IQBĀL, MUḤAMMAD (1877–1938), influential Muslim poet-philosopher of the Indian subcontinent. Born at Sialkot (presently a Pakistani town on the border of India), Iqbāl received his early schooling in his native town and his college education at Lahore (where he studied philosophy with the British Islamicist T. W. Arnold). In 1905 he went to Europe, where he followed MʾTaggart's lectures in philosophy, took his doctorate from Munich with a thesis on the development of metaphysics in Persia, and was called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn in London in 1908. In the same year he returned to Lahore where he taught for a while at the Government College and pursued a hectic but unsuccessful law practice. He was knighted in 1922 for his contributions to poetry (about 60 percent of which is in Persian and 40 percent in Urdu...