Lecture I: - The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Lecture I:

1. Reference here is to the
following verse from the mystical allegorical work: Maniq al-air (p. 243, v.
5), generally considered the magnum opus, of one of the greatest sufi poets and thinkers
Fard al-Dn ‘A?r’ (d.c. 618/1220):
2. A. N. Whitehead, Religion in
the Making, p. 5.
3. Ibid., p. 73.
4. Cf. H. L. Bergson, Creative
Evolution, pp. 187-88; on this intuition-intellect relation see also Allama Iqbal’s
essay: Bedil in the light of Bergson, ed. Dr Tehsin Firaqi, pp. 22-23.
5. Allahummarin
haq’iq al-ashykamhya, a tradition, in one form or other, to be found in
well-known Sufistic works, for example, ‘Alb. ‘Uthmn al-Hujwayr, Kashf
al-Majb, p. 166; Mawln Jall al-Dn Rm, Mathnaw-i Ma’naw,
ii, 466-67; iv, 3567-68; v, 1765; Mamd Shabistar (d. 720/1320), Gulshan-i Rz,
verse 200, and ‘Abd al-Ramn Jm (d. 898/1492), Law’ih, p. 3.
6. Qur’n, 16:68-69.
7. Ibid., 2:164; 24:43-44; 30:48;
35:9; 45:5.
8. Ibid., 15:16; 25:6; 37:6;
41:12; 50:6; 67:5; 85:1.
9. Ibid., 21:33; 36:40.
10. Cf. F. M. Cornford: Plato’s
Theory of Knowledge, pp. 29;109; also Bertrand Russell: History of Western
Philosophy, chapter: ‘Knowledge and Perception in Plato’.
11. Qur’n, 16:78; 23:78;
32:9; 67:23.
12. Ibid., 17:36. References
here, as also at other places in the Lectures, to a dozen Quranic verses in two
sentences bespeak of what is uppermost in Allama Iqbal’s mind, i.e. Quranic
empiricism which by its very nature gives rise to a Weltanschauung of the highest
religious order. He tells us, for example, that the general empirical attitude of the
Qur’a`n engenders a feeling of reverence for the actual and that one way of entering
into relation with Reality is through reflective observation and control of its
perceptually revealed symbols (cf. below, pp. 11-12, italics mine; also Lecture V, p. 102,
not 9).
13. For anti-classicism of the
Qur’n cf. Mazheruddn iddiq, Concept of Muslim Culture in Iqbal, pp.
13-25; also Lecture V, note 21.
14. See R. A. Tsanoff, The
Problem of Immortality (a work listed at S. No. 37 in the Descriptive Catalogue of
Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library), pp. 75-77; cf. also B. H. Zedler,
‘Averroes and Immortality’, New Scholasticism (1954), pp. 436-53. It is
to be noted that Tsanoff marshals the views of S. Munk (M langes de philosophie,
pp. 454 ff.), E. Renan (Averroes et I’averroisme, pp. 152, 158), A Stockl (Geschichte
der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 11, 117, 119), de Boer (Geschichte der
Philosophie, p. 173) and M. Horten (Die Hauptlehren des Averroes, pp. 244 ff.)
as against those of Carra de Vaux as presented by him in his work Avicenne, pp. 233 ff.,
as well as in the article: ‘Averroes’ in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,
II, 264-65, and clinches the matter thus: ‘certainly - and this is more significant
for our purpose - it was as a denier of personal immortality that scholasticism received
and criticised Averroes’ (p. 77, II, 16-19). For a recent and more balanced view of
‘Ibn Rushd’s doctrine of immortality, cf. Roger Arnaldez and A. Z. Iskander,
‘Ibn Rushd’, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XII, 7a-7b. It is to be
noted, however, that M. E. Marmura in his article on ‘Soul: Islamic Concepts’ in
The Encyclopedia of Religion, XIII, 465 clearly avers that Ibn Rushd’s
commentaries on Aristotle leave no room for a doctrine of individual immortality.
15. Cf. Tsanoff, op. cit., pp.
77-84, and M. Ynus Farangi Mahall, Ibn Rushd (Urdu; partly based on
Renan’s Averroes et l’averroisme), pp. 347-59.
16. See Lecture IV, pp. 93-98,
and Lecture VII, pp. 156-57.
17. Reference is to the
expression law-in mahfzin used in the Quranic verse 85:22. For the interpretation this
unique expression of the Qur’n see M. Asad, The Message of the Qur’n,
p. 943, note; and Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’a`n, p. 98 - the latter
seems to come quite close to Allama Iqbal’s generally very keen perception of the
meanings of the Qur’n.
18. This comes quite close to the
contemporary French philosopher Louis Rougier’s statement in his Philosophy and
the New Physics p. 146, II, 17-21. This work, listed at S. No. 15 in the Descriptive
Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library, is cited in Lecture III, p. 59.
19. Reference here is to Tevfk
Fikret, pseudonym of Mehmed Tevfik, also known as Tevfik Nazm, and not to Tawfik Fitrat
as it got printed in the previous editions of the present work. Fikret, widely considered
the founder of the modern school of Turkish poetry and remembered among other works for
his collection of poems: Rubb-i Shikeste (‘The Broken Lute’), died in Istanbul
on 18 August 1915 at the age of forty-eight. For an account of Fikret’s literary
career and his anti-religious views, cf. Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism
in Turkey, pp. 300-02 and 338-39; also Haydar Ali Dirioz’s brief paper in Turkish
on Fikret’s birth-centenary translated by Dr M. H. Notqi in Journal of the
Regional Cultural Institute, 1/4 (Autumn 1968), 12-15.
It is for Turkish-Persian
scholars to determine the extent to which Fikret made use of the great poet-thinker Bedil
(d. 1133/1721) for ‘the anti-religious and especially anti-Islamic propaganda in
Central Asia’. Among very many works on both Bedil and Fikret that have appeared
since Allama’s days and are likely to receive the scholars’ attention, mention
must be made of Allama’s own short perceptive study: ‘Bedil in the Light of
Bergson’, and unpublished essay in Allama’s hand (20 folios) preserved in the
Allama Iqbal Museum (Lahore); cf. Dr Ahmad Nabi Khan, Relics of Allama Iqbal
(Catalogue) , 1, 25, with photographic reproduction of the first sheet.
20. Cf. John Oxenford (tr.), Conversations
of Goethe with Eckermann and Sorret , p. 41.
21. The Qur’n condemns
monkery; see 57:27; 2:201; and 28:77. Cf. also Speeches, Writings and Statements of
Iqbal, ed. A. L. Sherwani, p. 7, for Allama Iqbal’s observations on the
respective attitudes of Christianity and Islam towards the problems of life, leading to
his keenly profound pronouncement: ‘The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is
organically related to the social order which it has created’.
22. There are many verses of the
Qur’n wherein it has been maintained that the universe has not been created in
sport (l’ibn) or in vain (bil-an) but for a serious end or with
truth (bi’l-haqq). These are respectively: (a) 21:16; 44:38; (b) 3:191;
38:27; (c) 6:73; 10:5; 14:19; 15:85; 16:3; 29:44; 30:8; 39:5; 44:39; 45:22; 46:3; and
64:3.
23. See also the Quranic verse
51:47 wherein the phrase inna la-mu`si’u`n has been interpreted to clearly foreshadow
the modern notion of the ‘expanding universe’ (cf. M. Asad, The Message of
the Qur’a`n, p. 805, note 31).
24. Reference here is in
particular to the Prophetic tradition worded as: ltasubbal-dahra fa inn Allh
huwa’l-dahru, (Amad anbal, Musnad, V, 299 and 311). Cf. also
Bukhr, Tafsr: 45; Taud: 35; Adab`: 101; and Muslim,
Alfz 2-4; for other variants of the adth Safa Hammm-Bin-Munabbih
(ed. Dr. M. Hamidullah) adth 117, gives one of its earliest recorded texts.
In an exceedingly important
section captioned Al-Waqtu Saif-un (Time is Sword) of his celebrated Asrr-i-Khud,
Allama Iqbal has referred to the above hadit`h thus:
Life is of Time and Time is of
Life;
Do not abuse Time!’ was the
command of the Prophet. (trans. Nicholson)
25. Reference is to the Quranic
verse 70:19 which says: ‘Man has been created restless (hal’an).’
26. This is very close to the
language of the Qur’n which speaks of the hardening of the hearts, so that they
were like rocks: see 2:74; 5:13; 6:43; 39:22; and 57:16.
This shows that Allama Iqbal,
through his keenly perceptive study of the Qur’n, had psychically assimilated both
its meanings and its diction so much so that many of his visions, very largely found in
his poetical works, may be said to be born of this rare assimilation; cf. Dr Ghulm
Mustaf Khn’s voluminous Iqbl aur Qur’n (in Urdu).
27. Qur’n, 41:35; also
51:20-21.
28. Reference here is to the Mathnaw,
ii, 52:
The bodily sense is eating the
food of darkness
The spiritual sense is feeding
from a sun (trans. Nicholson).
29. Qur’n, 53:11-12.
30. Ibid., 22:46.
31. Cf. Bukhr,
Jan’iz, 79; Shahdah 3; Jihd: 160, 178; and Muslim, Fitan: 95-96. D. J.
Halperin’s article: ‘The Ibn ayyd Traditions and the Legend of
al-Dajjl’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, XCII/ii (1976), 213-25,
gives an atomistic analytic account of the ahdth listed by him.
32. In Arabic: lau tarakathu
bayyana, an invariable part of the text of a number of ahdth about Ibn
ayyd; cf. D. B. Macdonald, The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam, pp. 35
ff.; this book, which represents Macdonald’s reputed Haskell Lectures on Comparative
Religion at Chicago University in 1906, seems to have received Allama’s close
attention in the present discussion.
33. Ibid., p. 36.
34. Cf. Lecture V, pp. 100 ff.
35. The term ‘subliminal
self’ was coined by F. W. H. Myers in the 1890’s which soon became popular in
‘religious psychology’ to designate what was believed to be the larger portion
of the self lying beyond the level of consciousness, yet constantly influencing thought
and behaviour as in parapsychic phenomena. With William James the concept of subliminal
self came to stand for the area of human experience in which contact with the Divine Life
may occur (cf. The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 511-15).
36. Macdonald, op. cit.,
p. 42.
37. Cf. Muyuddn Ibn
al-‘Arab’s observation that ‘God is a precept, the world is a
concept’, referred to in Lecture VII, p. 144, note 4.
38. Ibid., p. 145, where
it is observed: ‘Indeed the incommunicability of religious experience gives us a clue
to the ultimate nature of the human ego’.
39. W. E. Hocking, The Meaning
of God in Human Experience, p. 66. It is important to note here that according to
Richard C. Gilman this concept of the inextricable union of idea and feeling is the source
of strong strain of mysticism is Hocking’s philosophy, but it is a mysticism which
does not abandon the role of intellect in clarifying and correcting intuition; cf. his
article: ‘Hocking, William Ernest’, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, IV, 47
(italics mine).
40. Reference here perhaps is to
the hot and long-drawn controversy between the Mu‘tazilites (early Muslim
rationalists) and the Ash’arties (the orthodox scholastics) on the issue of Khalq
al-Qur’n, i.e. the createdness or the eternity of the Qur’n; for which see
Lecture VI, note 9. The context of the passage, however, strongly suggests that Allama
Iqbal means to refer here to the common orthodox belief that the text of the Qur’n
is verbally revealed, i.e. the ‘word’ is as much revealed as the
‘meaning’. This has perhaps never been controverted and rarely if ever discussed
in the history of Muslim theology - one notable instance of its discussion is that by
Shh Wal Allh in Sata’t and Fuyz al-aramain. Nevertheless, it is
significant to note that there is some analogical empirical evidence in Allama’s
personal life in support of the orthodox belief in verbal revelation. Once asked by
Professor Lucas, Principal of a local college, in a private discourse, whether, despite
his vast learning, he too subscribed to belief in verbal revelation, Allama immediately
replied that it was not a matter of belief with him but a veritable personal experience
for it was thus, he added, he composed his poems under the spells of poetic inspiration -
surely, Prophetic revelations are far more exalted. Cf. ‘Abdul Majd Slik, Dhikr-i
Iqbl, pp. 244-45 and Faqir Sayyid Wad-ud-Dn, Rzgr-i Faqr, pp.
38-39. After Allama’s epoch-making mathnawi: Asrr-i Khud was
published in 1915 and it had given rise to some bitter controversy because of his critique
of ‘ajami tasawwuf, and of the great fiz, he in a letter dated 14 April
1916 addressed to Mahrja Kishen Parshd confided strictly in a personal way: ‘I
did not compose the mathnaw myself; I was made to (guided to), to do so’; cf. M.
‘Abdullh Quraish’ Nawdir-i Iqbl (Ghair Mabu’ah Khutt)’,
Sahfah, Lahore, ‘Iqbl Nambar’ (October 1973), Letter No. 41, p. 168.
41. Cf. William James, op. cit.,
p. 15.
42. Ibid., p. 21.
43. The designation
‘apostle’ (rasl) is applied to bearers of divine revelations which
embody a new doctrinal system or dispensation; a ‘prophet’ (nab), on
the other hand, is said to be one whom God has entrusted with enunciation of ethical
principles on the basis of an already existing dispensation, or of principles common to
all dispensations. Hence, every apostle is a prophet as well, but every prophet is not an
apostle.
44. Cf. Lecture VII, pp. 143-144,
where this point is reiterated.
45. E. W. Hocking, op. cit.,
pp.106-107.

Back to Lecture-I

Lecture II:
THE PHILOSOPHICAL TEST OF THE REVELATIONS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
1. Cf. E.S. Haldane and G.R.T.
Ross (trs.), The Philosophical Works of Descartes, II, 57.
2. Cf. The Critique of Pure
Reason, trans. N.’Kemp Smith, p. 505.
3. The logical fallacy of
assuming in the premisses of that which is to be proved in the conclusion.
4. Qur’n, 41:53, also
51:20-21.
5. Ibid., 57:3.
6. Cf. R.F.A. Hoernle, Matter,
Life, Mind and God, pp. 69-70.
7. Cf. H. Barker, article
‘Berkeley’ in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, especially the
section; ‘Metaphysics of Immaterialism’; see also Lecture IV, p. 83, for Allama
Iqbal’s acute observations in refutation of ‘the hypothesis of matter as an
independent existence’.
8. Cf. A.N. Whitehead, The
Concept of Nature, p. 30. This is what Whitehead has called the ‘theory of
bifurcation of Nature’ based on the dichotomy of ‘simply located material bodies
of Newtonian physics’ and the ‘pure sensations’ of Hume. According to this
theory, Nature is split up into two disparate or isolated parts; the one known to us
through our immediate experiences of colours, sounds, scents, etc., and the other, the
world of unperceived scientific entities of molecules, atoms, electrons, ether, etc. -
colourless, soundless, unscented - which so act upon the mind through ‘impact’
as to produce in it the ‘illusions’ of sensory experiences in which it delights.
The theory thus divides totality of being into a reality which does not appear and is thus
a mere ‘conjecture’ and appearances which are not real and so are mere
‘dream’. Whitehead outright rejects ‘bifurcation’; and insists that
the red glow of sunset is as much ‘part of Nature’ as the vibrations of
molecules and that the scientist cannot dismiss the red glow as a ‘psychic
addition’ if he is to have a coherent ‘Concept of Nature’. This view of
Whitehead, the eminent mathematician, expounded by him in 1920 (i.e. four years before his
appointment to the chair of Philosophy at Harvard at the age of sixty-three) was widely
accepted by the philosophers. Lord Richard Burdon Haldane, one of the leading neo-Hegelian
British philosophers, said to be the first philosophical writer on the Theory of
Relativity, gave full support to Whitehead’s views on ‘bifurcation’ as well
as on ‘Relativity’ in his widely-read Reign of Relativity to which Allama
Iqbal refers in Lecture III, p. 57, and tacitly also perhaps in lecture V. The way Lord
Haldane has stated in this work his defence of Whitehead’s views of Relativity
(enunciated by him especially in Concept of Nature) even as against those of Einstein, one
is inclined to surmise that it was perhaps Reign of Relativity (incidentally also listed
at S. No. 276 in the Descriptive Catalogue of Allama’s Personal Library) more
than any other work that led Allama Iqbal to make the observation: ‘Whitehead’s
view of Relativity is likely to appeal to Muslim students more than that of Einstein in
whose theory time loses its character of passage and mysteriously translates itself into
utter space’ (Lecture V, p. 106).
9. Allama Iqbal states here
Zeno’s first and third arguments; for all the four arguments of Zeno on the unreality
of motion, see John Burnet, Greek philosophy; Thales to Plato, p. 84; they
generally go by names; the ‘dichotomy’; the ‘Achilles’; the
‘arrow’; and the ‘stadium’. It may be added that our primary source
for Zeno’s famous and controversial arguments is Aristotle Physics (VI, 9, 239b)
which is generally said to have been first translated into Arabic by Isq b. unain
(c. 845-910/911), the son of the celebrated unain b. Isq. Aristotle’s Physics
is also said to have been commented on later by the Christian Ab’Alal-asan b.
al-Samh (c. 945-1027); cf. S.M. Stern, ‘Ibn-al-Samh’, Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society (1956), pp. 31-44. Even so it seems that Zeno’s arguments as
stated by Aristotle were known to the Muslim thinkers much earlier, maybe through
Christian-Syriac sources, for one finds the brilliant Mu‘tazilite Nam (d.
231/845) meeting Zeno’s first argument in terms of his ingenious idea of tafrah jump
referred to by Allama Iqbal in Lecture III, pp. 63-64.
10. Cf. T.J. de Boer, article
‘Atomic Theory (Muhammadan)’, in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,
II, 202-203; D.B. Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, pp. 201 ff. and Majid
Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism, pp. 33-43.
11. Cf. Kitb al-Fial,
V, 92-102.
12. For Bergson’s criticism
of Zeno’s arguments cf. Creative Evolution, pp. 325-30, and also the earlier
work Time and Free Will, pp.113-15.
13. Cf. A.E. Taylor, article
‘Continuity’ in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, IV, 97-98.

14. Cf. Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the
External World, pp. 169-88;
also Mysticism and Logic,
pp. 84-91.
15. This is not Russell’s
own statement but that of H. Wildon Carr made during the course of his exposition of
Russell’s views on the subject; see Wildon Carr, The General Principle of
Relativity, p. 36.
16. Views of H. Wildon Carr and
especially of Sir T. Percy Nunn on relativity in the present context are to be found in
their symposium papers on ‘The Idealistic Interpretation of Einstein’s
Theory’ published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, N.S. XXII
(1921-22), 123-27 and 127-30. Wildon Carr’s, Doctrine of Monadistic Idealism,
however, is to be found much more fully expounded in his General Principle of
Relativity (1920) and A Theory of Monads: Outlines of the Philosophy of the
Principle of Relativity (1922); passages from both of these books have been quoted in
the present lecture (cf. notes 15 and 22).
T. Percy Nunn, best known as an
educationist, wrote little philosophy; but whatever little he wrote, it made him quite
influential with the leading contemporary British philosophers: Whitehead, Samuel
Alexander, Russell, Broad, and others. He is said to have first formulated the
characteristic doctrines of neo-Realism, an important philosophical school of the century
which had its zealot and able champions both in England and in the United States. His
famous symposium paper: ‘Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?’
read in a meeting of the Aristotelian Society in 1909 was widely studied and discussed and
as J. Passmore puts it: ‘it struck Bertrand Russell’s roving fancy’ (A
Hundred Years of Philosophy, p. 258). It is significant to note that Nunn’s
correction put on Wildon Carr’s idealistic interpretation of relativity in the
present passage is to be found almost in the same philosophical diction in Russell’s
valuable article: ‘Relativity; Philosophical Consequences’, in Encyclopaedia
Britannica (1953), XIX, 99d, Russell says: ‘It is a mistake to suppose that
relativity adopts any idealistic picture of the world . . . . The ‘observer’ who
is often mentioned in expositions of relativity need not be a mind, but may be a
photographic plate or any kind of recording instrument.’
17. On this rather debatable
interpretation of Einstein’s theory of relativity see Dr M. Razi-ud-dn iddq,
‘Iqbal’s Conception of Time and Space’ in Iqbal As A Thinker, pp.
29-31, and Philipp Frank, ‘Philosophical Interpretations and Misinterpretations of
the Theory of Relativity’, in H. Feigel and Mary Broadbeck (eds.), Readings in the
Philosophy of Science, pp. 222-26, reprinted from his valuable work. Interpretations
and Misinterpretations of Modern Physics (1938).
18. Cf. Hans Reichenbach,
‘The Philosophical Significance of the Theory of Relativity’, in P.A. Schilpp
(ed.), Albert-Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, section iv.
19. Cf. Tertium Organum,
pp. 33f.
20. Compare this with
Bergson’s view of consciousness in Creative Evolution, pp. 189f.
21. This is a passage from J.S.
Haldane’s Symposium Paper: ‘Are Physical, Biological and Psychological
Categories Irreducible?’ read in July 1918 at the joint session of the Aristotelian
Society, the British Psychological Society and the Mind Association; see Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, XVII, (1917-1918), 423-24, reproduced in H. Wildon Carr
(ed.), Life and Finite Individuality, pp. 15-16.
22. A Theory of Monads,
pp. 5-6.
23. Cf. Lecture I, pp. 8-11.
24. Cf. the Quranic verses quoted
on p. 39; to these may be added 22:47, 32:5, and 70:4 - according to this last verse a day
is of the measure of fifty thousand years.
25. Creative Evolution, p.
1.
26. The Qur’n says:
‘And behold a day with thy sustainer is as a thousand years of your reckoning’
(22:47). So also, according to the Old Testament: ‘One day is with the Lord as a
thousand years’ (Psalms, xc.’4).
27. According to Bergson, this
period may be as long as 25,000 years; cf. Matter and Memory, pp. 272-73.
28. For further elucidation of
future as an open possibility’ cf. Lecture III, p.’63.
29. See among others the Quranic
verses 25:2; 54:49 and the earliest on this subject in the chronological order of the srahs:
87:2-3.
These last two short verses speak
of four Divine ways governing all creation and so also man, viz. God’s creating a
thing (khalaqa), making it complete (fa sawwa), assigning a destiny to it or
determining its nature (qaddara) and guiding it to its fulfilment (fa hada).
Allama Iqbal’s conception of
destiny (taqdr) as ‘the inward reach of a thing, its realizable
possibilities which lie within the depth of its nature, and serially actualize themselves
without any feeling of external compulsion’ [italics mine] understood in terms of the
Divine ways embodied in the above two short verses, seems to be singularly close to the
text and the unique thought-forms of the Qur’n. There is no place in this
conception of destiny for the doctrine of Fatalism as preached by some Muslim scholastic
theologians whose interpretation of the verses of the Qur’n for this purpose is
more often a palpable misinterpretation (Lecture IV, p. 89); nor for the doctrine of
determinism as expounded by the philosophers who, cut off from the inner life-impulse
given by Islam, think of all things in terms of the inexorable law of cause and effect
which governs the human ego as much as the ‘environment’ in which it is placed.
They fail to realize that the origin of the law of ‘cause and effect’ lies in
the depths of the transcendental ego which has devised it or caused it under divine
guidance to realize its divinely assigned destiny of understanding and mastering all
things (p. 86); also Asrr-i Khud, many verses especially those in the earlier
sections.
30. Qur’n, 55:29.
31. Cf. Lecture I, p. 5.
32. See Shibl Nu‘mn,
Shi‘r al-‘Ajam, II, 114.
33. This is a reference to pp.
33-36.
34. Cf. Lecture I, p. 8 and note
23.
35. The Quranic verse 25:62
quoted on p. 37.
36. Reference is to the Quranic
expression: Ghanyy-un ‘ani’i-’lamn found in verses 3:97 and
29:6.
37. This is a reference to the
Quranic verse 20:14: ‘Verily, I - I alone - am God; there is no deity save Me. Hence,
worship Me alone, and be constant in prayer, so as to remember Me.’
38. Qur’n, 42:11.
39. The reference is to the
Quranic expression sunnat Allah found in 33:62; 35:43; 40:84-85; 48:23, etc.
40. Cf. Lecture III, p. 83, where
Allama Iqbal observes: ‘The scientific observer of Nature is a kind of mystic seeker
in the act of prayer.’
41. McTaggart’s argument
referred to here was advanced by him in his article; ‘The Unreality of Time’ in Mind
(N.S.), XVII/68 (October 1908), 457-74, reproduced later in Nature of Existence,
II, 9-31, as well as in the posthumous Philosophical Studies, pp. 110-31. McTaggart
has been called ‘an outstanding giant in the discussion of the reality or unreality
of time’ and his aforesaid article has been most discussed in recent philosophical
literature on Time. Of articles in defence of McTaggart’s position, mention may be
made of Michael Dummett: ‘A Defence of McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of
Time’ in Philosophical Review, XIX (1960), 497-504. But he was criticised by
C.D. Borad, the greatest expositor of his philosophy (cf. his commentary: Examination
of McTaggart’s Philosophy, Vol. I, 1933, and Vol. II in two parts, 1938), in Scientific
Thought, to which Allama Iqbal has referred in the present discussion, as well as in
his valuable article: ‘Time’ in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,
XII, 339a; and earlier than Broad by Reyburn in his article ‘Idealism and the Reality
of Time’ in Mind (Oct.1913), pp. 493-508 which has been briefly summarized by
J. Alexander Gunn in Problem of Time: A Historical and Critical Study, pp. 345-47.
42. Cf. C.D. Broad, Scientific
Thought, p. 79.
43. This is much like
Broad’s admitting at the conclusion of his examination of McTaggart’s argument
that time ‘is the hardest knot in the whole of Philosophy’, ibid., p. 84.
44. The Confessions of St.
Augustine, xi, 17; cf. O. Spengler, The Decline of the West, I, 140, where
Augustine’s observation is quoted in connection with ‘destiny’.
45. Reference is to the Quranic
verse 23:80 quoted on p. 37 above.
46. Cf. M. Afdal Sarkhwush,
Kalimt al-Shu‘ar‘, p. 77, where this verse is given as under:
47. Cf. Kitb al-Fial,
II,158; also 1. Goldziher, The Zhirs, pp. 113 f.
48. Qur’n, 50:38.
49. Ibid., 2:255.
50. Goethe, Alterswerke
(Hamburg edition), I, 367, quoted by Spengler, op. cit., on fly-leaf with
translation on p. 140. For locating this passage in Goethe’s Alterswerke, I am
greatly indebted to Professor Dr Annemarie Schimmel.
51. Reference here is to the
Prophet’s last words: ‘al-saltu al-saltu wa mmalakat aimnukum’
(meaning: be mindful of your prayers and be kind to persons subject to your authority)
reported through three different chains of transmitters in Amad b. anbal’s Musnad:
VI, 290, 311 and 321.

Back to Lecture-II

Lecture
III: THE CONCEPTION OF GOD AND THE MEANING OF PRAYER
1. Cf. Creative Evolution,
p. 13; also pp. 45-46.
2. Ibid., p. 14.
3. See Qur’n, for example,
2:163, 4:171, 5:73, 6:19, 13:16, 14:48, 21:108, 39:4 and 40:16, on the Unity of Allah and
4:171, 6:101, 10:68, 17:111, 19:88-92 emphatically denying the Christian doctrine of His
sonship.
4. Cf. L.R. Farnell, The
Attributes of God, p. 56.
5. The full translation here is
‘a glistening star’, required by the nass of the Qur’n, ‘Kaukab-un
urry-n’.
6. On this fine distinction of
God’s infinity being intensive and not extensive, see further Lecture IV, p. 94.
7. For the long-drawn controversy
on the issue of the creation of the universe, see, for instance, Ghazzl, Tahfut
al-Falsifah, English translation by S.A. Kaml: Incoherence of the Philosophers,
pp. 13-53, and Ibn Rushd, Tahfut al-Tahfut, English translation by Simon van
den Bergh: The Incoherence of the Incoherence, pp. 1-69; cf. also G.F. Hourani,
‘Alghazl and the Philosophers on the Origin of the World’, The Muslim
World, XLVII/2(1958), 183-91, 308-14 and M. Saeed Sheikh, ‘Al-Ghazl:
Metaphysics’, A History of Muslim Philosophy ed. M.M. Sharif, I, 598-608.
8. Cf. Lecture II, 28, 49.
9. A.S. Eddington, Space, Time
and Gravitation, pp. 197-98 (italics by Allama Iqbal).
10. For AbuHashim’s theory
of atomism cf. T.J. de Boer, ‘Atomic Theory (Muhammadan)’, Encyclopaedia of
Religion and Ethics, II, 202-03. De Boer’s account is based on Ab Rashd
Sa‘d’s Kitb al-Mas’il Fi’l-Khilf, ed. and trans. into
German by Arthur Biram (Leyden,1902).
11. Cf. Ibn Khaldn, Muqaddimah,
English translation by F. Rosenthal, III, 50-51, where Bqilln is said to have
introduced the conceptions of atom(al-jawhar al-fard), vacuum and accidents into the
Ash‘artie Kalm. R. J. McCarthy, who has edited and also translated some of
Bqilln’s texts, however, considers this to be unwarranted; see his article
‘al-Bklln’s’ in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (New edition), I,
958-59. From the account of Muslim atomism given in al-Ash‘ar’s Maqlt
al-Islmiyn, this much has, however, to be conceded that atomism was keenly
discussed by the Muslim scholastic theologians long before Bqilln.
12. For the life and works of
Maimonides and his relationship with Muslim philosophy, cf. S. Pines, The Guide of the
Perpelexed (New English translation, Chicago University Press, 1963),
‘Introduction’ by the translator and an ‘Introductory Essay’ by L.
Strauss; cf. also Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, II, 369-70 and
376-77.
13. D.B. Macdonald,
‘Continuous Re-creation and Atomic Time in Moslem Scholastic Theology’, The
Moslem World, XVII/i (1928), 6-28; reprinted from Isis, IX (1927), 326-44. This
article is focussed on Maimonides’ well-known ‘Twelve Propositions of the
Katam’.
14. Macdonald, ‘Continuous
Re-creation and Atomic Time . . .’ in op. cit., p.’24.
15. Ibid., pp. 25-28. See
also The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam, p. 320, where Macdonald traces the
pantheistic developments in later sufi schools to Buddhistic and Vedantic influences.
16. Qur’n, 35:1.
17. Cf. de Boer, ‘Atomic
Theory (Muhammadan)’, in op. cit., II, 203.
18. Cf. Eddington, op. cit.,
p. 200.
19. For an account of
Nam’s notion of al-tafrah or jump, see Ash‘ar, Maqlt
al-Islmiyn, II, 18; Ibn azm, Kitb al-Fial, V, 64-65, and
Shahrastn, Kitb al-Milal wa’l-Nial, pp. 38-39; cf. also
Isr’n, Al-Tabsr, p. 68, Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism, p.
39, and H.A. Wolfson: The Philosophy of the Kalm, pp. 514-17.
20. A.N. Whitehead, Science
and the Modern World, p. 49.
21. A view, among others held by
Bqilln who bases it on the Quranic verses 8:67 and 46:24 which speak of the
transient nature of the things of this world. Cf. Kitb al-Tamhd, p. 18.
22. Lecture I, p. 3; see also
Lecture V, p. 102, note 21.
23. For Ash‘arites’
theory of the perpetual re-creation of the universe basing it on the Absolute Power and
Will of God, cf. Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism, pp. 15, 117 ff. and M. Saeed
Sheikh, ‘Al-Ghazl; Metaphysics’, in op. cit., I, 603-08.
24. In R.A. Nicholson’s
edition of the Mathnaw this verse (i.1812) reads as under:
Wine became intoxicated with us,
not we with it;
The body came into being from us,
not we from it.
25. Viscount Richard Burdon
Haldane, the elder brother of John Scott Haldane, from whose Symposium Paper Allama Iqbal
has quoted at length in Lecture II, p. 35, was a leading neo-Hegelian British philosopher
and a distinguished statesman who died on 19 August 1928. Allama’s using the
expression ‘the late Lord Haldane’ is indicative of the possible time of his
writing the present Lecture which together with the first two Lectures was delivered in
Madras (5-8 Jan. 1929). The ‘idea of degrees of reality and knowledge’, is very
vigorously expounded by Haldane in The Reign of Relativity (1921) as also in his
earlier two-volume Gifford Lectures: The Pathway to Reality (1903-04) in which he
also expounded the Principle of Relativity on purely philosophical grounds even before the
publication of Einstein’s theory; cf. Rudolf Metz, A Hundred Years of British
Philosophy, p. 315.
26. This is a reference to the
Qur’an, 20:14.
27. Ibid., 50:16.
28. For further elucidation of
the privacy of the ego, see Lecture IV, pp. 79-80.
29. Cf. p. 64 where Iqbal says
that God ‘out of His own creative freedom . . . . has chosen finite egos to be
participators of His life, power, and freedom’.
30. The tradition: ‘Do not
vilify time, for time is God’ referred to in Lecture I, p. 8.
31. Cf. The Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy, Vol. I, Definition viii, Scholium i.
32. Cf. Louis Rougier, Philosophy
and the New Physics (An Essay on the Relativity Theory and the Theory of Quanta), p.
143. The work belongs to the earlier phase of Rougier’s philosophical output, a phase
in which he was seized by the new discoveries of physicists and mathematicians such as
Henry Poincare (celestial mechanics and new geometry), Max Planck (quantium theory)
Nicolas L. Carnot (thermodynamics), Madame Curie (radium and its compounds) and Einstein
(principle of relativity). This was followed by his critical study of theories of
knowledge: rationalism and scholasticism, ending in his thesis of the diversity of
‘metaphysical temperaments’ and the ‘infinite plasticity’ of the human
mind whereby it takes delight in ‘quite varied forms of intelligibility’. To the
final phase of Rougier’s philosophical productivity belongs La Metaphysique et le
langage (1960) in which he elaborated the conception of plurality of language in
philosophical discourse. Rougier also wrote on history of ideas (scientific,
philosophical, religious) and on contemporary political and economical problems - his Les
Mystiques politiques et leurs incidences internationales (1935) and Les Mystiques
economiques (1949) are noteworthy.
It is to be noted that both the
name ‘Louis Rougier’ and the title of his book Philosophy and the New Physics
cited in the passage quoted by Allama Iqbal are given puzzlingly incorrectly in the
previous editions of Reconstruction including the one by Oxford University Press
(London, 1934); and these were not noticed even by Madame Eva Meyerovitch in her French
translation: Reconstruire la pensee religieuse de l’Islam (Paris, 1955, p.
83). It would have been well-nigh impossible for me to find out the author’s name and
title of the book correctly had I not received the very kindly help of the Dutch scholar
the Reverend Dr. Jan Slomp and Mlle Mauricette Levasseur of Biblioth que Nationale,
Paris, who also supplied me with many useful particulars about the life and works of
Rougier. The last thing that I heard was that this French philosopher who taught in
various universities including the ones in Cairo and New York and who participated in
various Congresses and was the President of the Paris International Congress of Scientific
Philosophy in 1935, passed away on 14 October 1982 at the age of ninety-three.
33. Cf. Space, Time and Deity,
II, 396-98; also Allama Iqbal’s letter dated 24 January 1921 addressed to R.A.
Nicholson (Letters of Iqbal, ed. B.A. Dar, pp. 141-42) where, while disagreeing
with Alexander’s view of God, he observes: ‘I believe there is a Divine tendency
in the universe, but this tendency will eventually find its complete expression in a
higher man, not in a God subject to Time, as Alexander implies in his discussion of the
subject.’
34. The Sufi poet named here as
well as in Lectures V and VII as (Fakhr al-Dn) ‘Irq, we are told, is really
‘Ain al-Qut Abu’l-Mu‘l ‘Abdullah b. Muhammad b. ‘Al b.
al-asan b. ‘Al al-Miynj al-Hamadn whose tractate on space and time: Ghyat
al-Imkn fi Diryat al-Makn (54 pp.) has been edited by Rahim Farmanish (Tehran,
1338 S/1959); cf. English translation of the tractate by A.H. Kamali, section captioned:
‘Observations’, pp. i-v; also B.A. Dar, ‘Iqbal aur Mas‘alah-i
Zamn-o-Makn’ in Fikr-i Iqbal ke Munawwar Goshay, ed. Salim Akhtar, pp.
149-51. Nadhr Sbir, however, strongly pleads that the real author of the tractate was
Shaikh Tj al-Dn Mahmd b. Khud-dd Ashnaw, as also hinted by Allama Iqbal in his
Presidential Address delivered at the Fifth Indian Oriental Conference (1928) (Speeches,
Writings and Statements of Iqbal,’p. 137). Cf. Shaikh Mahmd Ashnaw’s
tractate: Ghyat al Imkn fi Ma‘rifat al-Zamn wa’l-Makn (42 pp.)
edited by Nadhr Sbir, ‘Introduction’ embodying the editor’s research
about the MSS of the tractate and the available data of its author; also HjKhalfah, Kashf
al-Zunn, II, 1190, and A. Monzavi, A Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts, vol.
II, Part I, MSS 7556-72.
Cf. also MaulnImtiz
‘AlKhn ‘Arsh, ‘Zamn-o-Makn k Bahth ke Muta‘allaq
‘Allmah Iqbl k aik Ma’khidh: ‘Irqya Ashnaw’, Maqlt:
Iqbl ‘lam Kngras (Iqbal Centenary Papers Presented at the International
Congress on Allama Mohammad Iqbal: 2-8 December 1977), IV, 1-10 wherein Mauln’
Arsh traces a new MS of the tractate in the Raza Library, Rampur, and suggests the
possibility of its being the one used by Allama Iqbal in these Lectures as well as in his
Address: ‘A Plea for Deeper Study of Muslim Scientists’.
It may be added that there
remains now no doubt as to the particular MS of this unique Sufi tractate on ‘Space
and Time’ used by Allama Iqbal, for fortunately it is well preserved in the Allama
Iqbal Museum, Lahore (inaugurated by the President of Pakistan on 26 September 1984). The
MS, according to a note in Allama’s own hand dated 21 October 1935, was transcribed
for him by the celebrated religious scholar Sayyid Anwar Shh Kshmr Cf. Dr Ahmad
Nabi Khan, Relics of Allama Iqbal (Catalogue), p. 12.
For purposes of present
annotation we have referred to Rahi`m Farmanish’s edition of Hamadn’s Ghyat
al-Imkn fi Diryat al-Makn (Tehran, 1338/1959) and to A.H. Kamali’s English
translation of it (Karachi, 1971) where needed. This translation, however, is to be used
with caution.
35. Cf. ‘Ain al-Quzt
Hamadn, op. cit., p. 51; English translation, p. 36.
36. The Quranic expression umm al-kitb
occurs in 3:7, 13:39 and 43:4.
37. Cf. al-Mabhith
al-Mashriqgah, I, 647; the Arabic text of the passage quoted in English is as under:
38. Reference here is in
particular to the Qur’n 23:80 quoted in Lecture II, p.’37.
39. Cf. Lecture II, p. 49, where,
summing up his philosophical ‘criticism’ of experience, Allama Iqbal says:
‘facts of experience justify the inference that the ultimate nature of Reality is
spiritual and must be conceived as an ego.’
40. Cf. ‘Ain al-Quzt
Hamadn, op. cit., p. 50; English translation, p. 36. For Royce’s view of
knowledge of all things as a whole at once (totum simul), see his World and the
Individual, II, 141.
41. About the cosmic harmony and
unity of Nature the Qur’n says: ‘Thou seest no incongruity in the creation of
the Beneficent. Then look again. Canst thou see any disorder? Then turn thy eye again and
again - thy look will return to thee concused while it is fatigued’ (67:3-4).
42. Qur’n, 3:26 and 73:
see also 57:29.
43. Cf. Joseph Friedrich Naumann,
Briefe ber Religion, p. 68; also Lecture VI, note 38. The German text of the
passage quoted in English is as under:
"Wir haben eine
Welterkenntnis, die uns einen Gott der Macht und Starke lehrt, der Tod und Leben wie
Schatten und Licht gleichzeitig versendet, und eine Offenbarung, einen Heilsglauben, der
von demselben Gott sagt, dass er Vater sei. Die Nachfolge des Weltgottes ergibt die
Sittlichkeit des Kampfes ums Dasein, und der Dienst des Vaters Jesu Christi ergibt die
Sittlichkeit der Barmherzigkeit. Es sind aber nicht zwei Gotter, sondern einer. Irgendwie
greifen ihre Arme ineinander. Nur kann kein Sterblicher sagen, wo und wie das
geschieht."
44. Reference is to
Browning’s famous lines in ‘Pippa Passes’:
God is in the heaven -

All is right with the world.’
45. Cf. Schopenhauer, World as
Will and Idea, trans. R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp, Book iv, section 57.
46. For the origin and historical
growth of the legend of Faust before Goethe’s masterly work on it, cf. Mary
Beare’s article ‘Faust’ in Cassell’s Encyclopaedia of Literature,
1, 217-19.
47. Cf. Genesis, chapter iii.
48. Strictly speaking, the word
Adam for man in his capacity of God’s vicegerent on earth has been used in the
Qur’n only in 2:30-31.
49. Cf. Genesis, iii, 20.
50. Qur’n, 7:19.
51. Ibid., 20:120.
52. Cf. Genesis, iii, 24.
53. Ibid., iii,17.
54. Qur’n, 2:36 and 7:24.
55. Cf. also verses 15:19-20.
56. Ibid., 71:17.
57. Ibid., 52:23.
58. Ibid., 15:48.
59. Ibid., 20:118-119.
60. Ibid., 2:35-37; also
20:120-122.
61. Ibid., 95:4-5.
62. Cf. also verses 2:155 and
90:4.
63. Ibid., 2:31-34.
64. Lecture I, pp. 10-11.
65. Madame Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1831-1891) is a noted spiritualist and theosophist of Russian birth, who in
collaboration with Col. H.S. Olcott and W.A. Judge founded Theosophical Society in New
York in November 1873. Later she transferred her activities to India where in 1879 she
established the office of the Society in Bombay and in 1883 in Adyar near Madras with the
following three objects: (i) to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity;
(ii) to promote the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science, and (iii) to
investigate the unexplained laws of nature and powers latent in man. The Secret
Doctrine (1888) deals, broadly speaking, with ‘Cosmogenesis’ and
‘Anthropogenesis’ in a ponderous way; though largely based on Vedantic thought
the ‘secret doctrine’ is claimed to carry in it the essence of all religions.
For the mention of tree as
‘a cryptic symbol for occult knowledge’ in The Secret Doctrine, cf. I,
187: ‘The Symbol for Sacred and Secret knowledge in antiquity was universally a Tree,
by which a scripture or a Record was also meant’; III, 384: ‘Ormzad . . . is
also the creator of the Tree’ (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from
which the mystic and the mysterious Baresma is taken’, and IV, 159: ‘To the
Eastern Occultist the Tree of Knowledge (leads) to the light of the eternal present
Reality’.
It may be added that Allama Iqbal
seems to have a little more than a mere passing interest in the Theosophical Society and
its activities for, as reported by Dr M. ‘Abdullh Chaghat‘, he, during his
quite busy stay in Madras (5-8 Jan. 1929) in connection with the present Lectures, found
time to pay a visit to the head office of the Society at Adyar. One may also note in Development
of Metaphysics in Persia (p. 10, note 2) reference to a small work Reincarnation
by the famous Annie Besant (President of the Theosophical Society, 1907-1933, and the
first and the only English woman who served as President of the Indian National Congress
in 1917) and added to this are the two books published by the Theosophical Society in
Allama’s personal library (cf. Descriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s
Personal Library, No. 81 and Relics of Allama Iqbal; Catalogue IV, 11). All
this, however, does not enable one to determine the nature of Allama Iqbal’s interest
in the Theosophical Society.
66. Qur’n, 17; 11; also
21:37. The tree which Adam was forbidden to approach (2:35 and 7:19), according to Allama
Iqbal’s remarkably profound and rare understanding of the Qur’n, is the tree
of ‘occult knowledge’, to which man in all ages has been tempted to resort in
unfruitful haste. This, in Allama’s view, is opposed to the inductive knowledge
‘which is most characteristic of Islamic teachings’. He indeed, tells us in
Lecture V (p. 101) that ‘the birth of Islam is the birth of inductive
intellect.’ True, this second kind of knowledge is so toilsome and painfully slow:
yet this knowledge alone unfolds man’s creative intellectual faculties and makes him
the master of his environment and thus God’s true vicegerent on earth. If this is the
true approach to knowledge, there is little place in it for Mme Blavatsky’s occult
spiritualism or theosophism. Allama Iqbal was in fact opposed to all kinds of occultism.
In one of his dialogues, he is reported to have said that ‘the forbidden tree’ (shajr-i
mamn‘ah) of the Qur’n is no other than the occultistic taawwuf
which prompts the patient to seek some charm or spell rather than take the advice of a
physician. The taawwuf, he added, which urges us to close our eyes and ears and
instead to concentrate on the inner vision and which teaches us to leave the arduous ways
of conquering Nature and instead take to some easier spiritual ways, has done the greatest
harm to science. [Cf. Dr Abu’l-Laith Siddq, Malfzt-i Iqbl, pp.
138-39]. It must, however, be added that Allama Iqbal does speak of a genuine or higher
kind of taawwuf which soars higher than all sciences and all philosophies. In it
the human ego so to say discovers himself as an individual deeper than his conceptually
describable habitual selfhood. This happens in the ego’s contact with the Most Real
which brings about in it a kind of ‘biological transformation’ the description
of which surpasses all ordinary language and all usual categories of thought. ‘This
experience can embody itself only in a world-making or world-shaking act, and in this form
alone’, we are told, ‘can this timeless experience . . . make itself visible to
the eye of history’ (Lecture VII, p. 145).
67. Qur’n, 2:36; 7:24;
20:123.
68. Ibid., 2:177; 3:200.
69. Lecture II, p. 58.
70. Lecture V, pp. 119ff.
71. The Principles of
Psychology, I, 316.
72. Cf. R.A. Nicholson (ed. and
tr.), The Mathnawi of Jalalddn Rm, Vol. IV (Books i and ii - text), ii, w.
159-162 and 164.
73. Cf. ibid., Vol. IV, 2 (Books
i and ii - translation), p. 230. It is to be noted that quite a few minor changes made by
Allama Iqbal in Nicholson’s English translation of the verses quoted here from the Mathnaw
are due to his dropping Nicholson’s parentheses used by him for keeping his
translation literally as close to the text as it was possible. Happily, Allama’s
personal copies of Volumes 2-5 and 7 of Nicholson’s edition of the Mathnawi are
preserved in Allama Iqbal Museum (Lahore) and it would be rewarding to study his usual
marginal marks and jottings on these volumes.
74. Cf. the Quranic verse 3:191
where so far as private prayers are concerned the faithful ones are spoken of remembering
God standing and sitting and lying on their sides.
75. The Qur’n speaks of
all mankind as ‘one community’; see verses 2:213, 10:19.
76. Ibid., 49:13.

Back to
Lecture-III

Lecture
IV: THE HUMAN EGO - HIS FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY
1. Cf. Qur’n, 6:94, 19:80
and 19:93-95; see also p. 93 where Allama Iqbal, referring to these last verses, affirms
that in the life hereafter the finite ego will approach the Infinite Ego ‘with the
irreplaceable singleness of his individually’.
2. This is, in fact translation
of the Quranic text: wa ltaziru wzirat-unw wizra ukhr which appears in verses
6:164; 17:15; 35:18; 39:7 and 53:38. Chronologically the last verse 53:38 is the earliest
on the subject. The implication of this supreme ethical principle or law is three-fold: a
categorical rejection of the Christian doctrine of the ‘original sin’,
refutation of the idea of ‘vicarious atonement or redemption’, and denial of the
possibility of mediation between the sinner and God (cf. M. Asad, The Message of the
Qur’n, p. 816, note 31).
3. Again, translation of the
Quranic verse 53:39 which is in continuation of the verse last referred to above.
4. Cf. O. Spengler, The
Decline of the West, I, 306-07. Also Lecture V, p. 114 where Allama Iqbal makes the
important statement: ‘Indeed my main purpose in these lectures has been to secure a
vision of the spirit of Islam as emancipated from its Magian overlayings’ (italics
mine). This may be read in conjunction with Allama’s reply to a Parsi
gentleman’s letter published in Statesman. This reply makes it clear that:
‘Magian thought and religious experience very much permeate Muslim theology,
philosophy and Sufism. Indeed, there is evidence to show that certain schools of Sufism
known as Islamic have only repeated the Magian type of religious experience . . . . There
is definite evidence in the Qur’n itself to show that Islam aimed at opening up new
channels not only of thought but the religious experience as well. Our Magian inheritance,
however, has stifled the life of Islam and never allowed the development of its real
spirit and aspirations’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, ed. A.L.
Sherwani, p. 170). It is important to note that, according to Allama Iqbal, Bahaism and
Qadianism are ‘the two forms which the modern revival of pre-Islamic Magianism has
assumed’, cf. his article ‘Qadianis and Orthodox Muslims’, ibid., p. 162.
This is reiterated in ‘Introduction to the Study of Islam’, a highly valuable
synopsis of a book that Allama contemplated to write. Under section ‘E’
Sub-section (iii) one of the topics of this proposed book is: ‘Babi, Ahmadiyya, etc.
Prophecies. All More or Less Magian’ (Letters and Writings of Iqbal, p. 93;
italics mine). Earlier on pp. 87-88 there is an enlightening passage which reads:
‘Empire brought men belonging to earlier ascetic cultures, which Spengler describes
as Magian, within the fold of Islam. The result was the conversion of Islam to a
pre-Islamic creed with all the philosophical controversies of these creeds: Rh, Nafs;
Qur’n; adth or Qadm. Real Islam had very little chances.’
This may be compared with Allama’s impassioned statement in his article: ‘Islam
and Mysticism’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 122): ‘The
Moslems of Spain, with their Aristotelian spirit, and away from the enervating influences
of the thought of Western and Central Asia, were comparatively much closer to the spirit
of Islam than the Moslem races of Asia, who let Arabian Islam pass through all the
solvents of Ajam and finally divested it of its original character. The conquest of Persia
meant not the conversion of Persia to Islam, but the conversion of Islam to Persianism.
Read the intellectual history of the Moslems of Western and Central Asia from the 10th
century downwards, and you will find therein verified every word that I have written
above.’ And Allama Iqbal wrote this, be it noted, in July 1917, i.e. before
Spengler’s magnum opus: The Decline of the West was published (Vol. I, 1918,
revised 1923, Vol. II, 1922; English translation, Vol. I, 23 April 1926, Vol. II, 9
November 1928) and before the expressions such as ‘Magian Soul’, ‘Magian
Culture’ and ‘Magian Religion’ came to be used by the philosophers of
history and culture.

5. Cf. the Quranic verses 41:53 and 51:20-21,
which make it incumbent on men to study signs of God in themselves as much as those in the
world around them.
6. Cf. Husain b. Mansr
al-allj, Kitb al-awsn, English translation by Aisha Abd Ar-Rahman, also
by Gilani Kamran, (Ana al-Haqq Reconsidered, pp. 55-108), sn VI, 23,
containing al-allj’s ecstatic utterance: an al-Haqq, and L.
Massignon’s explanatory notes on it translated by R.A. Butler in his article
‘Kitb al-Tawsn of al-Hallj’ Journal of the University of Baluchistan,
1/2 (Autumn 1981), 79-85; cf. also A. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, pp.
66 ff.
It may be noted that Allama Iqbal
in his, in many ways very valuable, article ‘McTaggart’s Philosophy’ (Speeches,
Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 143-51), compares McTaggart to allj (pp.
148-49). In the system of this ‘philosopher-saint’, ‘mystical intuition, as
a source of knowledge, is much more marked than in the system of Bradley . . . . In the
case of McTaggart the mystic Reality came to him as a confirmation of his thought . . . .
When the mystic Sultan Ab Sa‘id met the philosopher Ab ‘Al ibn Sn, he
is reported to have said, ‘I see what he knows.’ McTaggart both knew and
saw’ (pp. 145-46). The key to McTaggart’s system indeed, is his mysticism as is
borne out from the concluding sentence of his first work Studies in the Hegelian
Dialectic: ‘All true philosophy must be mystical, not indeed in its methods, but in
its final conclusions.’
This in-depth article on
‘McTaggart’s Philosophy’ also contains Allama Iqbal’s own translation
of two passages from his poem The New Garden of Mystery (Gulshan-i Rz-i Jadd)
dealing with Questions VI and VIII; the latter Question probes into the mystery of
allj’s ecstatic utterance: ‘I am the Truth’. Cf. B.A. Dar (tr.), Iqbal’s
Gulshan-i Rz-i Jadd and Bandag Nmah, pp. 42-43, 51-54.
7. Cf. The Muqaddimah,
trans. F. Rosenthal, II, 76-103.
8. Note Iqbl significant
observation that ‘modern psychology has not yet touched even the outer fringe of
religious life and is still far from the richness and variety of what is called religious
experience’ (Lecture VII, p. 152).
9. Cf. Ethical Studies
(1876), pp. 80 f.
10. Cf. The Principles of
Logic (1883), Vol. II, chapter ii.
11. Cf. Appearance and Reality
(1893), pp. 90-103.
12. Jvtm is the
individual mind or consciousness of man or his soul distinguished from the cosmic mind,
cosmic consciousness or world-soul; cf. ‘Atman’, Encyclopaedia of Religion
and Ethics, II,195, also XII, 597.
13. Cf. Appearance and Reality,
p. 89; also ‘Appendix’, p. 497.
14. Misprinted as, mutual, states
in the previous editions.
15. For Ghazl’s
concept;ion of the soul, cf. M. Saeed Sheikh, ‘Al-Ghazl: Mysticism’, A
History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M.M. Sharif, I, 619-21.
16. Reference here is to what
Kant named ‘Paralogisms of Pure Reason’, i.e. fallacious arguments which allege
to prove substantiality, simplicity, numerical identity and eternality of the human soul;
cf. Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 328-83.
17. Ibid., pp. 329-30.
18. Ibid., pp. 372-73;
this is, in fact, Kant’s argument in refutation of the German Jewish philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn’s ‘Proof of the Permanence of the Soul’; cf. Kemp Smith, Commentary
to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 470-71.
19. Cf. Principles of
Psychology, Vol. I, chapter ix, especially pp. 237-48.
20. Ibid., p. 340.
21. Ibid., p. 339; cf. Critique
of Pure Reason, p. 342, note (a) where Kant gives an illustration of a series of
elastic balls in connection with the third paralogism to establish the numerical identity
of the ego. Kemp Smith in his Commentary p. 461, has rightly observed that William
James’s psychological description of self-consciousness is simply an extension of
this illustration.
22. Qur’n, 7:54.
23. Cf. pp. 84-85, where Allama
Iqbal gives a philosophical answer to this question in terms of contemporary theory of
emergent evolution as expounded by S. Alexander (Space, Time and Deity, 2 vols.,
1920) and C.L. Morgan (Emergent Evolution, 1923). The theory distinguishes between
two kinds of effects: ‘resultants’ which are the predictable outcome of
previously existing conditions and ‘emergents’ which are specifically new and
not completely predictable. According to Alexander, who in his original conception of
emergence was indebted to Morgan (cf. Space, Time and Deity, II, 14), mind is
‘an ‘emergent’ from life, and life an emergent from a lower
physico-chemical level of existence’ (ibid.). When physico-chemical processes attain
a certain degree of Gestalt-like structural complexity life emerges out of it. Life is not
an epiphenomenon, nor is it an entelechy as with Hans Driesch but an ‘emergent’
- there is no cleft between life and matter. At the next stage of
‘configurations’ when neural processes in living organisms attain a certain
level of structural complexity, mind appears as a novel emergent. By reasonable
extrapolation it may be assumed that there are emergents (or ‘qualities’) higher
than mind.
This is very close to Mauln
Rm’s ‘biological future of man’, ‘Abd al-Karm al-Jl’s
‘Perfect Man’ and Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’. No wonder that Allama
Iqbal in his letter dated 24 January 1921 to R.A. Nicholson (Letters of Iqbal, pp.
141-42), while taking a strict notice of E.M. Forster’s review of The Secrets of
the Self (translation of his epoch-making Asrr-i Khud) and particularly of
the Nietzschean allegation against him (cf. Forster’s review in Dr Riffat Hassan, The
Sword and the Sceptre, p. 284) writes: ‘Nor does he rightly understand my idea
of the Perfect Man which he confounds with the German thinker’s Superman. I wrote on
the Sufi doctrine of the Perfect Man more than twenty years ago, long before I had read or
heard anything of Nietzsche . . . . The English reader ought to approach this idea, not
through the German thinker, but through an English thinker of great merit (italics
mine) - I mean Alexander - whose Gifford Lectures (1916-18) delivered at Glasgow were
published last year.’ This is followed by a quotation from Alexander’s chapter
on ‘Deity and God’ (op. cit., II, 347, II, 1-8) ending in a significant
admission: ‘Alexander’s thought is much bolder than mine (italics mine).
24. More generally known as
James-Lange theory of emotions. This theory was propounded by the Danish physician and
psychologist, Carl George Lange in a pamphlet Om Sindsbevaegelser in 1885, while
William James had already set forth similar views in an article published in Mind
in 1884. For a full statement of the theory, see William James, Principles of Psychology,
II, 449 ff. and for its refutation (as hinted at by Allama Iqbal), Encyclopaedia
Britanica, s.v., XII, 885-86.
25. For Iqbal’s very clear
and definitive verdict of body-mind dualism, cf. Lecture VI, p. 122.
26. Reference is to the Quranic
verse (7:54) quoted on p. 82.
27. Cf. Lecture II, p. 28.
28. Qur’n, 57:3.
29. Cf. William James, op. cit.,
II, 549.
30. More generally known as
Gestalt Psychology, this German school of psychology was the result of the combined work
of M. Wertheimer, K. Koffka and W. K hler during 1912-14. It came as a reaction against
the psychic elements of analytic or associationistic psychology, insisting upon the
concept of gestalt, configuration, or organized whole which, if analyzed, it was averred,
would lose its distinctive quality. Thus it is impossible to consider the phenomenon of
perception as in any way made up of a number of isolable elements, sensory or of any other
origin, for what we perceive are ‘forms’, ‘shapes’ or
‘configurations’. From ‘perception’ the gestalt-principle has been
extended throughout psychology and into biology and physics. Important for Iqbal scholars
are the suggestions recently made to discern some ‘points of contact’ between
the Gestalt and the philosophies of J. C. Smuts (holism) and A.N. Whitehead (philosophy of
organism); cf. K. Koffka, ‘Gestalt’, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences,
VI, 642-46; also J. C. Smuts, ‘Holism’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, XI,
643.
31. The concept of
‘insight’ was first elaborately expounded by W. K hler in his famous work: The
Mentality of Apes (first English translation in 1924 of his Intelligerpruf ngen
an Menschenaffen, 1917); cf. C.S. Peyser, ‘Kohler, Wolfgang (1887-1967)’, Encyclopedia
of Psychology, II, 271.
32. In the history of Islamic
thought, this is one of the finest arguments to resolve the age-long controversy between
determinism and indeterminism and to establish the soundest basis for self-determinism.
33. Cf. The Decline of the
West, II, 240, where Spengler says: ‘But it is precisely the impossibility of an
Ego as a free power in the face of the divine that constitutes Islam. (italics by
Spengler); earlier on p. 235 speaking of Magian religions (and for him Islam is one of
them) Spengler observes: ‘the impossibility of a thinking, believing, and knowing Ego
is the presupposition inherent in all the fundamentals of all these religions’.
34. Cf. Lecture II, p. 40.
35. Cf. Introduction to the Secrets
of the Self (English translation of Allama Iqbal’s ‘philosophical
poem’: Asrr-i Khud), pp. xviii-xix.
36. See Ibn Qutaibah, Kitb
al-Ma‘rif, ed. ‘Ukashah, p. 441; cf. also Obermann, ‘Political
Theology in Early Islam’: asan al-Basr’s Treatise on qadar’, Journal
of the American Oriental Society, LV (1935), 138-62.
37. Cf. D. B. Macdonald, Development
of Muslim Theology, pp. 123-24, for a brief mention of ‘the origin of the theory
of the accomplished fact’ with reference to the political attitude of the
Murj‘ites, and Khuda Bukhsh, Politics in Islam, p. 150, for Ibn
Jam’ah’s view on the subject as contained in his work on constitutional law of
Islam: Tarr al-Ahkm f Tadbr Ahl al-Islm (ed. Hans Kofler), p. 357. It
may be added that Allama Iqbal did take notice of Ibn Jama`’ah’s view (of
bai‘ah through force) and observed: ‘This opportunist view has no support in the
law of Islam’: cf. his article ‘Political Thought in Islam’ Sociological
Review, I (1908), 256, II, 15-16; reproduced in Speeches, Writings and Statements
of Iqbal, ed. A. L. Sherwani, p. 115.
38. Cf. Renan, Averr es et
l’averroisme (pp. 136f.) as quoted in R.A. Tsanoff, The Problem of Immortality,
p. 76.
39. Cf. William James, Human
Immortality, p. 32.
40. Ibid., p. 28.
41. Ibid., p. 29.
42. Cf. Lecture II, pp. 26-28;
also p. 83.
43. This passage in its entire
import seems to be quite close to the one quoted from Eddington’s widely read Nature
of the Physical World (p. 323) in Lecture VII, p. 147.
44. Cf. R. A. Tsanoff, op. cit.,
pp. 143-78, for a commendable account of Nietzsche’s doctrine of Eternal Recurrence.
45. Cf. H. Spencer, First
Principles, pp. 549 ff.
46. Cf. Tsanoff, op. cit.,
pp. 162-63.
47. Cf. Oscar Levy (ed.), Complete
Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, XIV, 248 and 250, quoted in Tsanoff, op. cit., p.
163.
48. Cf. Levy, op. cit.,
XVI, 274, and Tsanoff, op. cit., p. 177.
49. Cf. Lecture V, p. 113 where
Iqbal says: ‘Whatever may be the criterion by which to judge the forward steps of
creative movement, the movement itself, if conceived as cyclic, ceases to be creative.
Eternal recurrence is not eternal creation, it is eternal repetition’.
50. Barzakh, according to
Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon, means ‘a thing that intervenes between any
two things, or a bar, an obstruction, or a thing that makes a separation between two
things’. As signifying the state between death and resurrection the word barzakh
occurs in the Qur’n, 23:99-100.
51. Reference is to the Quranic
verses 23:12-14 quoted on p. 83.
52. See also verses 6:94 and
19:80.
53. Translation of the Quranic
expression ajr-un ghairu mamnun-in found in verses 41:8; 84:25 and 95:6.
54. Reference here is among
others to the Quranic verses 69:13-18; 77:8-11.
55. Cf. also the Quranic verses
20:112; 21:103; 101:6-7.
56. This alludes to the
difference of the Prophet’s encounter with God as stated in the Quranic verse 53:17
from that of Prophet Moses’ as given in verses 7:143. Referring to the Persian verse
(ascribed by some to the Suf poet Jaml of Delhi who died in 942/1535), Iqbal in his
letter to Dr Hadi Hasan of Aligarh Muslim University observes: ‘In the whole range of
Muslim literature there is not one verse like it and these two lines enclose a whole
infinitude of ideas’. See B.A. Dar (ed.), Letters and Writings of Iqbal, pp.
2-3.
57. So important is
‘action’ or ‘deed’ according to the Qur’n that there are more
than one hundred verses urging the believers to act righteously - hence, the opening line
of Allama Iqbal’s Preface to the Lectures; see M. Fu‘d ‘Abd
al-Bq’s al-Mu‘jam al-Mufahras li Alfz al-Qur’n al Karm, verses
under the radicals: ml, slh and hsn.
58. This, according to Helmholtz,
one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, was about thirty metres per
second. Before Helmholtz the conduction of neural impulse was thought to be instantaneous,
too fast to be measured. After he had demonstrated its measurement through his
experimental studies; his researches came to be used in experiments on reaction time (cf.
Gardner Murphy, Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology, p. 138 and N. A.
Haynie’s article: ‘Helmholtz, Hermann von (1821-1894)’ in Encyclopedia
of Psychology, II, 103. Allama Iqbal’s Hypothetical statement with reference to
Helmholtz’s discovery: ‘If this is so, our present physiological structure is at
the bottom of our present view of time’ is highly suggestive of new physiological or
biological studies of time. It is to be noted that some useful research in this direction
seems to have been undertaken already; cf. articles: ‘Time’ and ‘Time
Perception’ in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Macropaedia), XVIII, 420-22.
59. See George Sarton, Introduction
to the History of Science, I, 597, where it is said that the Kitb al-Hayawn of
al-Ji contains the germs of many later theories: evolution adaptation, animal
psychology. Cf. also M. Plessner, ‘Al-Ji’ in Dictionary of Scientific
Biography, VII, 63-65.
60. For a statement of the views
of ‘Brethren of Purity’ with regard to the hypothesis of evolution, cf. Seyyed
Hossein Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, pp. 72-74.
61. See Lecture V, p. 107, for
Ibn Maskawaih’s very clear conception of biological evolution, which later found
expression in the ‘inimitable lines’ of ‘the excellent Rm’ quoted
in the next passage as well as in Lecture VII, pp. 147-48.
62. Cf. E. H. Whinfield (tr.), Masnavi,
pp. 216-17; this is translation of verses 3637-41 and 3646-48 of Book iv of Rm’ s
Mathnaw- cf. Allama Iqbal’s observation on these verses in his Development
of Metaphysics in Persia, p. 91.
63. For the keeping of a book or
record of whatever man does in life here, there is repeated mention in the Qur’a`n;
see, for example, verses 18:49; 21:94; 43:80 and 45:29.
64. Reference seems here to be to
the Quranic verse 29:20 though ‘second creation’ is also alluded to in such
verses as 10:4; 27:64; 30:11. See also 56:61.
65. Qur’n, 17:13.
66. Reference here is to the
Quranic description of life hereafter such as is to be found in verses 37:41-49 and
44:51-55 for the state of life promised to the righteous, and 37:62-68 and 44:43-49 for
the kind of life to be suffered by the wicked. See also 32:17.
67. Qur’n, 104:6-7.
68. Reference is to the Quranic
expression hwyah (for hell) in 101:9.
69. See the Quranic verse 57:15
where the fire of hell is spoken of as man’s friend (maul), i.e. ‘the
only thing by which he may hope to be purified and redeemed’ (cf. M. Asad, The
Message of the Qur’n, p. 838, note 21).
70. Qur’n, 55:29.

Back to Lecture-IV

Lecture V:
THE SPIRIT OF MUSLIM CULTURE
1. Cf. ‘Abd al-Qudds
Gangh, Lat’if-i Qudds, ed. Shaikh Rukn al-Di`n, Lafah 79;
the Persian text rendered into English here is:
Reference may also be made here
to very pithy and profound jottings of Allama Iqbal on the back cover of his own copy of
William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, especially to those under
the sub-heading: ‘Mystical and Prophetic Consciousness’ with explicit mention of
‘Abd al-Quddu`s Gango`hi`; see Muhammad Siddiq, Descriptive Catalogue of Allama
Iqbal’s Personal Library, Plate No. 8.
2. This great idea is embodied in
the Quranic verse 33:40, i.e. ‘Muhammad... is Allh’s Apostle and the Seal of
all Prophets, (Muhammad-un rasl Allh wa khtam-un nabyyn). It has also
been variously enunciated in the adth literature (i) y Muhammad-u anta rasl
Ullh-i wa khtam al-anbiy’ : ‘O Muhammad! you are Allah’s Apostle
and the Seal of all Prophets’; this is what other Prophets would proclaim on the Day
of Resurrection (Bukhr, Tafsr: 17). (ii) Wa
‘ankhtim-un-nabyyn: ‘And I am the last of the Prophets’ (ibid.,
Manqib: 7; Muslim, mn: 327). (iii) Laisa nabyyu ba’d:
‘There is no Prophet after me’ (Bukhr, Maghz: 77). (iv) Lnabyya
bad: ‘There is no Prophet after me’ (ibid., Anbya: 50; Muslim, Imrah:
44; Fad’il al-Sahbah: 30-31). (v) Wa lnabyya ba’dah:
‘And there is no Prophet after him’, said so by Ab Awf as narrated by
Ism‘l (Bukhr, db: 109). (vi) Lnubuwwah ba’d:
‘There is no prophethood after me’ (Muslim, Fad‘ al-Sahbah:
30-32).
3. Though wahy matluww
(revelation which is recited or worded revelation) is specific to the Prophets, the
Qur’n speaks of revelation in connection with earth (99:5), heavens (41:12),
honey-bee (16:68-69), angels (8:12), mother of Moses (28:7) and disciples of Jesus
(5:111). As to the different modes of revelation see 42:51.
4. Reference here is to the last
but one passage of the Quranic verse 5:3 which reads: ‘This day have I perfected your
religion for you and completed My favour unto you and have chosen for you as religion al-Islm’.
This passage, according to all available adth on the testimony of the
Prophet’s contemporaries, was revealed at ‘Araft in the afternoon of Friday,
the 9th of Dhu’l-ijjah 10 A.H., the year of the Prophet’s last pilgrimage to
Makkah (cf. Bukha`ri`, mn: 34, where this fact is authenticated by Harat
‘Umar b. al-Khatta`b). It is to be noted that the Prophet’s death took place
eighty-one of eighty-two days after the revelation of this verse and as it speaks of the
perfection of religion in Islam, no precept of legal import whatsoever was revealed after
it; cf. Rz, al-Tafsr al-Kabr.
5. Qur’n, 41:53.
6. The first half of the formula
of Islam is: lilh ill Allh, i.e. there is no god but Allah, or nothing
whatever is worthy of worship except Allah. The other half is Muhammad-un Raslullh,
i.e. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. The expression ‘formula of Islam’
signifies that by bearing witness to the truth of these two simple propositions a man
enters the fold of Islam.
7. Cf. Bukhr, Jan’iz:
78; Shahdah: 3; and Jihd: 160 and 178 (Eng. trans. M. Muhsin Khan, II,
244-45; III, 488-89, and IV, 168-69 and 184-86) and Muslim: Fitan: 95-96 (Eng.
trans. A.H. Siddiqi, IV, 1510-15).
8. Cf. Muqaddimah, trans.
Rosenthal, Vol. III, Section vi, Discourse: ‘The Science of Sufism’; D. B.
Macdonald, Religious Attitude and Life in Islam, pp. 165-74, and M. Syrier,
‘Ibn Khaldu`n and Mysticism’, Islamic Culture, XXI/ii (1947), 264-302.
9. Reference here is to the
Quranic verses: 41:37; 25:45; 10:6; 30:22 and 3:140 bearing on the phenomena of Nature
which have quite often been named in the Qur’n as yt Allh, i.e. the
‘apparent signs of God’ (Rghib, al-Mufradt, pp. 32-33); this is
followed by reference to verses 25:73 and 17:72 which in the present context clearly make
it as much a religious duty of the ‘true servants of the Most Gracious God
‘Iba`d-ur-Rahma`n’ to ponder over these apparent signs of God ‘as revealed
to the sense-perception of man’ as to ponder over the Divine communications (yt
al-Qur’n) revealed to the Holy Prophet - this two-way God-consciousness alone
ensures man’s physical and spiritual prosperity in this life as well as in the life
hereafter.
10. Cf. G. H. Lewes, The
Biographical History of Philosophy (1857), p. 306, lines, 4-8, where Lewes says:
‘It is this work (‘Revivification of the Sciences of Religion’) which A.
Schm lders has translated; it bears so remarkable a resemblance to the Discours de la
m thod’ of Descartes, that had any translation of it existed in the days of
Descartes, everyone would have cried against the plagiarism’. The second sentence of
this passage was quoted by Allama Iqbal in his doctoral dissertation: The Development
of Metaphysics in Persia (1908), p. 73, note (1), in support of his statement that
Ghazzl anticipated Descartes in his philosophical method’.
It is to be noted that Schm
lders’ Essai sur les coles philosophiques chez les Arabes (Paris, 1842) was
not the French translation of Ghazzl’s voluminous ‘Revivification’ (Ihy’
‘Ulm al-Dn in forty books) but that of his autobiographical work Al-Munqidh
min al-Dall with its earliest edited Arabic text. It seems that the remarkable
originality and boldness of Ghazzl’s thought in the French version of al-Munqidh
led Lewes to confuse it with the greater, the more famous ‘Revivification’ (Ihy).
For the ‘amazing resemblance’ between Ghazzl’s Al-Munqidh min
al-Dall (Liberation from Error) and Descartes’ Discours de la method’
(Discourse on Method), see Professor M. M. Sharif, ‘The Influence of Muslim Thought
on the West’, ‘Section: D’, A History of Muslim Philosophy, II,
1382-84.
11. Cf. al-Qis?s
al-Mustaqm, trans. D.P. Brewster (The Just Balance), chapters ii-vi and
translator’s Appendix III: ‘Al-Ghazzl and the Syllogism’, pp. 126-30;
cf. also Michael E. Marmura, ‘Ghaza`li`’s Attitude to the Secular Sciences and
Logic’, Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science, ed. G. F. Hourani, Section
II, pp. 102-03, and Susanna Diwald’s detailed review on al-Qis?s in Der
Islam (1961), pp. 171-74.
12. For an account of
Ishra`qi`’s criticism of Greek logic contained in his Hikmat al-Ishrq, cf.
S. Hossein Nasr, ‘Shiha`b al-Di`n Suhrawardi`Maqtu`l’, A History of Muslim
Philosophy, I, 384-85; a fuller account of Ishra`qi`’s logic, according to
Nicholas Rescher, is to be found in his extant but unpublished (?) Kitb al-Talwht
and Kitb al-Lamaht (cf. Development of Arabic Logic, p. 185). It is to be
noted that the earliest explanation of Ishra`qi`’s disagreement with Aristotle that
logical definition is genus plus differentia, in terms of modern (Bosanquet’s) logic,
was given by Allama Iqbal in his Development of Metaphysics in Persia, pp. 97-98.
For an expose of Ibn
Taimyyah’s logical masterpiece al-Radd ‘ala’l-Mantqyin
(Refutation of the Logicians’) cf. Serajul Haque, ‘Ibn Taimi`yyah’ in A
History of Muslim Philosophy, II, 805-12; also Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic
Philosophy (pp. 352-53) for a lucid summing up. A valuable study of Ibn
Taimi`yyah’s logical ideas is that by ‘Al Sm al-Nashshr in Manhij
al-Bahth ‘inda Mufakkiri’l-Islm wa Naqd al-Muslimn li’l-Mantiq
al-Aristatls, chapter III, sections ii and iii. Al-Nashshr has also edited
Suyt’s Jahd al-Qarihh fi tajrd al-Nashah, an abridgment of ibn
Taimyyah’s Al-Radd ‘ala’l-Mantiqiyn.
13. Aristotle’s first
figure, al-shakl al-awwal or al-qiyas al-kmil of the Muslim logicians, is
a form of syllogism in which the middle term occurs as a subject in the first premiss and
as a predicate in the second premiss. It is the only form of syllogism in which the
conclusion becomes available in the form of a general (universal - proposition needed for
scientific purposes; cf. M. Saeed Sheikh, A Dictionary of Muslim Philosophy, s.v.
As to the criticism of the first
figure referred to here, it is more rightly to be ascribed to Fakhr al-Dn Rz, who,
besides his own now available logical works, wrote quite a few critical commentaries on
the works of Ibn Sn, rather than to the eminent physician of Islam, Ab Bakr
Zakarya Rz, none of whose short treatises on some parts of the Aristotelian Organon
seems to have survived; cf. Nicholas Rescher, The Development of Arabic Logic, pp.
117-18. Happily this stands confirmed by Allama Iqbal’s Presidential comments (almost
all of which have been incorporated in the present passage) on Khwajah Kamal’s
Lecture (in Urdu) on ‘Islam and Modern Sciences’ in the third session of the
All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference, 1911, in Delhi; see S.’A.’Vahid
(ed.), Maqlt-i Iqbl, pp. 239-40; cf. also Allama’s letter dated 1^st February
1924 to Sayyid Sulaimn Nadv, Iqblnmah, I, 127-28; reference in both cases is to
Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz and not to Ab Bakr Rz.
It is to be noted that of all the
writings of Allama Iqbal including his more than 1200 letters Ab Bakr Rzi`is mentioned
only in Development of Metaphysics in Persia: ‘as a physician and as a thinker
who admitted the eternity of matter, space and time and possibly looked upon light as the
first creation’ (pp. 24, 96). In a significant passage on p. 96 of this work Allama
has listed about ten Muslim thinkers who were highly critical either of Greek philosophy
in general or Greek logic in particular – Ab Bakr Rz’s name does not
appear in this list.
14. This is Ibn Hazm’s udd
al-Mantiq referred to in his well-known Kitb al-Fisal (I, 4 and 20; V, 70 and
128) under somewhat varied titles; also mentioned by his contemporary and compatriot
Sa`’id b. Ahmad al-Andalus in his abaqt al-Umam (p.’118) and later
listed by Brockelmann in GAL; Supplementb nde (I, 696). C. van Arendonk, however,
in his article on ‘Ibn Hazm’ in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (II, 385) and
I. Goldziher, s.v. in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, VII, 71 have declared that
‘the work has not survived’. And certainly very little was heard of this work
until Dr Ihsan ‘Abba`s of the University of Khartoum discovered possibly the only MS
and published it under the title: al-aqrb li-add al-Mantiq (The Approach to
the Limits of Logic) in 1959. Allama’s comments on Ibn azm’s ‘Scope of
Logic’ (Hudd al-Mantiq), at a time when it was generally considered to have
been lost is a proof of his extraordinary knowledge of Muslim writers and their works.
15. Cf. Development of
Metaphysics in Persia (1964), p. 64, where it is stated that ‘Al-Birnand Ibn
Haitham (d. 1038) . . . anticipated modern empirical psychology in recognizing what is
called reaction-time’: in the two footnotes to this statement Allama Iqbl quotes
from de Boer’s History of Philosophy in Islam, pp. 146 and 150, to establish
the positivism, i.e. sense-empiricism respectively of both al-Birn and Ibn Haitham. On
pp. 151-52 of this work is a passage (possibly referred to by Allama Iqbal here) which
describes reaction-time very much in the modern sense: ‘not only is every sensation
attended by a corresponding change localized in the sense-organ, which demands a certain
time, but also, between the stimulation of the organ and consciousness of the perception
an interval of time must elapse, corresponding to the transmission of stimulus for some
distance along the nerves.’
As to al-Kind’s discovery
that sensation is proportionate to stimulus, cf. de Boer, op. cit., p. 101, where
he speaks of ‘the proportional relation existing between stimulus and sensation’
in connection with al-Kind’s mathematized theory of compound remedies. This is
given in al-Kind’s celebrated treatise: Rislah fi Ma‘rifah
Quwwat-Adwyat al-Murakkabah which was at least twice translated into Latin (Sarton, Introduction
to the History of Science, II, 342 and 896).
16. Cf. Opus Majus, trans.
Robert Belle Burke, Vol. II, Part V (pp. 419-82). It is important to note that
Sarton’s observation on Roger Bacon’s work on optics is very close to that of
Allama Iqbal. ‘His optics’, says Sarton, ‘was essentially based upon that
of Ibn al-Haitham, with small additions and practical applications’ (op. cit.,
II, 957). As reported by Dr M. S. Nms, Allama Iqbal helped him in understanding the
rotographs of the only MS (No. 2460 in Biblioth que Nationale, Paris) of Ibn
Haitham’s Thrr al-Manzir for a number of days; cf. Ibn al-Haitham:
Proceedings of the Celebrations of 1000th Anniversary (held in November 1969 under the
auspices of Hamdard National Foundation Pakistan, Karachi), p. 128.
See, however, Professor A. I.
Sabra’s scholarly article: ‘Ibn al-Haytham’ in Dictionary of Scientific
Biography, VI, 189-210, especially p. 205 where he gives an up-to-date information
about the MSS of Ibn Haitham’s Kitb al-Manzir. According to Professor
Sabra, ‘The reference in Brockelmann to a recension of this work in the Paris MS, ar.
2460 (Brockelmann has 2640) is mistaken; the MS is a recension of Euclid’s Optics
which is attributed on the title page to Hasan ibn (Msibn) Shkir’.
17. ‘Ibn Hazm’ here is
a palpable misprint for ‘ibn Haitham’ - the context of the passage more
fittingly demands and latter rather than the former name. Ibn Hazm’s influence on
Roger Bacon’s Opus Majus, a predominantly science-oriented work, looks
somewhat odd. There seems to be no evidence of it in the text of Opus Majus - Ibn
Hazm is not even so much as mentioned by name in this work. Sarton, despite his great
praise for Ibn Hazm’s scholarship (op. cit. I, 713), nowhere hints at his
contributions to ‘science’ or his influence of Roger Bacon, nor is this to be
found in other standard works, for example, in the sixteen-volume Dictionary of
Scientific Biography.
18. Qur’n, 53:42.
19. For s’s discussion
of the parallel postulate (also named ‘axiom of parallelism’), see his ‘Al-Rislat
al-Shfyan ‘an al-Shakk fi’l-Khutt al-Mutawzyah’ in
(s’s) Ras’il, Vol. II, Pt. viii, pp. 1-40. Commenting on this
work Sarton observes (op. cit., II, 1003): ‘Nar al-Dn’s discussion
was remarkably elaborate’. Cf. also Cajori, A History of Elementary Mathematics,
p. 127, Q. fiz auq`n, Turth al-‘Arab al-‘Ilm, pp. 97-98, R.
Bonola, Non-Euclidean Geometry, pp. 12-13 and 37-38 and Dr S. H. Nasr’s
article: ‘Al-s’ in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XIII, 508-14
especially p. 510.
20. This passage may be read in
conjunction with Allama Iqbal’s observation on s in his Sectional Presidential
Address (delivered at the Fifth Oriental Conference, Lahore, on 20 November 1928): ‘A
Plea for the Deeper Study of Muslim Scientists’: ‘It is Tusi’s effort to
improve the parallel postulate of Euclid that is believed to have furnished a basis in
Europe for the problem of space which eventually led to the theories of Gauss and
Riemann’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 138). Euclid’s
parallel postulate is Postulate V of the first book of his Elements. What it means
to say is that through a given point ‘P’ there can be only one straight line
‘L’ parallel to a given straight line. It is to be noted that to Euclid’s
successors this postulate had signally failed to appear self-evident, and had equally
failed to appear indemonstrable - hence, Allama Iqbal’s generalized statement that
‘since the days of Ptolemy (87-165 A.D.) till the time of Nar s nobody gave
serious thought’ to the postulate. Deeper and wider implication of the postulate,
however, cannot be denied. ‘The innumerable attempts to prove this fifth postulate on
the one hand and the development of the non-Euclidean geometries on the other are as many
tributes to Euclid’s wisdom’, says Sarton (op. cit., I, 153). A long note
on the postulate by Spengler - well versed in mathematics - in his Decline of the West,
1, 176, admirably brings out its deep philosophical import.
These non-Euclidean geometries
were developed in the nineteenth century by certain European mathematicians: Gauss
(1777-1855) in Germany, Lobachevski (1792-1856) in Russia, Bolyai (1802-1860) in Hungary
and Riemann (1826-1866) in Germany. They abandoned the attempt to prove Euclid’s
parallel postulate for they discovered that Euclid’s postulates of geometry were not
the only possible postulates and that other sets of postulates could be formulated
arbitrarily and self-consistent geometries based on them. They further discovered that the
space assumed in Euclidean geometry is only a special case of a more general type. These
non-Euclidean geometries assumed immense scientific significance when it was found that
the space-time continuum required by Einstein’s theory of gravitation is
non-Euclidean.
This in short is the movement of
the idea of parallel postulate from Euclid to Einstein. Allama Iqbal with his seer-like
vision for ideas was very much perceptive of this ‘movement’ and also of the
scientific and philosophical significance of the non-Euclidean geometries. It is to be
noted that Allama’s keenly perceptive mind took full notice of the scientific
developments of his days, for example, of anti-mechanistic biologism (neo-vitalism) of
Hans Driesch and J. S. Haldane and of quantum theory as well as of relativity-physics
especially as expounded by Eddington, Louis Rougier, Lord Haldane, Wildon Carr and other
philosopher-scientists. Among other things, one may notice a score of books on the
‘Philosophy of Contemporary Science, more than half of which are on
relativity-physics (mostly published between 1920 and 1928) in his personal library alone.
See M. Siddiq, Descriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library, pp.
4-7 and 71-76, as well as Plates Nos. 22 and 23 giving the facsimiles of Allama’s
signatures dated July 1921 and September 1921 on his own copies of Einstein’s work: Relativity:
The Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition (1920) and Edwin E.
Slosson’s Easy Lessons in Einstein (1920); cf. also Dr Ahmad Nabi Khan, Relics
of Allama Iqbal (Catalogue), books listed at IV. 41 and IV. 46. The first book The Mystery
of Space by Robert T. Browne by its very sub-title: ‘A Study of the Hyperspace
Movement in the Light of the Evolution of New Psychic Faculties and an Inquiry into the
Genesis and Essential Nature of Space’ suggests that it was probably this book which
was foremost in Allama’s mind when he spoke of highly mathematical notion of
‘hyperspace movement’ in connection with Tusi’s effort to improve the
parallel postulate here as well as in his ‘Plea for Deeper Study’ (Speeches,
Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 141). Allama’s keen interest in higher
mathematics is evinced by his references in the present rather compact discussion on
Newton’s interpolation formula, recent developments in European mathematics and
Whitehead’s view of relativity as distinguished from that of Einstein. For the
development of Allama’s interest in certain mathematical key-concepts and in sciences
in general see M. Saeed Sheikh, ‘Allama Iqbal’s interest in the Sciences’, Iqbal
Review, XXX/i (April-June, 1989), 31-43.
21. Cf. a fairy long passage from
Spengler’s Decline of the West (I, 75) quoted in Allama’s Address:
‘A Plea for Deeper Study of the Muslim Scientists’ and an account of the way he
went into the authentication of al-Brn’s view of mathematical function (Speeches,
Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 135-36). Allama’s interest in
‘mathematical idea of function’ seems to be two-fold: religio-philosophical and
scientific. The function-idea, he says, ‘turns the fixed into the variable, and sees
the universe not as being but as becoming’. This is in full accord with the Quranic
view of the universe which God has built with power and it is He Who is steadily expanding
it (cf. M. Asad, The Message of the Qur’n, p. 805, note 31) and again
‘He adds to his creation whatever He wills: for verily, God has the power to will
anything’ (35:1). The Quranic view of the growing universe is thus ‘a clear
departure’ from the Aristotelian view of the fixed universe. Aristotle’s
doctrine of potentiality passing into actuality fails to resolve the mystery of becoming,
in its living historicity and novelty or, as W. D. Ross has put it: ‘The conception
of potentiality has often been used to cover mere barrenness of thought’ (cf. his
Aristotle, p. 176). Hence, Allama’s repeated pronouncement, that the spirit of the
Qur’n is essentially anti-classical. Philosophically speaking, time, which in the
present context has been linked up with the notion of functionality and rightly so, is the
most indispensable condition for the very possibility and reality of human experience,
cognitive or moral. This explains, partly at least, why ‘Time’ is the recurring
theme in Allama’s works in both prose and verse.
In mathematics function is a
relationship of correspondence between two variables called independent variable and
dependent variable and is expressed by saying ‘y is a function of x’ which means
y change with x , so that for a certain value of x, y has a certain value (or values). In
Europe though the term ‘function’ in its full mathematical sense was first used
by Leibniz in 1694, the theory of functions had already emerged with the analytic geometry
of Pierce Fermat in 1629 and that of the father of modern philosophy R ne Descartes -
Descartes’ La Geometrie appeared along with his better known Discours de la
m thode in 1637. After that such rapid advances took place in mathematics that
within, say, fifty years it was completely metamorphosed into its modern form or, as
Spengler puts it: ‘Once this immense creation found wings, its rise was
miraculous’. Being well versed in mathematics, Spengler gives an exciting account of
the new discoveries of the Western mathematicians and their impact of European science and
arts (op. cit., I, 74-90). Two of his statements are to be noted. Not until the
theory of functions was fully evolved, says Spengler, ‘could this mathematics be
unreservedly brought to bear in the parallel sphere of our dynamic Western physics’.
Generally speaking, this means that Nature speaks the subtle and complex language of
mathematics and that without the use of this language the breath-taking progress of
science in the West, since the seventeenth century, would have been a sheer impossibility.
Spengler, however, did not care to know that the mathematical idea of function originated,
not in the West, but in the East, more particularly with the most brilliant
al-Brn’s Al-Qnn al Mas‘d in 1030, i.e. six hundred years before
Fermat and Descartes.
The second statement to be noted
is that, according to Spengler, ‘The history of Western knowledge is thus one of
progressive emancipation from classical thought’ (ibid, p. 76). As it is,
Allama Iqbal has the least quarrel with Spengler on the truth of this statement for he
says: ‘The most remarkable phenomenon of modern history, however, is the enormous
rapidity with which the world of Islam is spiritually moving towards the West. There is
nothing wrong in this movement, for European culture, on its intellectual side, is only a
further development of some of the most important phases of the culture of Islam’
(Lecture I, p. 6: italics mine). And further, ‘Spengler’s view of the spirit of
modern culture is, in my opinion, perfectly correct’ (p. 114). What Allama Iqbal,
however, rightly insists is ‘that the anticlassical spirit of the modern world has
really arisen out of the revolt of Islam against Greek thought’ (ibid). This
revolt consists in Islam’s focusing its vision on ‘the concrete’, ‘the
particular’ and ‘the becoming as against the Greeks’ search for ‘the
ideal’ ‘the universal’ and ‘the being’. Spengler failed to see
these Islamic ingredients of modern culture because of his self-evolved thesis ‘that
each culture is a specific organism, having no point of contact with cultures that
historically precede or follow it’. Spengler’s thesis has its roots, not in any
scientifically established dynamics of history, but in his uncompromising theory of
cultural holism (note the sub-title of the first volume of his work: Gestalt und
Wirklichkeit). Cf. W. H. Dray’s article, ‘Spengler, Oswald’, in Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, VII, 527-30 for critical evaluation of Spengler’s philosophical
position.
22. Cf. M. A. Kazim,
‘al-Brn and Trignometry’, al-Brn Commemoration Volume, esp. pp.
167-68, for the English translation of the passage from al-Brn’s al-Qnn
al-Mas‘d wherein al-Brn generalizes his interpolation formula
‘from trignometrical function to any function whatever’. This is likely the
passage pointedly referred to by Allama Iqbal in his ‘A Plea for Deeper Study of the
Muslim Scientists’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 136). See,
however, Professor E. S. Kennedy’s highly commendable article on
‘al-Brn’ in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, II, 147-58. He
bases al- Brn’s theory of function on his ‘Treatise on Shadows’
already translated by him.
23. Cf. M. R. Siddiqi,
‘Mathematics and Astronomy’, A History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M. M.
Sharif, II, 1280, and Juan Vernet, ‘Mathematics, Astronomy, Optics’, The
Legacy of Islam ed. Joseph Schacht and C. E. Bosworth, pp. 466-68. According to
Sarton, al-Khawrizm may be called one of the founders of analysis or algebra as
distinct from geometry’ and that his astronomical and trignometric tables were the
first Muslim tables which contained, not simply the sine function, but also the
tangent’ (op. cit., I, 563).
24. Cf. Al-Fauz al-Asghar,
pp. 78-83; also Development of Metaphysics in Persia, p. 29 where an account of Ibn
Maskawaih’s theory of evolution is given as summed up by Shibl Nu’mni in his
‘Ilm al-Kalm, pp. 141-43.
25. This is a reference to the
views of Khwjah Muhammad Prsas contained in his short but valuable tractate on time
and space: Rislah dar Zamn-o-Makn, the only extant MS (6 folios) of which,
perhaps, is the one listed by A. Monzavi in his Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts,
Vol II, Part I, p. 800. I am greatly indebted to Qz Mahmd ul Haq of British Library,
London, for the microfilm of this MS. This resulted as a preliminary in the publication of
Urdu translation of Khwjah Muhammad Prs’s Rislah dar Zamn-o-Makn
along with a brief account of his life and works by Dr Khwja Hamd Yazdn in Al-Ma‘rif
(Lahore), XVII/vii, July 1984), 31-42, 56. Cf. Nadhr Sbir, Ghyat al-Imkn fi
Ma’rifat al-Zamn by Shaikh Mahmd Ashnaw, ‘Introduction’, p.
‘r’ where it is alleged that Khwjah Prsmade an extensive use of
Ashnaw’s said tractate on space and time, which is not very unlikely seeing the
close resemblance between the two tractates; yet at places Khwjah Prs’s
treatment of the subject is sufistically more sophisticated.
26. Cf. Lecture II, pp. 60-61.
27. Misprinted as
‘weight’ in previous editions; see also the significant Quranic text repeated in
verse 34:3.
28. Cf. Ghyat al-Imkn fi
Dirayat al-Makn, ed. Rahm Farmansh, pp. 16-17; English trans. A. H. Kamali, p.
13. On the authorship of this sufistic tractate on space and time, see note 34 in Lecture
III.
29. Ibid., p. 17; English
trans., p. 13.
30. Ibid., p. 23; English
trans., p. 17.
31. Ibid., pp. 24-25;
English trans., pp. 18-19.
32. Ibid., p. 25; English
trans., p. 19.
33. Ibid., p. 17; English
trans., pp. 20-21.
34. Ibid., pp. 27-28;
English trans., p. 21.
35. Ibid., pp. 28-29;
English trans., pp. 21-22.
36. Cf. Space, Time and Deity,
II, 41; also R. Metz, A Hundred Years of British Philosophy, pp. 634-38, and
article ‘S. Alexander’ in The Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. D. D. Runes,
wherein it is made clear that the term ‘deity’ is not used by Alexander in any
theological sense but in terms of his doctrine of emergent evolution: ‘The quality
next above any given level (of evolution) is deity to the beings on that level’.
37. Alexander’s metaphor
that time is mind of space is to be found in statements such as this: ‘It is that
Time as a whole and in its parts bears to space as a whole and its corresponding parts a
relation analogous to the relation of mind . . . or to put the matter shortly that Time is
the mind of Space and Space the body of Time’ (Space, Time and Deity, II, 38).
Allama Iqbal’s references to Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity, in the
sufistic account of space and time in the present Lecture as also in his address earlier:
‘A Plea for Deeper Study of Muslim Scientists’ (Speeches, Writings and
Statements, p. 142) coupled with his commendatory observations on Alexander’s
work in his letter dated 24 January 1921 addressed to R. A. Nicholson (Letters of Iqbal,
p. 141) are suggestive of Allama’s keen interest in the metaphysical views of
Alexander.
Of all the British philosophers,
contemporaries of Allama Iqbal, Alexander can be singled out for laying equal emphasis on
space and time as central to all philosophy. ‘All the vital problems of
philosophy’, says Alexander, ‘depend for their solution on the solution of the
problem what Space and Time are and, more particularly, in how they are related to each
other’. According to Allama Iqbal, ‘In [Muslim] . . . culture the problem of
space and time becomes a question of life and death’ (p. 105). ‘Space and Time
in Muslim Thought’ was the subject selected by Allama for his proposed Rhodes
Memorial Lectures at Oxford (1934-1935) (cf. Letters of Iqbal, pp.135-36 and 183;
also Relics of Allama Iqbal: Catalogue, Letter II, 70 dated 27 May 1935 from
Secretary, Rhodes Trust) which very unfortunately he could not deliver owing to his
increasing ill health. A letter dated 6 May 1937 addressed to Dr Syed Zafarul Hasan of
Aligarh Muslim University (author of the well-known Realism, 1928), discovered only
recently, shows that Allama Iqbal had already gathered ‘material’ for his Rhodes
Memorial Lectures; cf. Rafal-Dn Ha`shimi`, ‘Allamah Iqbal ke Chand Ghair Mudawwan
Khu’, Iqbal Review, XXIII/iv (January 1983), 41-43.
Attention may be called here also
to an obviously unfinished two-page draft on ‘The Problem of Time in Muslim
Philosophy’ in Allama’s own hand preserved in the Allama Iqbal Museum, Lahore;
cf. Dr Ahmad Nabi Khan, Relics of Allama Iqbal: Catalogue, I, 37.
38. Cf. Ghyat al-Imkn fi
Diryat al-Makn, pp. 16-17; English trans., p. 13.
39. Ibid., p. 50; English
trans., p. 36.
40. This is a reference to the
Quranic verses: 6:6; 9:39; 17:16-17; 18:59; 21:11; 22:45; 36:31.
God’s judgment on nations,
also called ‘judgment in history’, according to the Qur’n is said to be
more relentless than God’s judgment on individuals - in the latter case God is
forgiving and compassionate. Nations are destroyed only for their transgression and evil
doings. And when a nation perishes, its good members meet the same doom as its bad ones
for the former failed to check the spread of evil (11:116), cf. F. Rahman, Major Themes
of the Qur’n, p. 53.
41. See also Quranic verses 15:5
and 24:43.
42. For very special
circumstances under which a keen sense of history grew in Islam, see I. H. Qureshi,
‘Historiography’, A History of Muslim Philosophy, II, 1197-1203.
43. Ab ‘Abdullah Muhammad
b. Ishq (d. c. 150/767) has the distinction of being the first biographer of the Holy
Prophet. His work Kitb Sirat Rasl Allh (‘The Life of the Apostle of
God’) has, however, been lost and is now known only through Ibn Hishm’s
recension of it.
44. Ab Ja‘far Muhammad b.
Jarr al-abar is one of the greatest Muslim historians. His remarkably accurate
monumental history Kitb Akhbr al-Rusl wa’l-Mulk (‘Annals of the
Apostles and the Kings’), the first comprehensive work in the Arabic language, has
been edited M. J. de Goeje and others in 15 volumes (Leiden, 1879-1901). Al-Tabar is
equally well known for his commendable commentary on the Qur’n: Jmi’
al-Bayn ‘an Twl al-Qur’n in 30 volumes - a primal work for the later
commentators because of its earliest and largest collection of the exegetical traditions.
45. Ab’l-Hasan ‘Ali
b. al-Husain b. ‘Al al-Mas’di (d. c. 346/957), after al-Tabari`, is the next
greatest historian in Islam - rightly named as the ‘Herodotus of the Arabs’. He
inaugurated a new method in the writing of history: instead of grouping events around
years (annalistic method) he grouped them around kings, dynasties and topics (topical
method); a method adopted also by Ibn Khaldu`n. His historico-geographical work Murj
al-Dhahab wa’l-Ma‘din al-Jauhar (‘Meadows of Gold and Mines of
Gems’) also deals with Persian, Roman and Jewish history and religion.
46. Reference is to the Quranic
verses 4:1; 6:98; 7:189; 39:6.
47. See Robert Flint, History
of the Philosophy of History, p. 86. Flint’s eulogy of Ibn Khaldn, expressive
of his sentiment of a discovery of a genius, now stands more or less confirmed by the
realistic assessments made of Ibn Khaldn by eminent scholars such as A. Toynbee, A
Study of History, III, 322; Sarton, op. cit., III, 1262; Gaston Bouthoul in his
Preface to de Slane’s Les Prolegomenes d’Ibn Khaldoun (second edition,
Paris, 1934-38) and R. Brunschvig, La Berberie orientale sous les Hafsides, II,
391.
48. Cf. Muqaddimah, trans.
F. Rosenthal, III, 246-58, also M. Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy, pp.
361-64.
49. Phenomenon of the alternation
of day and night is spoken of in many verses of the Qur’n such as 2:164; 3:190;
10:6; 23:80; 45:5.
50. Ibid., 55:29.
51. Cf. p. 107.
52. Cf. p. 106.
53. On the notion of time as held
by Zeno, Plato, Heraclitus and Stoics, cf. A. J. Gunn, The Problem of Time, pp.
19-22.
54. Cf. O. Spengler, The
Decline of the West, II, 189-323.
55. Cf. Lecture I, p. 3, Lecture
III, p. 56 and p. 102.
56. Cf. Spengler, op. cit.,
II, 248-55.
57. Ibid., pp. 235, 240;
cf. also note 33 in Lecture IV.
58. Ibid., p. 238.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., pp. 206-07.
61. Cf. Muqaddimah,
Chapter III, section 51: ‘The Fatimid . . . ‘, trans. Rosenthal, II, 156-200.
Ibn Khaldu`n recounts formally twenty-four traditions bearing upon the belief in Mahdi
(none of which is from Bukhr or Muslim) and questions the authenticity of them all.
Cf. also the article ‘al-Mahdi`’ in Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam and P.
K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, pp. 439-49, for the religio-political background of
the imam-mahdi idea.
Reference may also be made to
Allama Iqbal’s letter dated 7 April 1932 to Muhammad Ahsan wherein, among other
things, he states that, according to his firm belief (‘aqdah), all
traditions relating to mahd, mashyat and mujaddidyat are the
product of Persian and non-Arab imagination; and he adds that certainly they have nothing
to do with the true spirit of the Qur’n (Iqblnmah, II, 231).
And finally it shall be rewarding
to read this last paragraph in conjunction with Allama’s important notes on the back
cover of his own copy of Spengler’s Decline of the West, facsimile of which is
reproduced in Descriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library, Plate
No. 33.

Back to Lecture-V

Lecture VI:
THE PRINCIPLE OF MOVEMENT IN THE STRUCTURE OF ISLAM
1. The Qur’n maintains the
divine origin of man by affirming that God breathed of His own spirit unto him as in
verses 15:29; 32:9; and 38:72.
2. Constantine the Great was
Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. He was converted to Christianity, it is said, by seeing a
luminous cross in the sky. By his celebrated Edict of Toleration in 313 he raised
Christianity to equality with the public pagan cults in the Empire. For his attempt at the
unification of Christianity, cf. Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, pp. 655-61, and The
Cambridge Medieval History, vol.1, chapter i.
3. Flavius Claudius Julianus
(331-363), nephew of Constantine, traditionally known as Julian the Apostate, ruled the
Roman Empire from 361 to 363. Studying in Athens in 355, he frequented pagan Neoplatonist
circles. As emperor, he at once proclaimed himself a pagan, restored freedom of worship
for pagans and began a campaign against the orthodox church. Cf. Alice Gardner, Julian
and the Last Struggle of Paganism against Christianity, and Will Durant, The Age of
Faith, pp. 10-19.
4. See J. H. Denison, Emotion
as the Basis of Civilization, pp. 267-68.
5. The principle of Divine Unity
as embodied in the Quranic proclamation: lilha illa-Allh: there is no God
except Allh. It is a constant theme of the Qur’n and is repeatedly mentioned as
the basic principle not only of Islam but of every religion revealed by God.
6. Reference is to the Quranic
verse 29:69. During the course of his conversation with one of his admirers, Allama Iqbal
is reported to have made the following general observation with reference to this verse:
‘All efforts in the pursuit of sciences and for attainment of perfections and high
goals in life which in one way or other are beneficial to humanity are man’s exerting
in the way of Allah (Malfzt-i Iqbl, ed. and annotated Dr Ab’l-Laith
Siddq, p. 67).
Translating this verse thus:
‘But as for those who strive hard in Our cause - We shall most certainly guide them
onto paths that lead unto us’, Muhammad Asad adds in a footnote that the plural
‘used here is obviously meant to stress the fact - alluded to often in the
Qur’n - that there are many paths which lead to a cognizance (ma‘rifah)
of God’ (The Message of the Qur’n, p. 616, note 61).
7. Cf. Ab Dwd, Aqdya:
11; Tirmidh, Akm: 3, and Drim, Kitb al-Sunan, I, 60; this
hadth is generally regarded as the very basis of Ijtihd in Islam. On the view
expressed by certain scholars that this hadth is to be ranked as al-mursal,
cf. ‘Abd al-Qdir, Nazarah, mmah fi Trikh al-Fiqh al-Islm, I, 70 and
210, and Sayyid Muhammad Ysuf Binoras quoted by Dr Khlid Mas‘d, ‘Khutubt-i
Iqbl men Ijtihd ki Ta‘rf: Ijtihd k Trkh Pas-i Manzar’, Fikr-o-Nazar,
XV/vii-viii (Islamabad, Jan-Feb. 1978), 50-51. See also Ahmad Hasan (tr.), Sunan Ab
Dwd, III, 109, note 3034 based on Shams al-Haqq, ‘Aun al-Ma’bd
li-hall-i Mushkilt Sunan Ab Dwd, III, 331.
8. These three degrees of
legislation in the language of the later jurists of Islam are: ijtihd
fi’l-shar’, ijtihd fi’l-madhhab and ijtihd
fi’l-mas’il; cf. Subh Mahmasn, Falsafat al-Tashr’ fi’l-Islam,
English trans. F. J. Ziadeh, p. 94, and N. P. Aghnides, Mohammeden Theories of Finance,
pp. 121-22. For somewhat different schemes of gradation of the jurists (for example the
one laid down by the Ottomon scholar and Shaikh al-Isla`m Keml Pshaza`deh (d.
940/1534) in his (Tabaqt al-Fuqah’) and minor differences in nomenclature
in different schools of law (Hanafis, Shf‘’s and others), cf. Zhid
al-Kauthar, Husn al-Taqdf Srat al-Imm abYsuf al-Q, pp. 24-25.
It is the possibilities anew of
the first degree of Ijtihd - complete authority in legislation - that Allama
Iqbal proposes to consider in what he calls (and this is to be noted) ‘this
paper’ rather than ‘this lecture’ as everywhere else in the present work.
This is a manifest reference to a ‘paper on Ijtihd’ that he read on 13
December 1924 at the annual session of Anjuman-i Himyat-i Islm. Cf. M. Khalid
Mas‘d, ‘Iqbal’s Lecture on Ijtihd’, Iqbal Review, XIX/iii
(October 1978), p. 8, quoting in English the announcement about this Lecture published in
the Daily Zamndr Lahore, 12 December 1924; and also S. M. Ikram, Modern
Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan, p. 183, note 19 where the worthy author tells
us that he ‘was present at this meeting as a young student’.
Among Allama Iqbal’s letters
discovered only recently are the four of them addressed to Professor M. Muhammad
Shafi’ of University Oriental College, Lahore (later Chairman: Urdu Encyclopaedia
of Islam). These letters dating from 13 March 1924 to 1 May 1924, reproduced with
their facsimiles in Dr Rana M. N. Ehsan Elahie, ‘Iqbal on the Freedom of
Ijtiha`d’, Oriental College Magazine (Allama Iqbal Centenary Number), LIII
(1977), 295-300, throw light, among other things, on the authors and movements that Allama
Iqbal thought it was necessary for him to study anew for the writing of what he calls in
one of these letters a paper on the ‘freedom of Ijtihd in Modern
Islam’. A few months later when the courts were closed for summer vacation Allama
Iqbal in his letter dated 13 August 1924 to M. Sa‘d al-Dn Ja’far informed
him that he was writing an elaborate paper on ‘The Idea of Ijtihd, in the
Law of Islam’ (cf. Aurq-i Gumgashtah, ed. Rahm Bakhsh Shaheen, p. 118).
This is the paper which when finally written was read in the above-mentioned session of
the Anjuman-i imyat-i Islm in December 1924; the present Lecture, it is now
generally believed, is a revised and enlarged form of this very paper.
9. Cf. M. Hanf Nadv,
‘Mas’alah Khalq-i Qur’n’ in ‘Aqliyt-i Ibn Taimyyah
(Urdu), pp. 231-53, and A. J. Arberry, Revelation and Reason in Islam, pp. 23-27.
References to this hotly debated
issue of the eternity or createdness of the Qur’n are also to be found in Allama
Iqbal’s private notes, for example those on the back cover of his own copy of
Spengler’s Decline of the West (cf. Descriptive Catalogue of Allama
Iqbal’s Personal Library, Plate No. 33) or his highly valuable one-page private
study notes preserved in Allama Iqbal Museum, Lahore (cf. Relics of Allama Iqbal:
Catalogue, I, 26). It is, however, in one of his greatest poems ‘Ibls ki
Majlis-i Shr (‘Satan’s Parliament’) included in the posthumous Armughn-i
Hijz that one is to find his final verdict on this baseless scholastic controversy:
Are the words of the Qur’n
created or uncreated?
In which belief does lie the
salvation of the ummah?
Are the idols of Lt and Mant
chiselled by Muslim theology
Not sufficeint for the Muslims of
today?
10. Cf. Ibn Qutaibah, Ta’w
l Mukhtalif al-adth, p.19.
11. Cf. Development of
Metaphysics in Persia, p. 54, where it is stated that rationalism ‘tended to
disintegrate the solidarity of the Islamic Church’; also W. M. Watt, ‘The
Political Attitudes of the Mu‘tazilah’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
(1962), pp. 38-54.
12. Cf. Muhammad al-Khudari, Trkh
al-Tashr’ al-Islm, Urdu trans. ‘Abd al-Salm Nadv, p. 323; Ibn
Qutaibah, Ma‘rif, p. 217, and J. Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan
Jurisprudence, p. 242. According to A. J. Arberry, Sufyn al-Thaur’s school of
jurisprudence survive for about two centuries; cf. Muslim Saints and Mystics, p.
129 translator’s prefatory remarks.
13. On the distinction of zhir
and btin, see Allama Iqbal’s article ‘Ilm-i Za`hir wa ‘Ilm-i
Ba`tin (Anwr-i Iqbl, ed. B. A. Dar, pp. 268-77) and also the following passage
from Allama Iqbal’s article captioned as ‘Self in the Light of Relativity’
(Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal, ed. S. A. Vahid, pp. 113-14): ‘The mystic
method has attracted some of the best minds in the history of mankind. Probably there is
something in it. But I am inclined to think that it is detrimental to some of the equally
important interests of life, and is prompted by a desire to escape from the arduous task
of the conquest of matter through intellect. The surest way to realise the potentialities
of the world is to associate with its shifting actualities. I believe that Empirical
Science - association with the visible - is an indispensable stage in the life of
contemplation. In the words of the Qur’n, the Universe that confronts us is not
ba`til. It has its uses, and the most important use of it is that the effort to overcome
the obstruction offered by it sharpens our insight and prepared us for an insertion into
what lies below the surface of phenomena.
14. The founder of Zhir
school of law was Dwd b. ‘Alb. Khalaf (c. 200-270/c. 815-884) who flourished in
Baghdad; Ibn Ham (384-456/994-1064) was its founder in Muslim Spain and its most
illustrious representative in Islam. According to Goldziher, Ibn Hazm was the first to
apply the principles of the Zhirite school to dogmatics (The Zhiris: Their Doctrine
and Their History, p. 112); cf. also Goldziher’s articles: ‘Dwd B.
‘Al B. Khalf’ and ‘Ibn Hazm’ in Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics, V, 406 b and VII, 71 a.
15. Cf. Serajul Haque, ‘Ibn
Taimiyya’s Conception of Analogy and Consensus’, Islamic Culture, XVII
(1943), 77-78; Ahmad Hasan, The Doctrine of Ijm‘ in Islam, pp. 189-92, and
H. Laoust, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’, Encyclopaedia of Islam (New edition), III,
954.
16. Cf. D.’B. Macdonald, Development
of Muslim Theology, p. 275.
17. Suyt, Husn
al-Mhdarah 1, 183; also ‘Abd Muta’l al-Sa’id, Al-Mujaddidn
fi’l-Islm, pp. 8-12. Cf. also Allama Iqbal’s ‘Rejoinder to The
Light’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 167-68) wherein,
commenting on the tradition that mujaddids appear at the head of every century (Ab
Dawd, Malhim: 1), he observed that the tradition ‘was probably popularised
by Jallud-Dn Suyti in his own interest and much importance cannot be attached to
it.’
Reference may also be made here
to Allama’s letter dated 7 April 1932 addressed to Muhammad Ahsan wherein, among
other things, he observes that, according to his firm belief (‘aqdh), all
traditions relating to mujaddidiyat are the product of Persian and non-Arab
imagination and they certainly are foreign to the true spirit of the Qur’n (cf. Iqblnmah,
II, 231).
18. For Allama Iqbal’s
statements issued from time to time in clarification on meanings and intentions of
pan-Islamic movement or pan-Islamism see: Letters and Writings of Iqbal, pp. 55-57;
Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 237; Guftr-i Iqbl, ed. M.
Rafq Afal, pp. 177-79 and 226 - the earliest of these statements is contained in
Allama’s letter dated 22 August 1910 to Editor: Paisa Akhbr reproduced in
Riaz Hussain, ‘1910 men Duny-i Islm k Hlt’ (Political Conditions of
the Islamic World in 1910), Iqbal Review, XIX/ii (July 1978), 88-90.
In three of these statements
Allama Iqbal has approvingly referred to Professor E. G. Browne’s well-grounded views
on ‘Pan-Islamism’, the earliest of which were published (s.v.) in Lectures on
the History of the Nineteenth Century, ed. F. Kirpatrick (Cambridge, 1904).
It may be added that
Allama’s article ‘Political Thought in Islam’, Sociological Review,
I (1908), 249-61 (reproduced in Speeches, Writings and Statements, pp. 107-21), was
originally a lecture delivered by him in a meeting of the Pan-Islamic Society, London,
founded by Abdullah Suhrawardy in 1903 - the Society also had its own journal: Pan-Islam.
Incidentally, there is a mention of Allama’s six lectures on Islamic subjects in
London by his biographers (cf. Abdullah Anwar Beg, The Poet of the East, p. 28, and
Dr Abdus Salm Khurshd, Sargudhasht-i Iqbl, pp. 60-61) which is supported by
Allama’s letter dated 10 February 1908 to Khwa`jah Hasan Nizm, listing the
‘topics’ of four of these lectures as (i) ‘Islamic Mysticism’, (ii)
‘Influence of Muslim Thought on European Civilization’, (iii) ‘Muslim
Democracy’, and (iv) ‘Islam and Reason’ (cf. Iqblnmah, II, 358).
Abdullah Anwar Beg, however, speaks of Allama’s extempore lecture on ‘Certain
Aspects of Islam’ under the auspices of the Pan-Islamic Society, which, it is said,
was reported verbatim in a number of leading newspapers the next day (ibid.).
19. Muhammad b. ‘Abd
al-Wahhb’s date of birth is now more generally given as 1115/1703; cf., however,
Khair al-Dn al-Zikrikl, Al-A’lm, VII, 138 (note) and A History of
Muslim Philosophy, ed. M. M. Sharif, II, 1446, in support of placing it in 1111/1700.
It is significant to note that
whenever Allama Iqbal thought of modernist movements in Islam, he traced them back to the
movement of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhb cf. Letters and Writings of Iqbal, pp.
82 and 93. In his valuable article ‘Islam and Ahmadism’ Allama Iqbal observes:
‘Syed Ahmad Khan in India, Syed Jamal-ud-Din Afghani in Afghanistan and Mufti Alam
Jan in Russia. These men were probably inspired by Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahab who was born
in Nejd in 1700, the founder of the so-called Wahabi movement which may fitly be described
as the first throb of life in modern Islam’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements,
p. 190). Again, in his letter dated 7 April 1932 to Muhammad Ahsan, Allama Iqbal,
explaining the pre-eminent position of Jaml al-Dn Afghn in modern Islam, wrote:
‘The future historian of the Muslims of Egypt, Iran, Turkey and India will first of
all mention the name of ‘Abd al-Wahhb Najadi and then of Jaml al-Dn
Afghn’ (cf. Iqblnmah, II, 231).
20. Cf. article ‘Ibn
Tmart’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam (New edition), III, 958-60, also in Shorter
Encyclopaedia of Islam and R. Le Tourneau, The Almohad Movement in North Africa in
the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, chapter 4.
21. This is a clear reference to
the well-known saying of the Prophet: innamal-a’mlu bi’nniyyti, i.e.
‘Actions shall be judged only by intentions’. It is to be noted that this adth
of great moral and spiritual import has been quoted by Bukhr in seven places and it is
with this that he opens his Al-Jm al-Sai.
22. For this adth worded:
‘al-aru kulluhmasjid-an’, see Tirmidh, Salt: 119; Nas,
Ghusl: 26; Masjid: 3 and 42; Ibn Mjah, Tahrah: 90, and
Drim, Siyar: 28 and Salt: 111. This superb saying of the Prophet also
found expression in Allama’s verse, viz. Kulliyt-i Iqbl (Fris), Rumz-i
Bekhud, p. 114, v. 3, and Pas Chih Byad Kard, p. 817, v. 8:
Through the bounty of the ruler
of our faith,

the entire earth became our mosque.

The King of the Faith said to the Muslims:

The whole earth is my mosque’ (trans. B. A. Dar).
23. Cf. The Muqaddimah,
trans. F. Rosenthal, I, 388-92.
24. For the Khawa`rij’s view
of the Caliphate, see Allama Iqbal’s article ‘Political Thought in Islam’ (Speeches,
Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 119-20); also W. Thomson, ‘Kharijitism and
the Kharijites’, Macdonald Presentation Volume, pp. 371-89, and E. Tyan, Institutions
du droit public musulman, ii, 546-61.
25. Cf. F. A. Tansel (ed), Ziya
G kalp k lliyati ‘i: S rler ve halk masallar, p. 129. On Allama’s
translation of the passages from Ziya G’kalp’s kulliyati, Dr Annemarie Schimmel
observes: ‘Iqbal did not know Turkish, has studied his (Ziya G kalp’s) work
through the German translation of August Fischer, and it is of interest to see how he
(Iqbal) sometimes changes or omits some words of the translation when reproducing the
verses in the Lecture’ (Gabriel’s Wing, p. 242).
It may be added that these
changes of omissions are perhaps more due to August Fischer’s German translation as
given in his Aus der religi sen Reformbewegung in der T rkei (Religious Reform
Movement in Turkey) than to Allama. The term ‘esri’, for example, has been used
by Ziya G kalp for ‘secular’ and not for ‘modern’ as Fischer has put
it. Again, a line from the original Turkish text is missing in the present passage, but
this is so in the German translation.
For this comparative study of the
German and English translations of passages from G kalp’s k lliyati, I am
very much indebted to Professor S. Qudratullah Fatimi, formerly Director: Regional
Cooperation for Development, Islamabad.
26. This is a reference to the
Quranic verse 49:13.
27. Cf. Ziya G kalp k
lliyati, p. 112. According to the Turkish original, the second sentence in this
passage should more fittingly have begun with ‘in this period’ rather than with
‘in every period’ as rendered by A. Fischer. Again the next, i.e. the third
sentence, may be said to be not so very close to the text; yet it is quite faithful to its
German version.
28. Cf. ibid., p. 113;
also Uriel Heyd, Foundation of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya G
kalp, pp. 102-03, and Allama Iqbal’s statement ‘On the Introduction of
Turkish Prayers by Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha’ published in the Weekly Light
(Lahore), 16 February 1932, reproduced in Rahim Bakhsh Shaheen (ed.), Memontos of Iqbal,
pp. 59-60.
29. On Ibn Tumart’s
innovation of introducing the call to prayer in the Berber language, cf. Ibn Ab
Zar’, Raud al-Qirts, Fr. trans. A. Beaumier, Histoire des souverains du
Magreb, p. 250; I. Goldziher, ‘Materalien zur Kenntniss der Almohadenbewegung in
Nordafrika’, ZDMG, XLI (1887), 71, and D. B. Macdonald, Development of
Muslim Theology, p. 249. This practice, according to Ahmad b. Khlid al-Salw, was
stopped and call to prayer in Arabic restored by official orders in 621/1224; cf. his Al-Istiqsli
Akhbr Duwal al-Maghrib’l-Aqs, II, 212.
30. Cf. Ziya G kalp k
lliyati, p. 133. The word ‘sun’ in the second sentence of this passage
stands for Gunum in Turkish which, we are told, could as well be translated as
‘day’; some allowance, however, is to be made for translation of poetical
symbols from one language into another.
31. Cf. ibid., p. 161. It
is interesting to note how very close is late Professor H. A. R. Gibb’s translation
of this passage as well as of the one preceding it (Modern Trends in Islam, pp. 91-92), to
that of Allama’s even though his first reference is to the French version of them in
F. Ziyaeddin Fahri’s Ziya G kalp: sa vie et sa sociologie, p. 240.
32. Cf. Bukhr, I’tism:
26; ‘Ilm: 39; Jan’iz: 32; Marad: 17, and Muslim, Jan’iz:
23 and Wasyyah: 22; see also last in Sahih Muslim, English translation by
A. H. Siddiqi`, III 870, note 2077.
33. For further elucidation of
Allama’s observations on Luther and his movement here as also in a passage in his
‘Statement on Islam and Nationalism in Reply to a Statement of Maulana Husain
Ahmad’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 254), see his most
famous and historical ‘All-India Muslim League Presidential Address of 29 December
1930’, ibid., pp. 4-5. Cf. also the closing passages of the article:
‘Reformation’ in An Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Vergilius Ferm, p. 642.
34. Cf. Subh Mahmasn, Falsafah-i
Shar‘at-i Islm, Urdu trans. M. Ahmad Ridv, pp. 70-83.
35. This acute observation about
the development of legal reasoning in Islam from the deductive to the inductive attitude
in interpretation is further elaborated by Allama Iqbal on pp. 140-41. It may be
worthwhile to critically examine in the light of this observation the attempts made by
some of the well-known Western writers on Islamic law to analytically trace the historical
development of legal theory and practice in early Islam, viz. N. J. Coulson, A History
of Islamic Law, chapters 3-5; J. Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law, chapters
7-9 and his earlier pioneer work: Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, by General
Index especially under ‘Medinese and ‘Iraqians’.
36. This is a reference to a
passage in Lecture I, p. 7.
37. Cf. M. V. Merchant, A Book
of Quranic Laws, chapters v-vii.
38. Cf. Briefe ber Religion,
pp. 72 and 81. The passages translated here are as under:
"Das Urchristentum legte
keinen Wert auf die Erhaltung von Staat Recht, Organisation, Produktion. Es denkt einfach
nicht ber die Bedingungen der Existenz der menschlichen Gesellschaft nach."
Also entweder man wagt es,
staatslos sein zu wollen, man wirft sich der Anarchie freiwillig in die arme, oder man
entschliesst sich, neben seinem religi sen Bekenntnis ein politisches Bekenntnis zu
haben.
Joseph Friedrich Naumann
(1860-1919), a passage from whose very widely read Briefe ber Religion
(‘Letters on Religion’) has been quoted above in Lecture III, pp. 64-65, was a
German Protestant theologian, socialist politician, political journalist and a champion of
Mitteleuropa plan. He was one of the founders and the first president of German
National Socialist Party (1896) which both in its name and in its policy of according
great importance to the agricultural and working classes in the development of the State
adumbrated Hitler’s Nazi Party (1920). His Mitteleuropa published in 1915 (English
translation by C. M. Meredith in 1916) stirred up considerable discussion during World War
I as it revived, under the impulse of Pan-Germanism, the idea of a Central European
Confederation including Turkey and the Balkan States under Germany’s cultural and
economic control. It also contemplated the expansion of the Berlin-Baghdad railway into a
grandiose scheme of empire extending from Antwerp in Belgium to the Persian Gulf.
Except for the year 1912-13,
Naumann was the member of Reichstag (German Parliament) from 1907 to 1919. Shortly before
his death, he was elected as the leader of Democratic Party. Naumann known for his wide
learning, acumen and personal integrity was very influential with German liberal
intellectuals of his day. For the life and works of Naumann, cf. the two articles:
‘Naumann, Friedrich’ and ‘National Socialism, German’ by Theodor Heuss
in the Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, XI, 310 and 225a; also The New
Encyclopaedia Britannica (Micropaedia), VIII, 561. For some information given in the
above note I am deeply indebted to the Dutch scholar the Reverend Dr Jan Slomp and his
younger colleague Mr Harry Mintjes. Mr Mintjes took all the trouble to find out what he
said was the oldest available edition of Briefe ber Religion (Berlin, Georg
Reimer, 1916, sixth edition) by making a search for it in all the libraries of Amsterdam.
Dr Jan Slamp was kind enough to mark the passages in Briefe quoted by Allama Iqbal
in English and mail these to me for the benefit of all Iqbalian scholars.
39. Hence, The Introduction of
Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act or Indian Act VIII of 1939. Cf. Mauln Ashraf
‘Al Thnaw, Al-Hilat al-Njizah lil-Hallat al-’jizah, p. 99 and
A. A. A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law, pp. 153-61.
40. See Al-Muwfiqt,
II, 4: also Ghazl, Al-Mustasf, 1, 140.
41. Cf. al-Marghinn, Al-Hidyah,
II, Kitb al-Nikh, p. 328; English trans. The Hedaya or Guide by C.
Hamilton, p. 66.
42. Cf. Speeches, Writings and
Statements of Iqbal, p. 194, where, while making an appraisal of Ataturk’s
‘supposed or real innovations’, Allama Iqbal observes: ‘The adoption of the
Swiss code with its rule of inheritance is certainly a serious error . . . . The joy of
emancipation from the fetters of a long-standing priest-craft sometimes derives a people
to untried courses of action. But Turkey as well as the rest of the world of Islam has yet
to realize the hitherto unrevealed economic aspects of the Islamic law of inheritance
which von Kremer describes as the supremely original branch of Muslim law.’ For some
recent accounts of the ‘economic significance of the Quranic rule of
inheritance’, cf. M. A. Mannan, Islamic Economics, pp. 176-86 and Shaikh
Mahmud Ahmad, Economics of Islam, pp. 154-58.
43. Marriage has been named in
the Qur’n as mthq-an ghalz-an, i.e. a strong covenant (4:21).
44. Cf. M. V. Merchant, op. cit.,
pp. 179-86.
45. Cf. I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische
Studien, English trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern, Muslim Studies, II, 18f.
This is the view held also by some other orientalists such as D. S. Margoliouth, The
Early Development of Mohammedanism, pp. 79-89, and H. Lammens, Islam: Beliefs and
Institutions, pp. 65-81.
46. This is the closing paragraph
of chapter III of Mohammedan Theories of Finance: With an Introduction to Mohammedan
Law and a Bibliography by Nicolas P. Aghnides published by Columbia University (New
York) in 1916 as one of its Studies in History, Economics and Public Law. A
copy of this work as reported by Dr M. ‘Abdulla`h Chaghata`’i was sent to Allama
Iqbal by Chaudhry Rahmat ‘Ali`Kha`n (President: American Muslim Association) from the
United States and was presented to him on the conclusion of the thirty-eighth annual
session of Anjuman-i imyat-i Islm (Lahore), i.e. on 31 March 1923 or soon after. Dr
Chaghat‘s essay: ‘Khutuba`t-i Madra`s ka Pas-i Manzar’ in his Iqbl
k uhbat Men and the section: ‘Six Lectures on the Reconstruction of Religious
Thought in Islam’ with useful notes in Dr. Raf al-Dn Hshim’s Ta?nf-i
Iqbl k Taqq-o Tauh Mu?la’ah throw light on the immediate
impact that Aghnides’s book had on Allama’s mind. It seems that Aghnides’s
book did interest Allama and did play some part in urging him to seek and study some of
the outstanding works on Usl al-Fiqh such as those by mid, Shib, Shh
Wal Allh, Shaukn, and others. This is evident from a number of Allama’s
letters to Sayyid Sulaimn Nadvas also from his letters from 13 March 1924 to 1 May
1924 to Professor Maulav M. Shaf’ [Oriental College Magazine, LIII (1977),
295-300]. It is to be noted that besides a pointed reference to a highly provocative view
of Ijm’ alluded to by Aghnides, three passages from part I of Mohammedan
Theories of Finance are included in the last section of the present Lecture, which in
this way may be said to be next only to the poems of Ziya G kalp exquisitely translated
from Fischer’s German version of them.
47. This is remarkable though
admittedly a summarized English version of the following quite significant passage from
Shh Wal Allh’s magnum opus Hujjat Allh al-Blighah (I,118):
This is the passage quoted also
in Shibl Nmn’s Al-Kalm (pp. 114-15), a pointed reference to which is
made in Allama Iqbal’s letter dated 22 September 1929 addressed to Sayyid Sulaimn
Nadv. There are in fact three more letters to Sayyid Sulaimn Nadv in September 1929,
which all show Allama’s keen interest in and preceptive study of Hujjat Allh
al-Blighah at the time of his final drafting of the present Lecture (cf. Iqblnmah,
pp. 160-63).
From the study of these letters
it appears that Allama Iqbal in his interpretation of at least the above passage from ujjat
Allh al-Bligah was much closer to Shibl Nmn than to Sayyid Sulaimn
Nadv.
It is to be noted that Allama
Iqbal was always keen to seek and study the works of Sha`h WalAllh, whom he considered
to be ‘the first Muslim who felt the urge of a new spirit in him’ (Lecture IV,
p. 78). Some of these works have been referred to by titles in Allama’s more than
1200 letters and it is noteworthy that their number exceeds that of the works of any other
great Muslim thinker; Ghazzl, Fakhr al-Dn Rz, Jall al-Dn Rum, Ibn
Taimiyyah, Ibn Qayyim; Sadr al-Dn Shrz, or any other. In his letter dated 23
September 1936 to Maulavi Ahmad Rid Bijnr, Allama reports that he had not received
his copies of Shh WalAllh’s Al-Khair al-Kathr and Tafhmt
supposed to have been dispatched to him through some dealer in Lahore. He also expresses
in this letter his keen desire to have the services on suitable terms of some competent
Muslim scholar, well-versed in Islamic jurisprudence and very well-read in the works of
Shh Wal Allh.
48. Cf. Aghnides, op. cit.,
p. 91. This is the statement which, according to Dr ‘Abdullah Chaghat‘ (op.
cit., pp. 300-04) and Dr. Raf al-Dn Hshim occasioned Allama Iqbal’s fiqhi
discussions with a number of renowned religious scholars which finally led to his writing
a paper on Ijtihd in 1924; the present Lecture may be said to be only a developed
form of that paper. On the impossible question of Ijm’s repealing the Qur’n
one is to note Allama’s two inquiring letters to Sayyid Sulaimn Nadv and more
importantly a letter also to Mauln Abul Kalm Azd (Iqblnmah, 1, 131-35).
49. mid, Ihkm fi Usl
al-Ahkm, 1, 373.
50. Shaukn, Irshd
al-Fuhl, pp. 65-72.
51. Mu’awwidhatn
are the last two srahs of the Qur’n, i.e. 113 and 114; they are called so
because they teach man how to seek refuge with God and betake himself to His protection.
52. This is summing up of
Karkhi`’s somewhat longer statement as quoted by Aghnides, op. cit., p. 106;
cf. also Sarakhs, Usul l-Sarakhs, II, 105.
53. For Allama’s views on
Persian constitutional theory see his articles: ‘Political Thought in Islam’ and
‘Islam and Ahmadism’, Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp.
118-19 and 195.
54. For Allama’s practical
guidelines to reform the present system of legal education in the modern Muslim world
especially in the subcontinent, see his very valuable letter dated 4 June 1925 to
Sahibzadah Aftab Ahmad Khan (Letters of Iqbal, p. 155); also the last paragraph of
his Presidential Address at the All-India Muslim Conference on 21 March 1932 (Speeches,
Writings and Statements, p. 43).
55. For Shf’’s
‘identification’ of Qiys and Ijtihd, cf. M. Khadduri, Islamic
Jurisprudence Shfi’s Rislah, p. 288 and J. Schacht, The Origins of
Muhammadan Jurisprudence, pp. 127-28.
56. Cf. Shaukn, op. cit., p.
199; mid, op. cit., IV, 42ff; and Mahmasn, op. cit., Urdu trans. M. A.
Ridv, p. 188.
57. Cf. Mohammedan Theories of
Finance, p. 125. This is the observation, in fact, of the Shfi’jurist Badr
al-Dn Muhammad b. Bahdur b. ‘Abd Allh al-Zarkash of eighth century and not of
Sarkashof tenth century of the Hijrah, as it got printed in the previous editions of the
present work (including the one by Oxford University Press in 1934). ‘Sarkash’
is a palpable misprint for Zarkash’; Aghnides in the above-cited work spells it
‘Zarkashi’ but places him in the tenth century of the Hijrah. None of the
Zarkashs, however, given in the well-known biographical dictionaries, say, ‘Umar
Rid Kahhalah’s fifteen-volume Mu‘jam al-Mu‘allifn (V, 181; IX,
121; X, 22, 205, 239 and XI, 273) is reported to have belonged to tenth century - except,
of course, Muhammad b. Ibra`hi`m b. Lu’lu’ al-Zarkash mentioned in
VIII, 214 who is said to be still living after 882/1477 or as al-Zirikl puts it to have
died sometime after 932/1526 (op. cit., V, 302); but this Zarkash, though he may
be said to have made name as an historian of the Muwahhids and the Hafasids, was no
jurist.
It is to be noted that the
passage on the future prospects of Ijtihd quoted by Allama Iqbal is only a more
significant part of Zarkash’s somewhat longer statement which Aghnides gives as
under:
If they [i.e., the people
entertaining this belief] are thinking of their contemporaries, it is a fact that they
have had contemporaries like al-Qaffl, al-Ghazzl, al-Raz, al-Rfi’, and
others, all of whom have been full mujtahids, and if they mean by it that their
contemporaries are not endowed and blessed by God with the same perfection, intellectual
ability and power, or understanding, it is absurd and a sign of crass ignorance; finally,
if they mean that the previous writers had more facilities, while the later writers has
more difficulties, in their way; it is again nonsense, for it does not require much
understanding to see that Ijtihd for the later doctors (muta’akhirn)
is easier than for the earlier doctors. Indeed the commentaries on the Koran and the
sunnah have been compiled and multiplied to such an extent that the mujtahid of today has
more material for interpretation than he needs.’
This statement on ijtihd
which Aghnides ascribes clearly to Zarkash, albeit of the tenth century of Hijrah, is in
fact, as may be seen, translation of the following passage from Shaukn’s Irshd
al-Fuhl (p. 223):
From the study of the section of Irshd
al-Fuhl dealing with the ‘possibility of there being a period of time without a
mujtahid, it becomes abundantly clear that the views embodied in the above passage are
those of the Shfi’ jurist Badr al-Dn Zarkash of the eighth century of Hijrah
and not of Sarkash, nor of Zarkashof the tenth century. For an account of the life and
works of Badr al-Dn Zarkash, cf. Muhammad Ab’l-Fadl al-Rahm’s
‘introduction’ to Zarkash’s well-known, Al-Burhn fi ‘ulm
al-Qur’n.
It may be added that the Persian
translator of the present work Mr. Ahmad rm considers ‘Sarkash’ to be a
misprint for ‘Sarakhs’, i.e. the Hanaf jurist Shams al-immah Ab Bakr
Muhammad b. Ab Sahl al-Sarakhs, the author of the well-known thirty-volume al-Mabst,
who died in near about 483/1090. Referring to ‘many errors and flaws’ that have
unfortunately crept into the Lahore edition of the present work, Mr. rm is inclined to
think that ‘tenth century’ is another misprint for ‘fifth century’
(cf. Ihy-i Fikr-i Dn dar Islm, pp. 202-03, note).
Ahmad rm admittedly takes his
clue from a line in Madame Eva Meyerovitch’s French translation: Reconstruire la
pensee religieus de l’Islam (p.192) and perhaps also from the Urdu translation: Tashkl-i
Jadd Ilhiyt-i Islmyah (p. 274) by the late Syed Nadhir Niyz who corrects
the name (Sarakhs) but not the date. This is, however, better than the Arabic translator
who retains both the misprints without any comments (cf. ‘Abbs Mahmd, Tajdd
al-Tafkr al-Dnfi’l-Islm, p. 206).
58. Cf. article
‘Turkey’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica, (1953) XXII, 606-08. The French
writer alluded to by Allama Iqbal is Andre Servier whose work L’Islam et la
psychologie da Musulman translated under the intriguing title Islam and the
Psychology of a Musulman by A. S. Moss Blandell (London, 1924) aroused the curiosity
of many. It is in the last chapter of his work dealing with French foreign policy that
Servier makes some observations on Turkey such as the following:
(a) ‘The Turks constitute an
element of balance . . . they form a buffer State between Europe and the Asiatic
ferment’ (p. 267). (Italics mine.)
(b) ‘Our interests,
therefore, make it our duty to protect them, to maintain them as an element of
equilibrium in the Musulman World’ (p. 268). (Italics mine.)
59. This may profitably be
compared with the following passage from Allama’s famous ‘Statement on Islam and
Nationalism in Reply to a Statement of Maulana Husain Ahmad’: ‘The history of
man is an infinite process of mutual conflicts, sanguine battles and civil wars. In these
circumstances can we have among mankind a constitution, the social life of which is based
upon peace and security? The Quran’s answer is: Yes, provided man takes for his ideal
the propagation of the Unity of God in the thoughts and actions of mankind. The search for
such an ideal and its maintenance is no miracle of political manoeuvring: it is a peculiar
greatness of the Holy Prophet that the self-invented distinctions and superiority
complexes of the nations of the world are destroyed and there comes into being a community
which can be styled ummat-am muslimat-al laka (a community submissive to Thee, 2:128) and
to whose thoughts and actions the divine dictate shuhada’a ‘al-an nas-i (a
community that bears witness to the truth before all mankind, 2:143) justly applies’
(Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 262-63).

Back to Lecture-VI

Lecture
VII: IS RELIGION POSSIBLE?
Lecture delivered in a meeting of
the fifty-fourth session of the Aristotelian Society, London, held on 5 December 1932 with
Professor J. Macmurray in the chair, followed by a discussion by Professor Macmurray and
Sir Francis Younghusband - cf. ‘Abstract of the Minutes of the Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society for the Fifty-Fourth Session’, in Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society (New Series), XXXIII (1933), 341.
The Lecture was published in the
said Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, pp. 47-64, as well as in The
Muslim Revival (Lahore), I/iv (Dec. 1932), 329-49.
1. This is a reference to Allama
Iqbal’s own father, who was a devout Suf; cf. S. Sulaimn Nadv, Sair-i
Afghnistn, p. 179; also S. Nadhr Niyz, Iqbl ke ur, pp. 60-61.
This bold but religiously most significant statement, I personally feel, is Allama’s
own; it has been attributed here to an unnamed ‘Muslim Sufi’ perhaps only to
make it more presentable to the orthodoxy; see M. Saeed Sheikh, ‘Philosophy of
Man’, Iqbal Review, XIX/i (April-June 1988), 13-16, found expression in
Allama’s verse, viz. Kulliyt-i Iqbl (Urd), Bl-i Jibrl, Pt.
II, Ghazal 60, v. 4:
Unless the Book’s each verse
and part

Be revealed unto your heart,

Interpreters, though much profound,

Its subtle points cannot expound.
2. Cf. Critique of Pure Reason,
Introduction, section vi, pp. 57-58; also Kemp Smith’s Commentary to Kant’s
‘Critique’, pp. 68-70. Metaphysics, if it means knowledge of the
‘transcendent’, or of things-in-themselves, was rejected by Kant as dogmatic,
because it does not begin with a critical examination of human capacity for such
knowledge. Reference may here be made to one of the very significant jottings by Allama
Iqbal on the closing back page of his own copy of Carl Rahn’s Science and the
Religious Life (London, 1928), viz. ‘Is religion possible? Kant’s
problem’; cf. Muhammad Siddiq, Descriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s
Personal Library, pp. 21-22 and Plate No. 7.
3. The ‘principle of
indeterminacy’ was so re-christened by A. S. Eddington in his Nature of the
Physical World, p. 220. Now more often known as ‘principle of uncertainty’
or ‘uncertainty principle’, it was ‘announced’ by the physicist
philosopher Heisenberg in Zeitschrift f r Physik, XLIII (1927), 172-98. Broadly
speaking, the principle states that there is an inherent uncertainty in describing
sub-microscopic process. For instance, if the position of an electron is determined, there
remains a measure of uncertainty about its momentum. As in a complete casual description
of a system both the properties must needs be accurately determined, many physicists and
philosophers took this ‘uncertainty’ to mean that the principle of causality had
been overthrown.
4. Cf. Fuss al-Hikam
(ed. ‘Aff), I, 108, II, 11-12 - the words of ‘the great Muslim Suf
philosopher’ are: al-khalqu ma’ql-un w’al-Haqqu mahss-un mashhd-un.
It is noteworthy that this profound mystical observation is to be found in one of Allama
Iqbal’s verses composed as early as 1903; cf. Bqyt-i Iqbal, p. 146, v.
2.
5. For the Sufi`doctrine of
plurality of time and space stated in Lecture III, pp. 60-61 and Lecture V, pp. 107-10 on
the basis of the then a rare Persian MS: Ghyat al-Imkn fi Diryat al-Makn
(The Extent of Possibility in the Science of Space) ascribed by Allama Iqbal to the
eminent Suf poet (Fakhr al-Dn) ‘Irq, see Lecture III, note 34; cf. also
Allama’s letter to Dr M. ‘Abdullh Chaghat‘ in Iqbalnamah, II, 334.
6. Cf. John Passamore, A
Hundred Years of Philosophy, p. 98. In fact both these pronouncements on metaphysics
are to be found in Hans Vaihinger’s work referred to in the next note. Vaihinger in
his chapter on Nietzsche tells us that ‘Lange’s theory of metaphysics as a
justified form of ‘poetry’ made a deep impression upon Nietzsche’ (p. 341)
and he also alludes to Nietzsche’s patiently asking himself: ‘Why cannot we
learn to look upon metaphysics and religion as the legitimate play of grown ups?’ (p.
346, note). Both these passages are underlined in Allama’s personal copy of
Vaihinger’s work (cf. M. Siddiq, op. cit., p. 6).
7. This is a reference to the
title: The Philosophy of ‘As If’ (1924), translation of Die Philosophie des
Als Ob (1911), a work of the German Kantian philosopher Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933).
The ‘as if’ philosophy known as fictionism is an extreme form of James’s
pragmatism or Dewey’s instrumentalism; it, however, traces its descent from Kant
through F. A. Lange and Schopenhauer. It holds that as thought was originally an aid and
instrument in struggle for existence it still is incapable of dealing with purely
theoretical problems. Basic concepts and principles of natural sciences, economic and
political theory, jurisprudence, ethics, etc., are merely convenient fictions devised by
the human mind for practical purposes - practical life and intuition, in fact, are higher
than speculative thought.
One meets quite a few
observations bearing on Vaihinger’s doctrine in Allama’s writings, for example,
the following passage in ‘Note on Nietzsche’: ‘According to Nietzsche the
‘I’ is a fiction. It is true that looked at from a purely intellectual point of
view this conclusion is inevitable; Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason ends in the
conclusion that God, immoratality and freedom are mere fictions though useful for
practical purposes. Nietzsche only follows Kant in this conclusion’ (Thoughts and
Reflections of Iqbal, ed. S. A. Vahid, pp. 239-40).
Also in ‘McTaggart’s
Philosophy’: ‘Not William James but Kant was the real founder of modern
pragmatism’ (ibid., p. 119).
8. For a comparative study of
Indian, Greek, Muslim and modern theories of atomism, cf. Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics, II, 197-210, and for a more recent account of modern atomism Niels Bohr’s
article: ‘Atom’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica, II, 641-47.
9. A. Eddington, The Nature of
Physical World, chapter: ‘Science and Mysticism’, p. 323.
10. Nnikrm Vasanmal Thadn
The Garden of the East, pp. 63-64. Cf. Mathnawi, iii, 3901-06, 3912-14, for
Rm’s inimitable lines on the theme of ‘biological future of man’ which Thadn
has presented here in a condensed form. Thada`ni`in the Preface to his book has made it
clear that ‘The poems . . . are not translations of renderings . . .; they are rather
intended to recreate the spirit and idea of each master . . . .’
11. Cf. The Joyful Wisdom,
Book V, where Nietzsche denounces ‘nationalism and race-hatred (as) a scabies of the
heart and blood poisoning’, also The Twilight of the Idols, chapter viii where he
pronounces nationalism to be ‘the strongest force against culture’.
12. Cf. pp. 145-46.
13. Reference here is to the
misguided observations of the orientalists to be found in such works as A. Sprenger, Des
Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed (1861), 1, 207; D.S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the
Rise of Islam (1905), p. 46; R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs
(1907), pp. 147-48; and D. B. Macdonald, Religious Attitude and life in Islam
(1909), p. 46.
14. C. Jung, Contribution to
Analytical Psychology, p. 225.
15. Idem, Psychology of the
Unconscious, pp. 42-43.
16. Cf. Shaikh Ahmad Sirhind, Maktbt-i
Rabbn, vol. I, Letter 253, also Letters 34, 257 and 260. In all these letters
there is listing of the five stations, viz. Qalb (the ‘heart’), Rh
(the ‘spirit’), Sirr (the ‘inner’), Khafiy (the
‘hidden’), and Akhf; together they have also been named as in Letter 34
Jawhir-i Khamsah-i lam-i Amr (‘Five Essences of the Realm of the
Spirit’). Cf. F. Rahman, Selected Letters of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, chapter
iii (pp. 54-55).
17. Cf. Stray Reflections,
ed. Dr Javid Iqbal, p. 42, where Nietzsche has been named as a ‘great prophet of
aristocracy’; also article: ‘Muslim Democracy’ (Speeches, Writings and
Statements of Iqbal, pp. 123-24), where a critical notice of Nietzsche’s
‘Aristocracy of Supremen’ ends up in a very significant rhetorical question:
‘Is not, then, the democracy of early Islam an experimental refutation of the ideas
of Nietzsche?’

18. Cf. Kulliyt-i Iqbl (Fris), Jvd
Nmah, p. 741, vv. 4 and 3.
Compare this with Allama
Iqbal’s pronouncement on Nietzsche in his highly valuable article:
‘McTaggart’s Philosophy’:
A more serious thing happened to
poor Nietzsche, whose peculiar intellectual environment led him to think that his vision
of the Ultimate Ego could be realized in a world of space and time. What grows only out of
the inner depths of the heart of man, he proposed to create by an artificial biological
experiment’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 150).
Again in ‘Note on
Nietzsche’: ‘Nietzsche’s Supreman is a biological product. The Islamic
perfect man is the product of moral and spiritual forces’ (Thoughts and
Reflections of Iqbal, ed. S. A. Vahid, p. 242).
19. Allama Iqbal wished that
Nietzsche were born in the times of Shaikh Ahmad of Sirhind to receive spiritual light
from him see Kulliyt-i Iqbl (Fris), Jvd Nmah, p. 741, v. 10:
Would that he had lived in
Ahmad’s time

so that he might have attained eternal joy. (trans. Arberry)
And he himself could be
Nietzsche’s spiritual mentor, were he be in Iqbal’s times; see Kulliyt-i
Iqbl (Urd), Bl-i Jibrl, Pt. II, Ghazal 33, v. 5.
If that Frankish Sage

Were present in this age
Him Iqbal would teach

God’s high place and reach (trans. S. Akbar Ali Shah).
20. Cf. A. Schimmel, ‘Some
Thoughts about Future Studies of Iqbal,’ Iqbal, XXIV/iv (1977), 4.
21. Cf. pp. 145-46.
22. Cf. Bertrand Russell,
‘Relativity: Philosophical Consequences’, Section: ‘Force and
Gravitation’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, XIX, 99c.
23. Cf. Kulliyt-i Iqbl
(Fris), Jvd Nmah, p. 607, vv. 10-15 and p. 608, vv. 1-7.
Commenting on Allama’s
translation of this passage A. J. Arberry in the Introduction to his translation of Jvd
Namh observes that this ‘affords a very fair example of how close and how
remote Iqbal was prepared to make his own version of himself’. And he adds that for
comparison, in addition to the translation of this passage offered by him, the reader may
like to consider its verse-paraphrase by Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad in Pilgrimage of Eternity,
II, 230-256.

Back to
Lecture-VII