Iqbal, Sir Muhammad

born Nov. 9, 1877, Si

lkot, Punjab, India

died April 21, 1938, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan) Indian poet and philosopher.

He first won fame for his poetry, which was written in the classical style for public recitation and became known even among the illiterate. His perspective grew increasingly Pan-Islamic, as revealed in the long poem The Secrets of the Self (1915), which he wrote in Persian in order to address a broader Muslim audience. Calling for a revitalization of Islam, he advocated the separate Muslim state that would eventually be realized with the founding of Pakistan in 1947, and he was acclaimed after his death as the father of that country. His poetic masterpiece is "The Song of Eternity" (1932). He is considered the greatest 20th-century poet to write in Urdu.

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▪ Indian poet and philosopher

Introduction

also spelled  Muḥammad Ikbāl  

born Nov. 9, 1877, Siālkot, Punjab, India [now in Pakistan]

died April 21, 1938, Lahore, Punjab

      Indian poet and philosopher, known for his influential efforts to direct his fellow Muslims toward the establishment of a separate Muslim state, an aspiration that was eventually realized in the country of Pakistan. He was knighted in 1922.

Early life and career.

      Iqbāl was born at Siālkot, India (now in Pakistan), of a pious family of small merchants and was educated at Government College, Lahore. In Europe from 1905 to 1908, he earned his degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge, qualified as a barrister in London, and received a doctorate from the University of Munich. His thesis, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, revealed some aspects of Islāmic mysticism formerly unknown in Europe.

      On his return from Europe, he gained his livelihood by the practice of law, but his fame came from his Persian- and Urdu-language poetry, which was written in the classical style for public recitation. Through poetic symposia and in a milieu in which memorizing verse was customary, his poetry became widely known, even among the illiterate. Almost all the cultured Indian and Pakistani Muslims of his and later generations have had the habit of quoting Iqbāl.

      Before he visited Europe, his poetry affirmed Indian nationalism, as in Nayā shawālā (“The New Altar”), but time away from India caused him to shift his perspective. He came to criticize nationalism for a twofold reason: in Europe it had led to destructive racism and imperialism, and in India it was not founded on an adequate degree of common purpose. In a speech delivered at Alīgarh in 1910, under the title “Islam as a Social and Political Ideal,” he indicated the new Pan-Islāmic direction of his hopes. The recurrent themes of Iqbāl's poetry are a memory of the vanished glories of Islām, a complaint about its present decadence, and a call to unity and reform. Reform can be achieved by strengthening the individual through three successive stages: obedience to the law of Islām, self-control, and acceptance of the idea that everyone is potentially a vicegerent of God (nāʾib, or muʾmin). Furthermore, the life of action is to be preferred to ascetic resignation.

      Three significant poems from this period, Shikwah (“The Complaint”), Jawāb-e shikwah (“The Answer to the Complaint”), and Khizr-e rāh (“Khizr, the Guide”), were published later in 1924 in the Urdu collection Bāng-e darā (“The Call of the Bell”). In those works Iqbāl gave intense expression to the anguish of Muslim powerlessness. Khizr (Arabic: Khiḍr), the Qurʾānic prophet who asks the most difficult questions, is pictured bringing from God the baffling problems of the early 20th century.

What thing is the State? or why

Must labour and capital so bloodily disagree?

Asia's time-honoured cloak grows ragged

and wears out . . .

For whom this new ordeal, or by whose hand prepared?

(Eng. trans. by V.G. Kiernan.)

      Notoriety came in 1915 with the publication of his long Persian poem Asrār-e khūdī (The Secrets of the Self). He wrote in Persian because he sought to address his appeal to the entire Muslim world. In this work he presents a theory of the self that is a strong condemnation of the self-negating quietism (i.e., the belief that perfection and spiritual peace are attained by passive absorption in contemplation of God and divine things) of classical Islāmic mysticism; his criticism shocked many and excited controversy. Iqbāl and his admirers steadily maintained that creative self-affirmation is a fundamental Muslim virtue; his critics said he imposed themes from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on Islām.

      The dialectical quality of his thinking was expressed by the next long Persian poem, Rumūz-e bīkhūdī (1918; The Mysteries of Selflessness). Written as a counterpoint to the individualism preached in the Asrār-e khūdī, this poem called for self-surrender.

Lo, like a candle wrestling with the night

O'er my own self I pour my flooding tears.

I spent my self, that there might be more light,

More loveliness, more joy for other men.

(Eng. trans. by A.J. Arberry.)

      The Muslim community, as Iqbāl conceived it, ought effectively to teach and to encourage generous service to the ideals of brotherhood and justice. The mystery of selflessness was the hidden strength of Islām. Ultimately, the only satisfactory mode of active self-realization was the sacrifice of the self in the service of causes greater than the self. The paradigm was the life of the Prophet Muḥammad and the devoted service of the first believers. The second poem completes Iqbāl's conception of the final destiny of the self.

      Later, he published three more Persian volumes. Payām-e Mashriq (1923; “Message of the East”), written in response to J.W. von Goethe's West-östlicher Divan (1819; “Divan of West and East”), affirmed the universal validity of Islām. In 1927 Zabūr-e ʿAjam (“Persian Psalms”) appeared, about which A.J. Arberry, its translator into English, wrote: “Iqbāl displayed here an altogether extraordinary talent for the most delicate and delightful of all Persian styles, the ghazal,” or love poem. Jāvīd-nāmeh (1932; “The Song of Eternity”) is considered Iqbāl's masterpiece. Its theme, reminiscent of Dante's Divine Comedy, is the ascent of the poet, guided by the great 13th-century Persian mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn ar-Rūmī, through all the realms of thought and experience to the final encounter.

      Iqbāl's later publications of poetry in Urdu were Bāl-e Jibrīl (1935; “Gabriel's Wing”), Zarb-e kalīm (1937; “The Blow of Moses”), and the posthumous Armaghān-e Hijāz (1938; “Gift of the Hejaz”), which contained verses in both Urdu and Persian. He is considered the greatest poet in Urdu of the 20th century.

Philosophical position and influence.

      His philosophical position was articulated in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1934), a volume based on six lectures delivered at Madras, Hyderābād, and Alīgarh in 1928–29. He argued that a rightly focused man should unceasingly generate vitality through interaction with the purposes of the living God. The Prophet Muḥammad had returned from his unitary experience of God to let loose on the earth a new type of manhood and a cultural world characterized by the abolition of priesthood and hereditary kingship and by an emphasis on the study of history and nature. The Muslim community in the present age ought, through the exercise of ijtihād—the principle of legal advancement—to devise new social and political institutions. He also advocated a theory of ijmāʿ—consensus. Iqbāl tended to be progressive in adumbrating general principles of change but conservative in initiating actual change.

      During the time that he was delivering these lectures, Iqbāl began working with the Muslim League. At the annual session of the league at Allahābād, in 1930, he gave the presidential address, in which he made a famous statement that the Muslims of northwestern India should demand status as a separate state.

      After a long period of ill health, Iqbāl died in April 1938 and was buried in front of the great Bādshāhī Mosque in Lahore. Two years later, the Muslim League voted for the idea of Pakistan. That the poet had influenced the making of that decision, which became a reality in 1947, is undisputed. He has been acclaimed as the father of Pakistan, and every year Iqbāl Day is celebrated by Pakistanis.

Sheila D. McDonough

Additional Reading

Aspects of his thought are explored in K.G. Saiyidain, Iqbal's Educational Philosophy, 6th ed. rev. (1965), a standard analysis of the relevance of Iqbāl's ideas about education written by a distinguished Indian educationist; Annemarie Schimmel, Gabriel's Wing, 2nd ed. (1989), a thorough analysis of Iqbāl's religious symbolism, including a comprehensive bibliography in English; Syed Abdul Vahid, Iqbal: His Art and Thought, new ed. (1959), a standard introduction; Hafeez Malik (ed.), Iqbal, Poet-Philosopher of Pakistan (1971), representative Pakistani views; and S.M.H. Burney (S.M.H. Barnī), Iqbal, Poet-Patriot of India (1987), focusing on nationalism and secularism in his poetry.

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