Message from the East
Payam-i-Mashriq (Urdu: پیامِ مشرق; or Message from the East; published in Persian, 1923) is a philosophical poetry book of Allama Iqbal, the great poet-philosopher of the Indian subcontinent.
Introduction
Payam-i Mashriq is an answer to West-östlicher Diwan by Goethe, the famous German poet.
History
Immediately after the end of World War I, Iqbal started writing the Payam and it can be presumed that he would have thought in this respect to achieve a goal of bringing the East and the West closer to each other.
It is evident from some of Iqbal’s Urdu letters that he first disclosed about his book-in-preparation (i.e. Payam) to Syed Sulaiman Nadwi, a distinguished scholar and his esteemed friend, in 1919:
"At present, I am writing a reply to the Divan of a Western poet (i.e. Goethe) and about half of it has been completed. Some poems will be in Persian and some in Urdu..... Two great German poets, Goethe and Uhland, were barristers. After practicing for a short time Goethe was appointed as an educational advisor to the state of Weimar and, thus, found much time to pay attention to his artistic intricacies. Uhland devoted his whole life to the law suits, and, therefore, he could write a few poems."