Allama Muhammad Iqbal محمد إقبال

Sir Muhammad Iqbal rahimahullah (1877-1938) was the foremost Urdu and Persian poet-philosopher of the modern Muslim world and the spiritual father of Pakistan. Born in Sialkot, Punjab, he received his early education in the traditional Qur'anic and Persian literary tradition before pursuing higher studies at Government College Lahore, then at Trinity College Cambridge, and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he earned his doctorate on the development of metaphysics in Persia. His celebrated Urdu works include the poems Shikwa (Complaint) and Jawab-e-Shikwa (Answer to the Complaint), which gave voice to the spiritual anguish and hope of the Muslim Umma. His philosophical lectures delivered at Lahore, Hyderabad, and Aligarh were published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, a foundational text of modern Islamic intellectual thought. Iqbal served as president of the All India Muslim League in 1930 and articulated his vision of a separate Muslim homeland in his Allahabad Address. He is revered across the Muslim world as Shair-e-Mashriq, the Poet of the East.