Beloved, sweetheart; literally an idol, the beloved worshipped like one.
Literally: idol, beautiful beloved
Sanam means idol — the beloved so beautiful she is worshipped like a graven image, the face the lover bows before. The word carries a deliberate frisson of forbidden devotion: to adore a sanam is to make a religion of love. Iqbal, alert to idolatry, plays on this edge — the beautiful idol can be a veil that arrests the seeker at the form, or, rightly seen, a sign pointing past itself to the one true Beloved.
Sanam in Iqbal’s couplets
But
Idol; a figure of the beloved so beautiful as to be worshipped, and a symbol of beauty in the ghazal.
Mashuq
The beloved; the one who is loved and desired.
Dilbar
The beloved; literally the one who carries off the heart.
Mehboob
'Beloved', 'darling' — one who is loved.
But-khana
An idol-temple; a place full of beautiful faces, or the heart crowded with images of the beloved.