Allama Muhammad Iqbal

Allama Muhammad Iqbal was born and raised in Sialkot and did his BA and MA from Government College Lahore. He studied in Cambridge at Trinity College, earning a second BA in 1906. He became a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn. He went to Germany for a PhD in philosophy at Munich. He practised law back in Lahore, but he is most well known for his poetry and philosophy. He has been titled ‘Shayar-e-Mashriq’ (Poet of the East), and advocated for the freedom and political autonomy of Muslims under the British Raj in the subcontinent. His famous poem ‘Taloo-e-Islam’ (The Rise of Islam) became an anthem to this effect. A compilation of lectures he delivered, later published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam in 1930, became a manifesto for the revival of Muslim intellectual thought, arguing and demonstrating that Islam encouraged, and was able to sustain rational questioning and philosophical inquiry. His time at Cambridge greatly influenced his poetry as well as his philosophy; influences from the West helped develop his thought alongside influence from Persian and Arabic thought. He was also politically active, delivering the famous Allahabad Address, help several positions in the All-India Muslim League. He was elected to the Punjab Legislative Council in 1927. He remained in correspondence with Jinnah in the years leading up to partition, but died nine years before it. He never lived to see Pakistan, but today the nation observes his birthday on 9th November as a national holiday, and he is ‘Mufakkir-e-Pakistan’ (The Thinker of Pakistan).