Tehran Celebrates Philosopher-Poet Iqbal’s Enduring Legacy

Date: 10 November 2025 - 22:19

News ID: ۱۴۵۶۶۹

TEHRAN -- On Sunday, the Mehr Hall at the Hozeh Honari of the Islamic Revolution became a luminous space of reflection and verse, as poets and scholars from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan gathered to honor Allama Iqbal Lahori.
Among the attendees were Muhammad Mudassir Tipu, ambassador of Pakistan to Iran, and Zahed Munir, a distinguished Iqbal scholar, alongside a constellation of literary voices from across the region.
The evening opened with Milad Erfanpour, poet and director of the Literary Creation Center at Hozeh Honari, welcoming the guests with a reflection on the enduring brotherhood between Iran and Pakistan.
“Though Iqbal is foremost remembered as a poet,” he remarked, “to limit him to poetry alone would be an injustice.” Erfanpour positioned Iqbal not merely as a literary figure but as a thinker whose vision of freedom and human dignity resonates across the contemporary Muslim world.
Ambassador Tipu traced the historical and political ties binding Iran and Pakistan. He recounted the steadfast support of Pakistan during moments of conflict and underscored the poetic bridges Iqbal built between the two nations.
“For me, Iran is a second home,” Tipu reflected. He expressed a wish to participate in the 2027 Year of Iqbal Lahori alongside Hozeh Honari, emphasizing the poet’s call for unity in the face of the modern world’s challenges.
The heart of the evening was, of course, the poetry. Voices from four countries filled the hall, evoking landscapes, histories, and metaphysical longings.
Morteza Amiri Esfandaghe offered verses praising Iran, while Hassan Reza and Seyed Ahmad Husseini Shahriar from Pakistan, alongside Tajik poets Shah Mansour and Mahmoud Habibi Kasbi, conjured Iqbal’s spirit through languages that transcended national boundaries.
Zahed Munir provided context and reflection, situating Iqbal within a broader Persianate intellectual tradition. He spoke of Iran as a cultural and historical compass, whose art, literature, and history remained central to Iqbal’s imagination.
“He considered Persian the language of sweetness,” Munir said, “and often drew on Iran’s past to illuminate the moral and philosophical challenges of his time.”
The evening closed with the reading of poetry by Mashallah Shakeri, former Iranian ambassador to Pakistan, sealing the event as a meeting not only of nations but of histories and hearts.
Iqbal Lahori himself was a man of paradoxes and borders. Born in what is today Pakistan to ancestors who had converted to Islam, he pursued studies across Scotland, Lahore, and Germany, producing a doctorate on the history of philosophy in Iran.
His political engagement began in his youth, opposing British colonial rule and later envisioning the separation of Muslim India into a new nation—Pakistan—realized nine years after his death.
Yet beyond politics, his devotion to Persian language and literature remained unwavering. He wrote in Persian not because he was Iranian, but because it was the language that best captured the sweep of his thought, the cadence of his metaphysical inquiry, and the longing of his heart.
To this day, scholars and poets alike consider Iqbal “the most Iranian of non-Iranians”—a testament to the enduring power of poetry and culture to traverse borders.
In celebrating Iqbal, the evening at Hozeh Honari reminded its audience that language, art, and thought are the ties that bind human communities across time and space.