The Wisdom of Allama Iqbal

Allama Iqbal left behind a body of poetry and prose that still shapes how many readers think about the self, faith and society. His work falls into three groups: his Persian poetry, which carries much of his core philosophy; his Urdu poetry, which reached the widest audience; and his one major work of prose. This page is a book-by-book guide to the most important of them and the ideas each one carries.

Persian poetry

Asrar-e-Khudi (Secrets of the Self), 1915

This is the book where Iqbal first set out his idea of Khudi, the self. For him Khudi does not mean pride or ego. It means the awake, responsible self that a person builds through desire, love and action. In the poem he argues that the self is not fixed but grows stronger the more it strives, and that its highest state is not to dissolve into the world but to shape it. This put him at odds with a strand of older Sufi poetry that praised self-annihilation, and the book stirred real debate when it appeared. When Reynold Nicholson translated it into English as The Secrets of the Self, Iqbal’s philosophy began to reach Europe as well.

Rumuz-e-Bekhudi (Mysteries of Selflessness), 1918

The companion to Asrar-e-Khudi turns from the single self to the community. If the first book was about building the individual, this one is about how the individual finds full meaning inside a group that shares its values and purpose. Iqbal writes here about the millat, the Muslim community, and the things that hold it together: shared faith, justice, and a common aim across time. Read together, the two books make one argument, that the person and the community grow together and that neither is complete without the other. On this site you can read Rumuz-e-Bekhudi in the original with a couplet-by-couplet Urdu commentary.

Payam-e-Mashriq (Message of the East), 1923

Iqbal wrote this collection as a reply to Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan, the German poet’s own turn toward Eastern themes. Where Goethe had reached from West to East, Iqbal answered from East to West. The book offers the East’s spiritual insight as a gift and a challenge to a Europe he thought rich in power but thin in meaning, and it calls for a real exchange between the two rather than the mere copying of one by the other.

Zabur-e-Ajam (Persian Psalms), 1927

This is among the warmest of his Persian books, full of lyric poetry of great feeling. Many readers count it among his finest work in the language, and it shows that the philosopher of the self was also a poet of real music and tenderness.

Javid Nama (Book of Eternity), 1932

A long visionary poem in which the poet journeys through the heavens. The form recalls the old tradition of the spiritual ascent, and readers often compare it to Dante’s Divine Comedy. In the poem Rumi, whom Iqbal treated as his guide, leads him through the celestial spheres much as Virgil leads Dante. Along the way the poet meets figures from history and legend, each standing for a lesson about human strength and failure, and the whole journey turns on self-purification and on lining up a life with a higher purpose. Iqbal named his son Javid after it.

Urdu poetry

Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa (Complaint and Answer)

In Shikwa, Iqbal speaks in the voice of a Muslim who complains to God about the decline of his community and the loss of its past standing. The poem was bold for its time, and its frank tone drew both admiration and criticism.

Hum to jeete hain ke duniya mein tera naam rahe,
Kahin mumkin hai ke saqi na rahe, jam rahe.
We live only that Your name may endure in the world; can the cup remain once the cupbearer is gone?

In Jawab-e-Shikwa, the answer comes back. The fault lies not with God but with a community that has let go of justice, courage and unity. Together the two poems work as a conversation between people and God, and their real subject is self-examination and reform.

Bang-e-Dra (The Call of the Marching Bell), 1924

Iqbal’s first Urdu collection gathers his early work and traces his growth as a poet. It moves from nature poems and patriotic verse, including the famous Tarana-e-Hindi that begins Sare Jahan Se Achha, through his years in Europe, toward the firmer, more philosophical voice of his maturity. It is the best single record of how the young romantic became the poet of Khudi.

Bal-e-Jibril (Gabriel’s Wing), 1935

Widely held to be his finest Urdu book. It contains ghazals, quatrains and longer poems, and here his command of both language and idea is at full height. Much of his most quoted verse comes from this collection, including his best known line on the self:

Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqdeer se pehle,
Khuda bande se khud poochhe, bata teri raza kya hai.
Raise your self so high that, before each turn of fate, God himself asks you what you wish for.

Zarb-e-Kalim (The Rod of Moses), 1936

Iqbal gave this book the subtitle that marks it as a protest against the age. The title points to the staff of Moses, a sign of the power to face oppression and force change. The poems take direct aim at colonial rule, at hollow imitation of the West, and at the spiritual decline he saw around him, and they call on readers to join faith with effort rather than sit still.

Armaghan-e-Hijaz (The Gift of the Hijaz), 1938

Published in the year of his death, this final collection has sections in both Urdu and Persian. Its title looks toward the holy land of the Hijaz, and it carries the mature reflections of a poet near the end of his road.

Prose: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, 1930

Iqbal’s main work of prose is a set of lectures, delivered in English, in which he argues that Islam is not a closed system but one able to meet the questions of a new age. Three ideas stand out. The first is ijtihad, or independent reasoning: he holds that Muslims must keep thinking through their law and tradition for their own time rather than only repeat past rulings. The second is that faith and science are not enemies, and that the Quran itself invites inquiry into the natural world. The third is his view of the human self as a free and creative being, a partner in the ongoing work of creation. Taken together, the lectures try to hold tradition and the modern world in the same hand, and they remain the clearest statement of his mature thought.