Author

Muhammad Iqbal

Poet and philosopher of the self (khudi), who sought to reconstruct Islamic thought in dialogue with modern philosophy.

1877–1938

Also known as Allama Iqbal, Sir Muhammad Iqbal

Biography

Muhammad Iqbal was born in 1877 in Sialkot, in the Punjab, and studied at Government College, Lahore, where the orientalist Thomas Arnold encouraged him. In 1905 he went to Europe, studying philosophy at Cambridge, taking a doctorate at Munich in 1908 with a thesis on the development of metaphysics in Persia, and qualifying as a barrister in London.

Back in Lahore he practised law and wrote poetry in Urdu and Persian. The Secrets of the Self (Asrār-i Khudī, 1915), a Persian poem, taught that the self must be strengthened and realized, not dissolved; Nicholson translated it into English in 1920. Later works include The Message of the East, a reply to Goethe, and the Jāvīd Nāma, a journey through the heavens guided by Rūmī, whom Iqbal regarded as his master.

In 1928–1929 he gave the lectures published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, engaging Bergson, Whitehead and modern physics. In his presidential address to the All-India Muslim League in 1930 he proposed a Muslim state in north-western India. He died in Lahore in 1938, and is honoured as the national poet of Pakistan.

Major works

Philosophical ideas

Scholarship

The self (khudi) is the centre of human life, to be strengthened through love, striving and creative action; the goal is not to vanish into God but to become a fuller self in relation to him.

Religious experience is a genuine source of knowledge, as worthy of critical study as sense experience, and Islam must rethink its heritage in the light of it and of modern thought.

Cite this entry

Chicago (bibliography): “Muhammad Iqbal.” Author. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/muhammad-iqbal.
Chicago (note): “Muhammad Iqbal,” author, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/muhammad-iqbal.
MLA: “Muhammad Iqbal.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/muhammad-iqbal.
BibTeX: @misc{authors-muhammad-iqbal, title = {{Muhammad Iqbal}}, howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society}, note = {Author. Last modified November 7, 2026}, year = {2026}, url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/muhammad-iqbal} }

Related authors

Influenced by: Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

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Questions

Should the self be strengthened or extinguished?Annihilation, awakening from the illusion of self, or the realization of a fuller self: what becomes of the self at the end of the path.