KARACHI: Allama Iqbal’s Javed Nama has man at its very centre. This was the point that Dr Syed Taqi Abidi kept stressing upon during his lecture on Iqbal’s book of Persian poetry at Urdu Bagh on Tuesday morning.

Dr Abidi, who lives in Canada, said it’s a complicated (paicheedah) subject [to talk about]. The book has 1,837 verses (shear) and it took Iqbal five years to complete it. The poet himself had said he had not read or studied more for any of his books than he had to study for Javed Nama, which was published in 1932.

Dr Abidi said those who know about literature count Iqbal’s book as one of the top five in Persian. Shahnama (Firdausi), Masnavi (Maulana Rumi), Diwan-i-Hafiz, Saadi’s Gulistan and Javed Nama are in Persian and we are no more as well-versed in the language as we used to be, he bemoaned.

Quoting from the book (which he did profusely throughout the lecture), Dr Abidi said the poet wished that the light of his ideas (sahar) reached the younger generation. Iqbal masterfully used similes, (tashbeehat) metaphors (istaa’rey) and allusions (talmeehat) to put his message across. And his philosophy revolved around man who (quoting from a couplet) is so vast that he couldn’t be confined to galaxies.

‘Those who know about literature count Iqbal’s book as one of the top five in Persian’

Dr Abidi said before Iqbal, Amir Khusrau (700 years ago) and Baidil (350 years back) had also touched upon the subject; Iqbal was familiar with them. This led the Canadian scholar to remark that most of the genres in poetry — masnavi, ruba’ai, ghazal etc — adopted by poets [of the subcontinent] had originated in other parts of the world but the meanings [of questions raised by life] that the poets extracted by using those forms were our own.

Returning to the topic of the importance of man and humanity, Dr Abidi said Javed Nama’s central idea (markazi khayal) is human being and his/her character building (insaan saazi). He lamented that today, in the 21st century, though we call ourselves civilised, humanity is in crisis. People don’t respect one another. Creatures such as animals work like computers but man has his will. He has to decide between majboor (helpless, exploited) or mukhtaar (independent, self-governing). Man can either drop money into a blind beggar’s bowl or steal out of it.

He said in Javed Nama, the most number of verses is to do with Maulana Rumi. The second is Tipu Sultan. In the book, Iqbal is walking near a river and Rumi’s spirit appears. They have a dialogue. At this point, Dr Abidi told the audience that Iqbal had said on one occasion that he benefited from books by Dante, Ibn-i-Arabi and Abu al Ala-Ma’arri. He also claimed that exactly 100 years before the publication of Javed Nama, there came Ghalib’s Mairaj Nama (1832) comprising 251 verses, and Iqbal was inspired by it.

Dr Abidi narrated episodes from the book, such as the one where Rumi and Iqbal meet Jahan Dost and exchange thoughts. But the scholar kept coming back to the concept of humanity reciting lines such as Aadmiyat ehteram-i-aadmi (respe­cting man is humanity). He stressed that Javed Nama is not just a book for Muslims, but for all mankind.

He pointed out that Iqbal doesn’t only touch upon big topics, he also provides us with remedies. For him, a human being should be conscious of himself/herself, of others, and of the Almighty.

He again complained about the way the contemporary world is operating in terms of people respecting one another by saying that democratic governments are evaluated by the way they treat their minorities.

In between his comments, he kept narrating the various phases that the poet goes through in his book, including those in which he meets the likes of Ghalib and Quratulain Tahira.

Earlier, writer Zaheda Hina introduced the speaker to the audience.

Rukhsana Saba anchored the event.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2019