The Persian Works

The language he chose for his thought

Urdu was the language Iqbal grew up reciting, and his Urdu poetry made him famous across the subcontinent. But when he came to set down his philosophy in full, he turned to Persian. Persian had been the language of learning, of the great poets he loved most, and of a world far wider than India. Writing in it placed Iqbal in a conversation that ran from Rumi and Hafiz to readers across Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

The result is that a reader who knows only the Urdu Iqbal has met barely half of him. The doctrine of Khudi was first argued in Persian. His reply to Goethe was in Persian. His masterpiece, the Javid Nama, is in Persian. This section gives each major Persian work a proper guide: what it is, why he wrote it, what it says, and a few passages in trusted English translation, with the translator always named.