author
Sir Muhammad Iqbal
1877–1938
A major poet and philosopher of South Asia, his Urdu and Persian verse joined spiritual reflection with a powerful call for self-respect, renewal, and action. His ideas helped shape modern Muslim political thought in British India and later became closely linked with the story of Pakistan.
2 Audiobooks
The Secrets of the Self (Asrar-i Khudi) — A Philosophical Poem
by Sir Muhammad Iqbal
About the author
Born in Sialkot on November 9, 1877, Muhammad Iqbal studied at Government College Lahore before continuing his education in Europe. He studied philosophy at Cambridge, qualified in law in London, and completed a doctorate at the University of Munich, experiences that deepened the blend of Eastern and Western thought found in his writing.
Iqbal is best known for poetry in Urdu and Persian that speaks about the self, moral courage, faith, and the possibilities of human growth. Among his most influential prose works is The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, which set out his ideas about religion, philosophy, and modern life in a clear and ambitious way.
He was also an important public thinker in the final decades of British rule in India. Remembered with the honorific Allama and widely celebrated as the national poet of Pakistan, he died in Lahore on April 21, 1938, but his writing still reaches readers far beyond South Asia.