Muhammad Allama Iqbal (Image: Business Recorder)

Offices are closed today in Lahore as the Pakistani nation marks Iqbal day, celebrating the birth of visionary poet and philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal.

Also known as Allama Iqbal, he is widely credited with having conceived the concept of Pakistan.

Born on 9th November 1877 in Sialkot, Punjab, he studied law in London before returning to his homeland. In 1922 he was knighted by then-British monarch King George V.

Although he had spoken of a Muslim nation separate from India as early as in 1930, it was in a letter to Pakistan’s founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah in 1937 that Sir Iqbal articulated the concept of Pakistan as we know it today.

Sir Muhammad Allama Iqbal’s tomb in Lahore

According to a Wikipedia entry, the letter read as follows; “A separate federation of Muslim Provinces, reformed on the lines I have suggested above, is the only course by which we can secure a peaceful India and save Muslims from the domination of Non-Muslims. Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India and outside India are?”

Sir Iqbal died months after that letter, nine years before the volatile creation of Pakistan. He is considered a key figure in the history of the nation, buried in a humble tomb outside Lahore’s iconic Badshahi Mosque.

His vision for Pakistan is often considered in modern debates over the nature and character of Pakistan, which at 66 years of age, is still consolidating its national identity.