Muhammad Iqbal, an Islamic poet and metaphysician, was born in Sialkot, Pakistan. He studied philosophy at Cambridge for three years under J. M. E. McTaggart and James Ward. He received his Ph.D. from Munich University in 1908 for his thesis The Development of Metaphysics in Persia.

Inheriting the classical tradition of Muslim mystic poets, both Persian and Urdu, Iqbal was for a long time an admirer of the Spanish Sufi philosopher Ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240), the most consistent advocate of pantheism among Muslim thinkers. Very soon, however, he realized that this philosophy was foreign to the simple and invigorating message of Islam as embodied in the Qurʾan and as represented in the dynamic life of Muḥammad and his early followers. Under the influence of Jalāl al-Din Rūmī (1207–1273), the great mystic poet, whose philosophical outlook was allied in several important respects with post-Kantian...