ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 2, Book 8 Chapter 82: Renaissance in Indo-Pakistan (Continued): Iqbal Muhammad Iqbal was born, in 1289/1873, at Sialkot. His ancestors were Kashmiri Brahmans of the Sapru caste. His great-grandfather migrated to the Punjab sometime in early thirteenth/nineteenth century and settled down in Sialkot, a historical town that has produced many great scholars.

His father Nur Muhammad was a saintly man for whom religion was a matter of living experience. As related by Iqbal himself, he had distinct tendency towards mysticism. Heredity and parental influence made Iqbal in­herit and imbibe this tendency that continued to mature throughout his intel­lectual and spiritual development.

The father used to earn his modest living by the labour and skill of his own hands and originally had the intention of giving the son some instruction in the mosque and then making him a helper in his own craft.

It has been reliably stated by many contemporaries of his father that it was Maulawi Mir Hasan who seeing great promise in this intelligent child persuaded his father to let him enter an ordinary public school which followed methods of teaching and curricula introduced by the British Indian system of education. A ceremonious initiation into needlework proposed by the father was not approved by the learned Mir Hasan and the father accepted his advice.

The boy started wielding the pen instead of the needle, a pen destined to exercise a marvellous creative influence. Like many a person of sensitive mind and spiritual leanings, the father had faith in prophetic dreams. He related a dream that he had shortly before the birth of Iqbal.[^1] He saw that there was a bird of exquisite plumage flying low in the air and hovering over the heads of a crowd of people who were jumping up and stretching their arms to catch it.

While he stood looking and admiring the beauty of the bird, it dropped into his lap of its own accord. When the genius in Igbal began to sprout forth and receive early admiration from great scholars and poets, the father was convinced that it was the spirit of Iqbal that had been symbolized in his dream as a beautiful bird. We find the same symbolism in the New Testament where it is related that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove.

The school that Iqbal attended still exists almost unchanged even after the lapse of three quarters of a century.