God had saved, and that he was seeking the people who had once left his land. So a messenger from a foreign people came into the world of Buddhism, just as Buddha had foretold.

The prophecy was fulfilled a second time in the latter days. For that age a Messiah had been promised who would come in the footsteps of Jesus (as). He came in the person of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as), the Promised Messiah.