'Life of Iqbal'

Muhammad Iqbal was born on November 9, 1877, at Sialkot, Punjab. His grandfather Shaikh Rafiq, a Kashmiri, had joined a wave of migration to Sialkot, where he made a living peddling Kashmiri shawls. Shaikh Rafiq had two sons, Shaikh Ghulam Qadir and Shaikh Nur Muhammad, Iqbal's father.

Shaikh Nur Muhammad was a tailor whose handiwork was quite well known in Sialkot. But it was his devotion to Islam, especially its mystical aspects, that gained him respect among his Sufi peers and other associates. His wife, Imam Bibi, was also a devout Muslim. The couple instilled a deep religious consciousness in all their five children.

With the defeat of the Sikhs in Punjab by the British army, Western missionaries wasted no time in establishing centres of learning in Sialkot. One of these, the Scotch Mission College, founded in 1889, offered courses in the liberal arts, several of them in Arabic and Persian, although by this time English had supplanted Persian as the medium of instruction in most schools. This was where Iqbal had his first secular education.

Iqbal's potential as a poet was first recognized by one of his early tutors, Sayyid Mir Hassan, from whom he learned classical poetry. Mir Hassan never learned English, but his awareness of the merits of Western education and his appreciation of modernity ensured him a position as Professor or Oriental Literature at Scotch Mission. He was Iqbal's tutor until his graduation in 1892.

It was also in 1892 that Iqbal was married off to Karim Bibi, the daughter of an effluent Gujerati physician. According to some sources, this was the beginning of many years of unhappiness. They separated in 1916, but Iqbal provided financial support to Karim Bibi until he died. The couple had three children.

In 1885, after completing his studies at Scotch Mission, Iqbal entered the Government College in Lahore, where he studied Philosophy and Arabic and English Literature for his Bachelor of Arts degree. He was an excellent student, graudating cum laude and winning a gold medal for being the only candidate who passed the final comprehensive examination. Meanwhile, he continued writing poetry. When he received his Master's degree in 1899, he had already begun to make his mark among the literary circles of Lahore.
While reading for his Master's degree, Iqbal became acquainted with a figure who was to have a strong influence on his intellectual development. Sir Thomas Arnold, an erudite scholar of Islam and modern philosophy, became for Iqbal a bridge between East and West. It was Arnold who inspired in him the desire to pursue higher studies in Europe.

Iqbal studied in Europe for three years from 1905 and acquired a law degree at Lincoln's Inn, a Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge and a Doctor of Philosophy at Munich University. At Cambridge, he crossed paths with other great scholars who further influenced his scholastic development. Under their guidance, Iqbal refined his already considerable intellect and widened his mental horizon.
It was while in Britain that he first went into politics. Following the formation of the All-India Muslim League in 1906, Iqbal was elected to the executive committee of the league's British chapter. Together with two other leaders, Sayyid Hassan Bilgrami and Sayyid Amir Ali, he also sat on the subcommittee which drafted the league's constitution.

Upon his return from Europe in 1908, Iqbal embarked on a career in law, academics and poetry, all at once. Of the three pursuits, he excelled in what was his true calling and first love--poetry. There is a widely held belief that had the Government College in Lahore been more generous with their monthly stipend and academic freedom, he would have been as brilliant an academician as he was a poet. In fact, it was financial considerations that forced him to relinquish his assistant professorship in 1909 to take up a fulltime law career.
But he did not earn much as a lawyer either, although he could have. Instead of concentrating on the profession, he preferred to divide his time between the law and his own spiritual development.
In spite of a promise he made to his father-- that he would not make any profit out of his poetry--he sold copies of them and used the proceeds to supplement his small income. Already a famous poet by now, Iqbal received a knighthood from the British Government in honour of the brilliant Asrar-i Khudi.
While dividing his time between the law and poetry, Iqbal, with the encouragement of friends and supporters, decided once more to enter the political arena. In November 1926, he contested a seat in the Muslim District of Lahore and beat his opponent by a wide margin of 3,177 votes.

In 1931, Iqbal made a second visit to Europe to renew old acquaintances and make new ones and to reflect and write. He attended conferences in Britain and met various scholars and politicians, including the French philosopher Henri Louis Bergson and the Italian dictator Mussolini. A visit to Spain inspired three beautiful poems, which were later incorporated into a major composition, Bal-I Jibril (Gabriel's Wing).
After returning from a trip to Afghanistan in 1933, Iqbal's health deteriorated. But his religious and political ideas were gaining wide acceptance and his popularity was at its peak. One of the last great things he did was to establish the Adarah Darul Islam, an institution where studies in classical Islam and contemporary social science would be subsidized. It was perhaps the last wish of a great man who was fascinated with the yoking of modern science and philosophy to Islam, to create bridges of understanding at the highest intellectual level. This thought he expressed thus:

In the West, Intellect is the source of life,
In the East, Love is the basis of life.
Through Love, Intellect grows acquainted
with Reality,
And Intellect gives stability to the work of
Love,
Arise and lay the foundations of a new world,
By wedding Intellect to Love.

Iqbal was an heir to a very rich literary, mystic, philosophical and religious tradition. He imbibed and assimilated all that was best in the past and present Islamic and Oriental thought and culture. His range of interests covered Religion, Philosophy, Art, Politics, Economics, the revival of Muslim life and universal brotherhood of man. His prose, not only in his national language but also in English, was powerful. His two books in English demonstrate his mastery of English. But poetry was his medium par excellence of expression. Everything he thought and felt, almost involuntarily shaped itself into verse.

His first book Ilm ul Iqtisad/The knowledge of Economics was written in Urdu in 1903 . His first poetic work Asrar-i Khudi (1915) was followed by Rumuz-I Bekhudi (1917). Payam-i Mashriq appeared in 1923, Zabur-i Ajam in 1927, Javid Nama in 1932, Pas cheh bayed kard ai Aqwam-i Sharq in 1936, and Armughan-i Hijaz in 1938. All these books were in Persian. The last one, published posthumously is mainly in Persian: only a small portion comprises Urdu poems and ghazals.

His first book of poetry in Urdu, Bang-i Dara (1924) was followed by Bal-i Jibril in 1935 and Zarb-i Kalim in 1936.

Bang-i Dara consist of selected poems belonging to the three preliminary phases of Iqbal's poetic career. Bal-i Jibril is the peak of Iqbal's Urdu poetry. It consists of ghazals, poems, quatrains, epigrams and displays the vision and intellect necessary to foster sincerity and firm belief in the heart of the ummah and turn its members into true believers. Zarb-i Kalim was described by the poet himself "as a declaration of war against the present era". The main subjects of the book are Islam and the Muslims, education and upbringing, woman, literature and fine arts, politics of the East and the West. In Asrar-i Khudi, Iqbal has explained his philosohy of "Self". He proves by various means that the whole universe obeys the will of the "Self". Iqbal condemns self-destruction. For him the aim of life is self-relization and self-knowledge. He charts the stages through which the "Self" has to pass before finally arriving at its point of perfection, enabling the knower of the "Self" to become the viceregent of Allah on earth/Khalifat ullah fi'l ard. In Rumuz-i Bekhudi, Iqbal proves that Islamic way of life is the best code of conduct for a nation's viability. A person must keep his individual characteristics intact but once this is achieved he should sacrifice his personal ambitions for the needs of the nation. Man cannot realize the "Self" out of society. Payam-i Mashriq is an answer to West-Istlicher Divan by Goethe, the famous German peot. Goethe bemoaned that the West had become too materialistic in outlook and expected that the East would provide a message of hope that would resuscitate spiritual values. A hundred years went by and then Iqbal reminded the West of the importance of morality, religion and civilization by underlining the need for cultivating feeling, ardour and dynamism. He explained that life could, never aspire for higher dimensions unless it learnt of the nature of spirituality.

Zabur-i Ajam includes the Mathnavi Gulshan-i Raz-i Jadid and Bandagi Nama. In Gulshan-i Raz-i Jadid, he follows the famous Mathnavi Gulshan-i Raz by Sayyid Mahmud Shabistri. Here like Shabistri, Iqbal first poses questions, then answers them with the help of ancient and modern insight and shows how it effects and concerns the world of action. Bandagi Nama is in fact a vigorous campaign against slavery and subjugation. He explains the spirit behind the fine arts of enslaved societies. In Zabur-i Ajam, Iqbal's Persian ghazal is at its best as his Urdu ghazal is in Bal-i Jibril. Here as in other books, Iqbal insists on remembering the past, doing well in the present and preparing for the future. His lesson is that one should be dynamic, full of zest for action and full of love and life. Implicitly, he proves that there is no form of poetry which can equal the ghazal in vigour and liveliness. In Javid Nama, Iqbal follows Ibn-Arabi, Marri and Dante. Iqbal depicts himself as Zinda Rud (a stream, full of life) guided by Rumi the master, through various heavens and spheres and has the honour of approaching Divinity and coming in contact with divine illuminations. Several problems of life are discussed and answers are provided to them. It is an exceedingly enlivening study. His hand falls heavily on the traitors to their nation like Mir Jafar from Bengal and Mir Sadiq from the Deccan, who were instrumental in the defeat and death of Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula of Bengal and Sultan Tipu of Mysore respectively by betraying them for the benefit of the British. Thus, they delivered their country to the shackles of slavery. At the end, by addressing his son Javid, he speaks to the young people at large and provides guidance to the "new generation".

Pas Cheh Bay ed Kard ai Aqwam-i Sharq includes the mathnavi Musafir. Iqbal's Rumi, the master, utters this glad tiding "East awakes from its slumbers" "Khwab-i ghaflat". Inspiring detailed commentary on voluntary poverty and free man, followed by an exposition of the mysteries of Islamic laws and sufic perceptions is given. He laments the dissention among the Indian as well as Muslim nations. Mathnavi Musafir, is an account of a journey to Afghanistan. In the mathnavi the people of the Frontier (Pathans) are counseled to learn the "secret of Islam" and to "build up the self" within themselves.

Armughan-i Hijaz consists of two parts. The first contains quatrains in Persian; the second contains some poems and epigrams in Urdu. The Persian quatrains convey the impression as though the poet is travelling through Hijaz in his imaginatin. Profundity of ideas and intensity of passion are the salient features of these short poems. The Urdu portion of the book contains some categorical criticism of the intellectual movements and social and political revolutions of the modern age.

Iqbal wrote two books in English. The first being The Development of Metaphysics in Persia in which continuity of Persian thought is discussed and sufism is dealt with in detail. In Iqbal's view true Islamic Sufism awakens the slumbering soul to a higher idea of life.

The second book, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, is the collection of Iqbal's six lectures which he delivered at Madras, Hyderabad and Aligarh. These were first published from Lahore in 1930 and then by Oxford University Press in 1934. Some of the main subjects are "Knowledge and Religious Experience," "The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer," "The Human Ego," "Predestination and Free Will," "The Spirit of Muslim Culture," "The Principle of Movement in Islam (Ijtihad)." These issues are discussed pithily in a thought provoking manner in the light of Islam and the modern age. These lectures were translated into Urdu by Sayyid Nazir Niazi. 1111>