Allamah Iqbal's Bal-I Jibril (Gabriel's Wing)

About the Book Bal-i-Jibril (Gabriel's Wing; published in Urdu, 1935) is a philosophical poetry book of Allama Iqbal, the great South Asian poet-philosopher, and the national poet of Pakistan.

Iqbal's first book of poetry in Urdu, Bang-i-Dara (1924), was followed by Bal-i-Jibril in 1935 and Zarb-i-kalim in 1936. Bal-i-Jibril is the peak of Iqbal's Urdu poetry. It consists of ghazals, poems, quatrains, epigrams and displays the vision and intellect necessary to foster sincerity and firm. belief in the heart of the ummah and turn its members into true believers.

Some of the verses had been written when Iqbal visited Britain, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, France, Spain and Afghanistan, including one of Iqbal's best known poems The Mosque of Cordoba.

The work contains 15 ghazals addressed to God and 61 ghazals and 22 quatrains dealing the ego, faith, love, knowledge, the intellect and freedom. The poet recalls the past glory of Muslims as he deals with contemporary political problems.

About the Author Annemarie Schimmel (7 April 1922- 26 January 2003) was an influential German Orientalist and scholar who wrote extensively on Islam and Sufism. Internationally renowned, she was a professor at Harvard University from 1967 to 1992.

At the university, she was deeply influenced by her teacher Hans Heinrich Schaeder, who suggested that she study the Divan of Shams Tabrizi, one of the major works of Jalaluddin Rumi. In November 1941 she received a doctorate with the thesis Die Stellung des Kalifen und der Qadis im spätmittelalterlichen Ägypten (The Position of the Caliph and the Qadi in Late Medieval Egypt).

In 1946, at the age of 23, she became a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Marburg, Germany. She earned a second doctorate at Marburg in the history of religions (Religionswissenschaft) in 1954.

**Contents and Sample Pages**