Iqbal's Youth: Shaheen

The most significant and certainly the best known, image in Iqbal’s poetry is that of the Shaheen. “Live in the world like an eagle, and like an eagle die,” says Iqbal (Javâd Namah). An understanding of the Shaheen motif in Iqbal’s poetry thus becomes essential to understand Iqbal’s thought and message.

Iqbal wants Muslim Nojawans to stop living a life of indolence and accept the challenges of life. Using the garden and the desert as metaphors respectively, for easy and tough life, he tells Muslims to quit the garden, reminding them that they have the power to fly like “the mountain shahbaz”.

Iqbal says, addressing the Muslim:

“You are the eagle of Muhammad,”
“and angels and houris are your prey”

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"If you are bareheaded, develop high resolve,
For here the crown is only for the eagle’s head."

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In a passage in "Pas Chi Bayed Kard?". Iqbal has this to say on the subject (he is addressing those who advise Muslims to renounce the world):

"This world of clay and water is game to the believer.
Are you saying to the falcon, “Let go of your game?”
I have failed to solve this difficult problem:
Why does the eagle shun the skies?
Pity the eagle that does not act like one,
And whose claws never caused hurt to a bird,
An eagle that is nest?bound, abject, crestfallen,
And does not flap its wings in the blue space!"

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While Regretting on the state of Muslims of his time he says:

"Alas! A hundred times alas that you did not become an eagle!
Your eyes failed to catch the hints of nature:
The judge of fate has since eternity decreed:
"The crime of weakness merits instant death."
The last line is also a neat summation of Iqbal’s understanding of the workings of history."

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Quite naturally, 1qbal sees himself in the role of reminding the eagles—the Youngsters—of their roots and their potentialities:

"Those who had been prey for long now have a new vision,
For I have divulged the ways of the falcon."

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Here are some Nazams of Iqbal about Shaheen:

THE EAGLE

I have turned my back on that world.
Where sustenance is called grain and water.
I like the solitude of the wilderness-
I was always a hermit by nature-
No spring breeze, no rose?plucker, no nightingale,
And no illness of the songs of love!
One must avoid the garden?dwellers
Their charms are too seductive!
It is the desert wind that gives effect
To the stroke of the brave youth in combat.
It is not that I am hungry for pigeon and dove-
Renunciation is the mark of an eagle’s life-
To swoop, to withdraw, and to swoop again
Is but a pretext to keep up blood heat.
This cast, this west is the pheasants’ world,
Mine is the boundlessness of the blue sky!
I am the monk of the kingdom of birds,
For the eagle is not given to making nests.

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BEYOND THE STARS 

There are other worlds beyond the stars;
More tests of love are yet to come.
This vast space is not lifeless?
In it there are hundreds of other caravans.
Do not be content with the world of colour and smell:
There are other gardens, and other nests, too.
What is to worry if you have lost one residence?
There are other stations one might sigh and cry for!
You are an eagle; your job is to fly:
You have other skies in front of you.
Do not get lost in this maze of day and night,
There is, for you, another space, another time.
Gone are the days when I was an isolate in the group:
Many here now are, confidants of mine.

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THE EAGLE’S ADVICE TO ITS YOUNGSTER

“You know that all eagles are, of essence, one:
A handful of feathers, they have the heart of a lion.
Be of good nature, and of mature strategy;
Be daring, dignified, and a hunter of big game.
Do not mix with partridge, pheasant, and starling
Except if you should desire to hunt.
What lowly, fear?stricken group they are
That they wipe their beaks clean with dust!
The falcon that imitates the ways of its prey
Becomes the prey of its own prey.
Many a hunting bird that descends to earth
Perishes through mixing with pickers of grain.
Take care of yourself and live in contentment.
Live the life of one brave, strong, and rugged.
Leave for the quail the soft and delicate body;
Develop a vein tough like the horns of a deer.
Any joy that becomes the lot of the world
Is due to hardship, toil, and fullness of breath.”
Well did the eagle speak to its son:
“One drop of blood is better than pure wine.
Do not, like deer and sheep, seek out company;
Go into seclusion like your ancestors.
I remember this of the words of the old falcons:
‘Do not make your nest on the branch of a tree.’
We do not make nests in garden or field,
For we have a paradise in mountains and deserts.
To pick up grain from the ground is an error,
For God has given us the vastness of the skies.
One of noble stock, if he scrapes his feet on the ground,
Becomes more despicable than a house bird.
For falcons the rock is a carpet
Walking on rocks sharpens the claws.
You are one of the yellow?eyed of the desert,
You are noble of nature like the sâmurgh.
You are noble?born, one who, on combat day,
Draws out the pupil of the tiger’s eye.
Your flight has the majesty of angels,
In your veins is the blood of the k«fërâ falcon.
Under the humpbacked, revolving sky
Eat what you catch, be it soft or hard;
Do not take your food from another hand,
Be good and take the advice of the good.

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Youth means burning in one’s own blood:

It is hard work that turns life’s bitter into sweet.
The delight of swooping on the pigeon, my son,
Is perhaps not found in the pigeon’s blood itself.”