Muhammad Iqbal, Payam-e Mashriq [Message of the East]

Javed Majeed (King's College London)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.2: Pakistani and Bangladeshi Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Sarker Hasan Al Zayed (Independent University Bangladesh), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Muneeza Shamsie (Independent Scholar - Asia), Niaz Zaman (Independent University Bangladesh)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1923

Places

India (Publication/ performance)
Pakistan (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

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Message of the East

, subtitled “In answer to the divan of the German poet Goethe”, is a response to Goethe’s

West-ostlicher Divan

(1819). Iqbal’s poem consists of 155 quatrains, a group of poems in a mainly lyric mode, 45 “ghazals” (love lyrics), and a section entitled “Portrait of the Europeans”. This section draws sketches of some European poets and philosophers, including Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Byron, Hegel, Goethe, Locke, Lenin, and Bergson. The poem is dedicated to the then King of Afghanistan. Iqbal’s Urdu preface outlines his aim as “foregrounding the ethical [“akhlaqi”], religious [“mazhabi”] and communal [“milli”] truths and ideas that are relevant to the inner development of individuals and nations” (Iqbal,

Payam-e Mashriq

1973, p. 11). The…

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191 words

Citation: Majeed, Javed. "Payam-e Mashriq". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 July 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30672, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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