Search

[German Version] (Nov 9, 1877, Sialkot – Apr 21, 1938, Lahore), leading poet-philosopher in modern Islam. Iqbāl was schooled in English and German philosophy and was an admirer of J.W. v. Goethe and M.Ğ. Rūmī. In his Persian (6 vols.) and Urdu (3 vols.) poetry, he developed his dynamic worldview, in which love appears as the force that stengthens the individual on the path to God and wherein the defeat of Satan through continuous struggle plays an important role. In his lectures (1928), Iqbāl atte…

[German Version] I. General – II. History and Culture – III. Religious History – IV. History of Christianity I. General The designation “India,” Gk ἰνδός/ indós, Latinized as indus, goes back to Sanskrit sindhu (orig. “boundary”?) through the intermediary of Old Persian hindu; it is a designation of the River Sindhu and of the Indus region, from which Persian Hindūstān, “Place/territory of the Hindus,” is derived. The Indians themselves called the land (among other designations) Bhārata, “[Land of the] Descendants of Bhārata” (the l…

Pakistan became an independent state on August 14, 1947. The idea of a Muslim area in the northwest of the subcontinent was first suggested and supported by Muhammad Iqbāl (1877–1938), the poet-philosopher of Indian Muslims, at the annual gathering of the All India Muslim League in Allahabad on December 30, 1930. 1. History Muslims (Islam) came to India in 711 and took over the lower Indus Valley up to Multan (now southern Pakistan). By 800 a second wave came and, from Ghaznī in present-day Afghanistan, set up Muslim rule in northwest India. Ben…

1. A sense of number seems to be an inherent part of human life and property. All cults and religions have understood number in much the same way. The Babylonians (Babylonian and Assyrian Religion), using 60 as the basis, oriented their numerical system to the heavenly bodies. The Pythagoreans (Greek Philosophy 2.2) equated the cosmos with pure mathematics. For them the odd numbers were masculine and positive. Their views influenced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The strictly arithmetic theories (esp. of Euclid [4th cent. b.c.]), which were not under Pythagorean influenc…