Allama Muhammad Iqbal

Allama Iqbal Poetry

Allama Iqbal poetry is among the most widely read and deeply loved verse in the Urdu and Persian languages. Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877 to 1938) was born in Sialkot and studied in Lahore, and later at Cambridge, Munich and Heidelberg. Readers across the subcontinent know him as the poet whose thought shaped the demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims of India, and Pakistan honours him as its national poet. His verse ties poetry to philosophy, and most of the Allama Iqbal poetry gathered on this site circles a single question: what makes a human life awake, strong and free. This page is your guide to reading his complete poetry here, the books he wrote, the two languages he worked in, and the ideas that run through his work.

The poetry books of Allama Iqbal

Iqbal wrote in both Urdu and Persian. His Urdu books reached the widest audience, while his Persian books carry much of his core philosophy. You can read each collection in full on this site.

Urdu poetry collections

• Bang-e-Dra (The Call of the Marching Bell), 1924. His first Urdu collection, gathering work from his early years through his return from Europe, moving from nature poems and patriotic verse to the mature voice of his later thought.
• Bal-e-Jibril (Gabriel's Wing), 1935. Widely held to be his finest Urdu book, with ghazals, quatrains and longer poems in which his command of language and idea is at full height.
• Zarb-e-Kalim (The Rod of Moses), 1936. Iqbal called it his protest against the age; the poems take direct aim at politics, education, art and the condition of the Muslim world.
• Armaghan-e-Hijaz (The Gift of the Hijaz), 1938. Published in the year of his death, with sections in both Urdu and Persian.

Persian poetry collections

• Asrar-e-Khudi (Secrets of the Self), 1915. The book that first set out his idea of Khudi, the self, and how a person builds and strengthens it.
• Rumuz-e-Bekhudi (Mysteries of Selflessness), 1918. The companion to Asrar-e-Khudi, turning from the single self to the community; read it here with a couplet-by-couplet Urdu commentary.
• Payam-e-Mashriq (Message of the East), 1923. Written as a reply to Goethe's West-Eastern Divan, offering the East's answer to the West.
• Zabur-e-Ajam (Persian Psalms), 1927. Lyric poetry of great warmth, often counted among his best Persian work.
• Javid Nama, 1932. A long visionary poem in which the poet journeys through the heavens in the tradition of the spiritual ascent, meeting figures from history along the way.

The main ideas in Allama Iqbal poetry

Khudi, the self

Khudi is the centre of Iqbal's thought. He uses the word for the self, but not for pride or ego; he means the awake, responsible self that grows through effort, love and action. A strong self, in his view, does not dissolve into the world but shapes it. You can read more about where Iqbal took the idea of "Khudi Ko Kar Buland Itna".

The self and the community

For Iqbal the single self reaches its full worth inside a community. The individual gives the nation its people, and the nation gives the individual purpose and protection. This is the subject of Rumuz-e-Bekhudi and returns across his work.

Love and action

Iqbal sets ishq, love, against cold calculation. Love is the force that pushes a person past safe limits into effort and risk. Life for him is movement and struggle, not rest, and a self that stops striving begins to die.

A message to the East

Much of his later verse speaks to the Muslim world and the wider East. He asks readers to recover their own strength and vision rather than copy the West, and to build a life joined to faith, action and self-respect.

Where to read Allama Iqbal poetry on this site

We are building a full library of Allama Iqbal poetry in Urdu, Roman Urdu and English, along with explanation. You can read his collections book by book, including Bang-e-Dra, Bal-e-Jibril, Zarb-e-Kalim, and the Persian Rumuz-e-Bekhudi with a couplet-by-couplet Urdu commentary. For his life and thought in depth, see our full Allama Iqbal guide in English and the detailed Urdu biography of Allama Iqbal. New sections are added regularly.