Early life[edit]

Mohammad Iqbal was born on 9 November 1877 in Sialkot, in the Punjab province of British India in what is now Pakistan. During
the reign of Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan—according to scholar Bruce Lawrence—Iqbal's Brahmin ancestors from Kashmir had
converted to Islam.[3] However, according to Iqbal biographer Mustansir Mir, the conversion to Islam took place even earlier, some
four and a half centuries before Iqbal's birth.[4] Much later, around the turn of the nineteenth century, as the Kashmir region came
under Sikh rule, his grandfather's family emigrated to the Punjab. [4] According to scholar Annemarie Schimmel, Iqbal often wrote
about his being "a son of Kashmiri-Brahmans but (being) acquainted with the wisdom of Rumi and Tabriz."[5]
Iqbal's father, Nur Muhammad, was a tailor,[4] who lacked formal education, but who had great devotion to Islam and a "mystically
tinged piety."[5] Iqbal's mother was known in the family as a "wise, generous woman who quietly gave financial help to poor and
needy women and arbitrated in neighbor's disputes." [6] After his mother's death in 1914, Iqbal wrote an elegy for her:
Who would wait for me anxiously in my native place?
Who would display restlessness if my letter fails to arrive
I will visit thy grave with this complaint:
Who will now think of me in midnight prayers?
All thy life thy love served me with devotion—
When I became fit to serve thee, thou hast departed.[5]

At the age of four, young Iqbal was sent regularly to a mosque, where he learned how to read the Quran in Arabic.[4] The following
year, and for many years thereafter, Iqbal became a student of Syed Mir Hassan, who was then the head of the Madrassa in
Sialkot, and later to become a widely-known Muslim scholar.[6] An advocate of secular European education for the Muslims of British
India—in the tradition of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan—Hassan convinced Iqbal's father to send him to Sialkot's Scotch Mission College,
where Hassan was professor of Arabic.[6] Two years later, in 1895, Iqbal obtained the Faculty of Arts diploma from the college. [6]
That year Iqbal's family arranged for him to be married to Karim Bibi, the daughter of an affluent Gujarati physician. The couple had
two children: a daughter, Mi'raj Begam (born 1895) and a son, Aftab (born 1899). Iqbal's third child, a son, died soon after birth.
Iqbal and Karim were unhappy in their marriage and eventually divorced in 1916. [citation needed]
Later the same year, Iqbal entered the Government College in Lahore where he studied philosophy, English
literature and Arabic and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating cum laude. He won a gold medal for placing first in the
examination in philosophy. While studying for his master's degree, Iqbal came under the influence of Sir Thomas Arnold, a scholar
of Islam and modern philosophy at the college. Arnold exposed the young man to Western culture and ideas, and served as a
bridge for Iqbal between the ideas of East and West. Iqbal was appointed to a readership in Arabic at the Oriental College in Lahore,
and he published his first book in Urdu, The Knowledge of Economics in 1903. In 1905 Iqbal published the patriotic song, Tarana-e-
Hind (Song of India).[citation needed]

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