Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, Interces-

sion (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1998); Shaun Marmon, 

“The Quality of Mercy: Intercession in Mamluk Society.” 

Studia Islamic 87 (1998): 125–139; David Pinault, “Shia 

Lamentation Rituals and Reinterpretations of the Doc-

trine of Intercession: Two Cases from Modern India.” 

History of Religions 38, no. 3 (1999): 285–305; Annema-

rie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The 

Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill: 

University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

intifada

  See i

srael

; p

alestine

.

Iqbal, Muhammad

 

(1877–1938)  leading 

Indian poet, intellectual, and statesman

Muhammad Iqbal, a remarkably brilliant Muslim 

intellectual who initially articulated the idea of mod-

ern p

akistan

, was born in Sialkot, a town north of 

Lahore. His father owned a tailor shop. He received 

both his B.A. (1897) and M.A. (1899) degrees from 

the Government College in Lahore. An outstanding 

student, he excelled in Arabic, Urdu, Persian, and 

English and emerged from the university as a poet 

of note in both Urdu and Persian. In 1903, while a 

faculty member at his old school, he published his 

first book, a study of economics.

In 1905, he traveled to Europe for postgraduate 

studies and completed a Ph.D. at Munich two years 

later after completing a dissertation on Persian 

metaphysics. He came to know some of the most 

brilliant scholars in Europe at the time, including 

the Orientalists Thomas Arnold, E. G. Brown, and 

R. A. Nicholson. He taught for a year at London 

University, was admitted to the bar, and in 1908 

returned to what then was i

ndia

. For the next years, 

Iqbal practiced law, taught part time in Arabic and 

English literature, and wrote the Urdu and Persian 

poems that would make him famous. In 1915, he 

quit his teaching post to spend time promoting 

humanistic Islamic reform. In 1923, he received a 

knighthood from the British government.

Iqbal entered politics in 1926 and was elected 

to the Punjab Legislative Council, where he