Urdu Dictionary

Arabic · noun · Time, Fate & the Cosmos

Falaq

फ़लक़

said fa-LAQ

also written: falaq, falak, charkh, sky, heaven

Meaning

Daybreak, the cleaving of dawn from the darkness.

Literally: Arabic falaq: the breaking of dawn, the splitting of light from night.

How Iqbal uses it

The falak is the sky or revolving heaven — the great vault overhead, classically pictured as the turning wheel (charkh) of fate that grinds and oppresses the lover, the 'cruel sky' that thwarts and the high ceiling of the visible world. It is destiny and limit. Iqbal often arraigns the turning sky as the figure of an order to be defied and transcended: the high self refuses to be a plaything of the wheeling heavens and reaches past the falak to the worlds beyond.

See it in the verse

Falaq in Iqbal’s couplets

Khol aankh, zameen dekh, falak dekh, fiza dekh
Mashriq se ubharte hue suraj ko zara dekh

Open your eyes — look at the earth, the sky, the open air; just look at the sun rising in the east.

Awakening · Hope

Khudi ka nasheman tere dil mein hai
Falak jis tarah aankh ke til mein hai

The nest of your selfhood is inside your own heart — the way the whole sky lives inside the pupil of an eye.

Selfhood · Self-Knowledge

Napaid tere bahr-e-takhayyul ke kinare
Pahunchenge falak tak teri aahon ke sharare

The shores of your sea of imagination are nowhere to be found; the sparks of your longing will reach all the way to the sky.

Aspiration · Restlessness · Hope

Related words

Fajr

Dawn; the dawn prayer at first light.

Subh

Morning, dawn, the first light of day.

Sahar

Dawn, the last watch of the night just before daybreak.

Charkh

The revolving sky, the wheeling heavens; figuratively fate and the turning fortune.

Anjum / Sitara

Stars (anjum) / a star (sitara).

Ufuq

The horizon; the line where sky meets earth.

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