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"Poet of the East"

Iqbal has been referred to as the "Poet of the East" by academics, institutions and the media.

The Vice-Chancellor of Quaid-e-Azam University, Dr. Masoom Yasinzai, stated in a seminar addressing a distinguished gathering of educators and intellectuals that Iqbal is not only a poet of the East but is a universal poet. Moreover, Iqbal is not restricted to any specific segment of the world community, but he is for all humanity.

Yet it should also be born in mind that while dedicating his Eastern Divan to Goethe, the cultural icon par excellence, Iqbal's Payam-i-Mashriq constituted both a reply as well as a corrective to the Western Divan of Goethe. For by stylizing himself as the representative of the East, Iqbal endeavored to talk on equal terms to Goethe as the representative of West.

Iqbal's revolutionary works through his poetry affected the Muslims of the subcontinent. Iqbal thought that Muslims had long been suppressed by the colonial enlargement and growth of the West. For this concept, Iqbal is recognised as the "Poet of the East".

So to conclude, let me cite Annemarie Schimmel in Gabriel's Wing who lauds Iqbal's "unique way of weaving a grand tapestry of thought from eastern and western yarns" (p. xv), a creative activity which, to cite my own volume Revisioning Iqbal, endows Muhammad Iqbal with the stature of a " universalist poet " and thinker whose principal aim was to explore mitigating alternative discourses to construct a bridge between the "East" and the "West."

The Urdu world is very familiar with Iqbal as the "Poet of the East". Iqbal is also called Muffakir-e-Pakistan ("The Thinker of Pakistan") and Hakeem-ul-Ummat ("The Sage of the Ummah "). The Pakistan government officially named him Pakistan's " national poet ".