No doubt the translator of this work was Dr Muhammad Iqbal, but he was not Allama Muhammad Iqbal. In fact during the early half of the 20th century Lahore enjoyed the presence of two Dr Muhammad Iqbals living side by side.

The one flourished as a poet commonly known as Allama Iqbal, he enjoyed the epithets of The Hakimul Ummat and the Poet of the East.

The other Dr Muhammad Iqbal, somewhat lesser known, distinguished himself as a scholar associated with Punjab Univeristy as the head of Persian Department and later as the principal of its Oriental College.

Prof Muhammad Iqbal has in addition to other scholarly works also translated a Persian book Rahat-ul-Sadoor in Urdu.

The librarians of Harvard University mistook Prof Iqbal for Allama Iqbal and listed the book under the latter's name in its catalogue. Dr Daud Rahbar pointed the error to the librarians who realised their mistake and have now corrected it.

Dr Daud Rahbar, a scholar in his own right, is the son of the late Prof Iqbal. He is at present engaged in writing the biography of his illustrious father.

He disclosed the above mentioned error in an article which is included in a volume about Prof Iqbal compiled by Dr Ikram Chughtai and published by the Truth Society, Lahore under the title Tarikh-i-Razmiyat-i-Iran. This book is an Urdu translation of Nöldeke's German book on Firdousi's Shahnama.

Theodor Nöldeke was a German orientalist, who died in 1930. Dr Ikram Chughtai had access to his personal papers and from among these papers he dug out a letter written in German by Prof Iqbal to Nöldeke in respect to his proposed translation of the said book.

Two other letters written by E.G. Brown in this respect were also dug out. These three letters too form part of this volume

This volume carries in addition a section comprising articles about Prof Iqbal. These articles written by Maulvi Abdulhaq, Dr Syed Abdullah, Dr Baqar, Prof Iqbal's brother Prof Khadim Muheuddin, and son Daud Rahbar serve as an introduction to the personality of Prof Iqbal.

These articles taken together make a lively portrait of the esteemed scholar and bring to light his devotion to knowledge and his point of view in respect of literature and language.

Primarily a Persian scholar, he also cared to learn a few other languages, particularly French and German and as the foreword of this book informs us, 'he showed a keen interest in translating known literary and scholarly works written in these languages into Urdu.'

It was this keenness on his part that prompted him to undertake the work of translation under discussion. Of course the Persian and English translations of Nöldeke's aforementioned German book were available. But he chose to make his Urdu translation directly from the original German text.

He has not cared to be very literal and has also thought fit to ignore some portions of the original, which according to him, were not relevant as far as his Urdu readers were concerned.

He has, however, made a useful addition of footnotes. Moreover he took pains to find out the Persian text of the couplets in Shahnama, which have been referred to by Nöldeke in his discussion.

In his account of Shahnama Nöldeke has referred to the poet Daqiqi, who was senior to Firdausi, and who had made the first attempt to write a Shahnama like Masnavi. But his ambitious plan remained unfulfilled because of his untimely death.

The other chapter included in this book tells us about the sources from where Firdausi has borrowed much in his Shahnama. One such source, as traced by Nöldeke, is a kind of Shahnama written in prose and bears the title Nama Bastan.

He quotes from Firdausi's couplets where the poet seems saying that he is undebted to Nama Bastan for what he has written in his Shahnama.

A number of books written in Arabic have also been referred here as sources supplying material to Firdausi.

Other chapters may be seen offering a critical study of Shahnama and pointing to the poetic qualities this epic carries with it.

The credit for this volume goes to Ikram Chughtai who has dug out facts relating to this precious work of translation made by Prof Iqbal and compiled all the researched material so ably.