Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s2.t24: Muhammad Iqbal
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s2.t24
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Muhammad Iqbal
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Muhammad Iqbal (November 9, 1877 - April 21, 1938) was an Indian Muslim poet, philosopher, social activist. He was also called Allama Iqbal.
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Born in a Muslim family in Sialkot, Punjab Province, India (present-day Punjab Province, Pakistan), Iqbal went to a local school in Sialkot to study when he was six, and learned Arabic, Persian and Urdu poems. He studied in Scotch Mission High School in Sialkot during 1893-1895, and was admitted to Punjab University (major in Philosophy) in 1895. Later, he stayed in the university to teach after obtaining a Master’s degree in 1899. He went to Britain to learn Law and Philosophy in 1905, and returned to his homeland after obtaining his Doctor of Philosophy in Ludwig Maximilian Muenchen Unitversitaet in Germany in 1908. He was hired as a Professor of Punjab University, and took the post of Secretary-General of ‘Kashmir Muslim Association’ in 1909. He was awarded the title of Knight by the British government in 1923, and was selected as a Congressman of Punjab Province during 1926-1929. He took the post of President of the annual meeting of All-India Muslim League in 1930, when he proposed the opinion of founding Pakistan and set forth his theory of founding a country. As a Muslim representative of India, he attended the round-table conference of Britain-India in London in 1931.
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His poems are based on patriotism and nationalism with the philosophical thought of Islam, represented by a collection of poems in Persian, such as Asrar-i-Khudi (1915) and Rumuz-e-Bekhudi (1918). Besides the literary works, he also wrote the book of The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930) is one of the representative works of Islamic Modernism with extensive influence among the Muslim intellectuals. Caring about the Chinese revolution, he wrote in his poem Wine Song that “the sleeping Chinese people are to be awakened,
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Muhammad Iqbal
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the fountains in the Himalayas are starting to boil,” to show his dissatisfaction with the colonial rule and support of the Chinese revolution.
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There are successively three revisions of Selected Poems of Iqbal, which have been respectively translated by Zou Difan, jointly by Zou Difan and Chen Jingrong as well as by Wang Jiaying. In addition, there is a book named ‘*Self Secrets*’ translated by Liu Shuxiong. The research monographs in this field mainly include Muslim Poet Philosopher: Iqbal written by Liu Shuxiong and Self·Foreordination and Eternity: Studies on Iqbal written by Lei Wuling.