Persian · noun · Poetry, Speech & Art
Sehraa
सेहरा
said SEH-raa
also written: sehra, sahra, desert
Meaning
A wedding ode or song composed in honour of the bridegroom.
Literally: desert, wilderness
How Iqbal uses it
The sehra is the desert or wilderness — the vast, empty, untended expanse, classical haunt of the mad lover Majnun and of the free, ungoverned soul, set against the cultivated garden; a place of trial, solitude, and a wild liberty the tame garden lacks. Iqbal often prefers the desert's freedom to the garden's comfort: the wilderness is where the self is tested and roams unbounded, the open ground of the seeker who will not be hedged.