Muhammad Iqbal

Lore & Background

Iqbal was born and raised in Sialkot, Punjab, British India and studied at Scotch Mission College in Sialkot and Government College University in Lahore. He taught Arabic at the Oriental College, Lahore, from 1899 until 1903. In 1905, he departed from India to pursue further education in Europe, first in England and later in Germany.

In England, he earned a second BA at Trinity College, Cambridge, and subsequently qualified as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn. In Germany, he obtained a PhD in philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), with his thesis focusing on 'The Development of Metaphysics in Persia' in 1908. Upon his return to Lahore in 1908, Iqbal established a law practice but primarily focused on producing scholarly works on politics, economics, history, philosophy, and religion.

He is most renowned for his poetic compositions, including 'Asrar-e-Khudi', 'Rumuz-e-Bekhudi', and 'Bang-e-Dara'. His literary works in the Persian language garnered him recognition in Iran. An ardent proponent of the political and spiritual revival of the Muslim world, particularly of the Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, the series of lectures Iqbal delivered to this effect were published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam in 1930. He was elected to the Punjab Legislative Council in 1927 and held several positions in the All-India Muslim League.

In his Allahabad Address, delivered at the League's annual assembly in 1930, he formulated a political framework for the Muslim-majority regions spanning northwestern India, spurring the League's pursuit of the two-nation theory. In August 1947, nine years after Iqbal's death, the partition of India gave way to the establishment of Pakistan, a newly independent Islamic state in which Iqbal was honoured as the national poet. The anniversary of his birth, 9 November, is observed as a public holiday in Pakistan.

Reader's Guide

Iqbal was born on 9 November 1877 in Sialkot, Punjab Province, British India (now in Pakistan). A Punjabi of Kashmiri ancestry, his family traced their ancestry back to the Sapru clan of Kashmiri Pandits who were from a south Kashmiri village in Kulgam and converted to Islam in the 15th-century. Iqbal's mother-tongue was Punjabi. Iqbal's father, Sheikh Noor Muhammad (died 1930), was a tailor.

Iqbal's mother Imam Bibi, a Kashmiri from Sambrial, died on 9 November 1914 in Sialkot. Iqbal was four years old when he was sent to a mosque to receive instruction in reading the Qur'an. He learned Arabic and Persian from Syed Mir Hassan.

He matriculated in 1893. He received an intermediate level with the Faculty of Arts diploma in 1895. The same year he enrolled at Government College, Lahore, where in 1897 he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, English literature, and Arabic. In 1899, he received his Master of Arts degree from the same college.

Marriages

Iqbal married four times. His first marriage was in 1895 to Karim Bibi. They had two children: a daughter, Miraj Begum (1895–1915), and a son, Aftab Iqbal (1899–1979). Iqbal and Karim Bibi separated somewhere between 1910 and 1913.

His second marriage took place on 26 August 1910 with the niece of Hakim Noor-ud-Din. His third marriage was with Mukhtar Begum in December 1914. They had a son, but both mother and son died shortly after birth in 1924. Later, Iqbal married Sardar Begum, and they became parents of a son, Javed Iqbal (1924–2015), and a daughter, Muneera Bano (born 1930).

Academic career

Iqbal began his career as a reader of Arabic after completing his Master of Arts degree in 1899, at Oriental College and shortly afterward was selected as a junior professor of philosophy at Government College Lahore. He worked there until he left for England in 1905. In 1908, he returned from Germany and joined the same college again as a professor of philosophy and English literature.