1. The Verse of Naziri

I would not exchange for half a dozen systems of philosophy this one verse of Naziri:

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* The Persian couplet could be translated as: “Nothing falls short in my wasteland; every wood that could not be my pulpit I turned it into the gallows” – KAS.

In 1917, Iqbal published a series of ‘Stray Thoughts’ in New Era, Lucknow. They are now included in Discourses of Iqbal compiled by Shahid Husain Razzaqi. All but one of these are taken from the private notebook, although revised in most cases. The entries correspond to the following numbers of the present volume: 124, 117, 116, 112, 109, 82, 80, 71, 63, 64, 54, 79, 3, 2, 9, 8, 11, 29, 98, 103, 105, 111, 123 and 50. Where these vary from the notebook, the changes have been carefully annotated in this edition.

A new entry appears in the above sequence between 54 and 79. It does not occur in the notebook and might have been written at some later period. It was included in the second edition of  Stray Reflections  in 1992 and given the heading ‘The Verse of Naziri.’

KAS