Muhammad Iqbal

Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), often called Allama ("the learned") Iqbal, was a poet and philosopher of British India, writing chiefly in Persian and Urdu. He was born in Sialkot, Punjab, into a family of modest merchants; sources report Kashmiri ancestry. After early schooling in Sialkot he took degrees at Government College, Lahore, where he studied under the orientalist Thomas Arnold. From 1905 to 1908 he studied in Europe: philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge; legal training that qualified him as a barrister in London; and a doctorate from the University of Munich for a thesis, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia. He also spent time in Heidelberg learning German.

Returning to Lahore, Iqbal practiced law and wrote the poetry and philosophy for which he is remembered. In lectures later published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930/1934), he argued that Islam could be rethought using modern philosophy and science. His central poetic theme was khudi (selfhood) — the cultivation of a dynamic, God-conscious self.

As president of the All-India Muslim League session at Allahabad in December 1930, he called for consolidating the Muslim-majority provinces of north-western India into a self-governing unit. Historians disagree on whether he envisioned a fully separate state or autonomy within a larger India; he is nonetheless widely honored as a forerunner of the Pakistan idea. He was knighted in 1922 and died in Lahore in 1938.